Beating Bullies At Work
Bullying in the workplace is gaining increasing media coverage as employees start to take action against employers who don’t take their concerns seriously. A sensible response is to put into place a policy on bullying to sit alongside those for harassment and whistleblowing, but whilst that may take care of the employers responsibilities from a compliance perspective, they may have little impact on what happens everyday in the workplace.
Organisations that have clear job descriptions supported by competencies and that have a well understood and consistently applied performance management system that reflects their values tend not to have a problem with bullying. It’s a phenomenon that can only occur when behaviours and objectives aren’t transparent and are not objectively assessed.
A manager that doesn’t have clear guidelines around the behaviours expected of them and their team, or any objective way of assessing performance or seeking to improve it, can easily slip into a bullying approach without even realizing what’s happening. Some organisations even tend towards an entire culture of bullying over time as that becomes the accepted way of behaving. When we hear comments such as ‘we never fire anyone, we just make sure that people who don’t fit leave of their own accord’, it often indicates an unhealthy undercurrent of bullying.
If you’d like to talk about how you can challenge bullying in your organisation, and give managers the frameworks they need to ensure that the workplace is productive and constructive contact:
Lynn Joy
e: lynnj@predaptive.com
t: +44 (0) 1789 734333
f: +44 (0) 1789 734401
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