Expert Office Advice

With national ‘Ban bullying at work’ day on November 7th this year, several issues are once again raised. As terrible as it sounds, bullying in the workplace is still an issue for many and life threatening for some.

While bullying at work may not necessarily take on the guise of the playground bully, it’s effects can be just as emotional and threatening. Bullying at work can be described as ANY of the following:
• Staff who are good at their jobs being criticised, given jobs below their skill level or even having responsibility removed.
• Being shouted at.
• Continually being picked on by co-workers or bosses, either in public or private.
• Getting deliberately blocked on promotion.
• Regularly excluding other employees from activities or ignoring them completely.
• Making difficult workloads and deadlines.
• Attacking a member of staff about their appearance or lifestyle.
• Consistently making the same person the issue of jokes.

This small list is just an example of what bullying CAN be, you can probably think of several more right now, but every situation will be different and being general can help you to decide if you may be a victim of bullying or maybe you’re bullying and didn’t realise it!

Bullying is a serious business, every year thousands of people and businesses are taken to court in an attempt to put a stop to unwanted behaviour, workers even risk their houses and families by leaving work to take a lower paying job to rid themselves of a bully. The reason is simple, emotional issues aside, bullying can also cause physical symptoms such as:

• anxiety, headaches, nausea, sleeplessness;
• ulcers, skin rashes, irritable bowel syndrome;
• high blood pressure, various illnesses of the organs such as the kidneys;
• tearfulness, loss of self-confidence, thoughts of suicide.

Your employer has a legal obligation to tackle any bullying problems you are having, treating them as seriously as you are. Bullying in the workplace is a recognised form of stress, and has to be dealt with as any other health and safety issue would. Employers who fail to do this can eventually end up paying a very high price, in essence they are breaking the law.

Legally, employers have the duty to ensure the health and safety and welfare of their employees under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974. Failure to deal with any problems you may be having can result in your employer breaching their contract with you. This is also true of the Sexual Harassment & Racial Discrimination Legislation, and the Criminal Justice & Public Order Act of 1994. Employers and the bully could end up paying fines, compensation and even possibly a jail sentence.

Bullying isn’t isolated, in the last few years the figures of reported cases have skyrocketed from a few hundred to thousands each year:

• Approx 20% are teachers, lecturers and school administrative staff;
• Approx 12% are health care professionals, including nurses, paramedics, GPs etc.;
• Approx 10% are from social services and caring occupations including care of the elderly and people with special needs;
• Approx 6-8% are from the voluntary and non-profit sector, with small charities (social housing, disadvantaged children, special needs, etc) featuring prominently (these usually involve a female serial bully); this sector has show the highest rate of increase in calls since 1998;
• Approx 5% are civil servants not included in the above group.

Of those figures approximately 65% of cases are from the public sector, 30% are from the private sector and 5% are from students, retired people, etc.

Approx 90% of cases involve a manager bullying a subordinate; 8% are peer-to-peer bullying, and 2% subordinate(s) bullying their manager. Bullying isn’t gender dependant either, both men and women bully co-workers, with women being the more common complainants.

If you are being bullied, or require more information a quick search online will produce thousands of relevant results and reading through you will be able to pin-point what course of action is best for you. Since each case is different it’s impossible to give you any help or specific direction apart from, don’t leave it hoping it will get better, you MUST take immediate action.