“Bullying & harassment means any unwanted behaviour that makes someone feel intimidated, degraded, humiliated or offended. It is not always obvious or apparent to others, and may happen in the workplace without an employer’s awareness” (acas.org.uk)
Examples of bullying or harassing behaviour include:
- Spreading rumours
- Insulting behaviour
- Exclusion, isolation or victimisation
- Unfair treatment
- Deliberately undermining a competent worker by constant criticism
- Withholding information or removing responsibility without justification
- Setting impossible deadlines with the intention of undermining
According to the Health and Safety Executive 13% of mental health issues come from violence, threats or bullying. It fair to say however, that this is from reported statistics, there are many incidents which go unreported. A study by the TUC in 2015 suggested nearly a third of people are bullied at work and in 72% of cases the bullying was carried out by a manager.
What does bullying & harassment do to our mental health?
- It starts with denial “this isn’t really happening”, if I just ignore it, it’ll go away”.
- Then the reality that there’s a problem sets in your mind. Once it’s lingered for a while it’s starts to gnaw.
- Before you know it, it’s there every day, when you get up you think about it, then before you get into work you wonder what’s going to happen that day. What are you going to have to deflect? How much are you going to have to defend yourself? How humiliated are you going to be in front of your peers?
- You then realise you must do something, so you try to talk sensibly to the individual(s) about the problem, how you feel about it and what it’s doing to you. If you are lucky and in the minority there will be a resolution.
- If not, you might then be confused about how to deal with the situation. You might question yourself and challenge your own thoughts about the situation. You might speak to HR, if you have an HR department. They will advise you on the internal process to follow for grievances at work. They won’t help you realise your mental health is declining because they’re not trained to do that.
- A formal grievance is probably going to ruin your career surely, nobody actually raises these things do they? You try again and again to have a conversation with those involved as the harassment continues every day. This is confusing and painful to deal with, your mental health is declining further. There is no one at work to help you deal with what you’re going through.
- It’s now affecting your personal life. You are withdrawn, constantly thinking about why this issue can’t be resolved. You might be arguing with your loved ones, or just ignoring them as the weight of this gets heavier and heavier. You are starting to realise this is impacting in a major way.
- Going to work is now so difficult and sickening you can’t face it. You get signed off by your GP who likely diagnoses some form of stress related condition.
This is a real story, and it’s not an isolated one. Unfair treatment such as this goes on all the time. Being bullied or harassed at work can feel very isolating especially in hierarchical organisations who don’t have adequate support for individuals.
What is the impact of bullying for the employer?
Word will get out and you are at risk of condoning a workplace in which bullying and/or harassment exists. This can create an unhappy and unproductive workplace where you will have:
- Poor morale and poor employee scores
- Loss of respect not only for those implicated but those in senior positions who allow it to happen
- Poor productivity
- The cost of absence and ultimately high staff turnover
- Worst case scenario, tribunals and payment of unlimited compensation
What should an employer do to combat bullying & harassment?
It’s an unfortunate fact that organisations don’t tend to consider the employee when setting policies or creating procedures to deal with this issue. This leads to the loss of good people. The minute an organisation only looks out for themselves the respect of the employee affected and those remaining will be lost, therefore:
- Have a policy which considers and involves the employee
- Be a good role model, the behaviour of senior leadership is as important as the policy
- Maintain procedures which deal promptly with complaints and have independent support for the employee.
- Set standards of behaviour and ensure these are widely communicated.
