How to Prepare an Anti-Bullying Policy
Prevention is the best way to avoid the risk of bullying at work. The purpose of an effective policy is not simply to prevent improper conduct and behaviour but also to encourage best practices and a safe and harmless workplace where such behaviour is unlikely to occur.
Employers should adopt, monitor, and implement an effective and accessible policy on bullying in the workplace.
Preparing the Policy
The policy and complaints procedure should be adopted, where appropriate. Simple direct language should be used in the policy. Information given to employees should be in a form, manner and in an appropriate language that is likely to be understood by the employees concerned.
The policy should be written, dated, and signed by a responsible person in senior management and updated when appropriate.
Scope of the Policy
The policy should:
- Describe what is meant by bullying at work
- Include a non-exhaustive list of examples of bullying behaviour relevant to the employment
- Given the name or job title of the person who may be approached by a person wishing to complain of bullying at work
- State that the protection extends to bullying at work by management, fellow employees, subordinates, clients, customers, and other business contacts as well as work-related social events
- State that all complaints of bullying will be taken seriously and will be followed through to resolution and that employees who make a complaint will not be victimised.
Allocation of Responsibilities in Prevention of Bullying at Work
The policy should state that management, others in the position of authority, and workplace representatives have a particular responsibility to ensure that bullying at work does not occur and that complaints are addressed promptly.
The policy should state that, management will:
- Provide a good example by treating all people in the workplace with respect
- Promote awareness of the policy and complaints procedures
- Be vigilant for signs of bullying at work through observation and through seeking employee feedback and take action before a problem escalates
- Deal sensitively with employees involved in a bullying complaint
- Explain the procedures to be followed if a complaint of bullying at work is made
- Ensure that an employee making a complaint is not victimised for doing so
- Monitor and follow up on the situation after a complaint is made so that the bullying at work does not reoccur.
Bright Contracts has a preformatted Anti-Bullying Policy under the ‘Bullying and Harassment Policy and Procedure' section of the Handbook in the software, which is fully compliant with current employment laws.
Related Articles:
Bullying in the Workplace: What you need to know
Bullying in the Workplace: What constitutes as bullying?
What You Need to Know About Staff Handbooks
Bullying in the Workplace: What you need to know
We have already discussed in a previous blog post Bullying in the Workplace: What constitutes bullying? What bullying is and what constitutes bullying. In this post we are going to discuss the effects bullying have at work, the role of the employer and the employee to prevent bullying at work and actions and measures you can take to tackle bullying.
The effects of Bullying at Work
Workplace bullying and related complaints can have a range of effects on both employees and employers. For the employer, the effects can include reputation damage, absences of employees in the workplace, reduced productivity, increased costs, poor morale, and loss of respect for managers and supervisors.
For the employee or the target of bullying behaviour, the effects can include stress, low morale, reduced performance, and lower productivity. Some people decide to leave their employment, exposing themselves to financial strains.
Prevention of Bullying at Work- Role of Employer
Every person in the workplace has a role in promoting a positive workplace free from bullying behaviour.
An employer should:
- Uphold the duty to manage and conduct work activities in such a way as to prevent any improper conduct or behaviour that is likely to risk an employee’s safety, health or welfare at work. Employers must act reasonably to prevent workplace bullying patterns developing, where there is a complaint, the employer must react reasonably, assess the complaint, and record actions on each case.
- Develop a workplace anti-bullying policy, in consultation with employees, to ensure a system is in place for dealing with complaints and that disciplinary action may follow where bullying has occurred.
Prevention of Bullying at Work- Role of Employee
How an employee behaves in a way that is acceptable. Employees both individually and within teams and groups, have a role in promoting positive behaviour to others, relating in a clear, civil and respectful way to everyone in the workplace.
Under section 13 of the 2005 Act employees’ duties include to:
- Comply with the relevant statutory provisions, as appropriate, and take reasonable care to protect their safety, health and welfare of any other person who may be affected by the employee’s acts
- Co-operate with their employer or any other person so far as is necessary to enable their employer or any other person to comply with the relevant statutory provisions.
- Not engage in other behaviour that is likely to endanger a person’s own safety, or their health and welfare at work or any other person at work during the course of the employment.
Measures to Prevent Bullying in the Workplace
- Promotion and reinforcement of a positive workplace culture
- Effective Anti-Bullying policies, to be used and promoted in the workplace
- Widespread policy awareness
- Appropriate training as required for those managing complaints and for line management
- Contact person/appropriate support available
There may be value in appointing a Contact Person who acts as the first step for anyone enquiring about a possible bullying case. Where the organization can support this, it can help to resolve matters earlier and more effectively.
The Contact Person should be supportive and listen and offer guidance in line with company policy and procedures all on a confidential basis. This person should be carefully selected and trained. The main purpose of this role is to be supportive, they will have no role in the investigation of any complaints and should not be tasked with any further involvement in the details or right and wrongs of a complaint.
Related Articles:
Bullying in the Workplace: What constitutes as bullying?
What You Need to Know About Staff Handbooks
How to Prevent Discrimination in the Workplace
Workplace discrimination is based on certain prejudices and occurs when an employee is treated unfavourably because of gender, sexuality, race, religion, pregnancy, or disability. Discrimination generally falls into two principal categories, known as direct and indirect discrimination.
Direct Discrimination
Direct discrimination occurs when one individual receives less favourable treatment than another based on one or more of the nine grounds set out in the employment equality legislation. If a woman is paid less than a man to do the same job for no reason other than being a woman, this would represent direct discrimination.
Indirect Discrimination
Indirect discrimination occurs when neutral requirements unjustly disadvantage a certain category of persons. An example of this may be requiring candidates for a manual labour position to have fluent English. This would put Irish nationals in a better position to secure the position over foreign nationals.
Discrimination by Association
Discrimination by association occurs when a person is treated less favourably based on their association with a person protected by one of the nine grounds. If someone is experiencing harassment at work because they are in a relationship outside work with a foreign national this would represent discrimination by association.
Discrimination by Imputation
If an employee is incorrectly identified as belonging to one of the categories of a person described under the nine grounds and receives less favourable treatment than colleagues this will amount to discrimination by imputation. If it is incorrectly assumed that an employee has a certain religious belief and that employee is treated less favourably on this basis this will be discrimination by imputation.
It's important to know that discrimination is carried out by individuals. Your organisation is liable for any actions carried out by an employee in the course of their employment. It is important to take action to reduce the possibility that any discriminatory action occurs.
As part of the action plan to reduce the risk of discrimination occurring within your organisation, you should ensure that all employees:
- Understand that the organisation is committed to preventing all forms of discrimination
- Are aware of and understand their roles and responsibilities with respect to promoting equality and diversity
- Know how to seek advice and make a complaint in respect of discrimination
- Are confident that the employer will treat any complaint seriously and that it will be dealt with promptly and fairly
- Understand that any incident of discrimination will be viewed as a serious disciplinary matter
- Understand the types of behaviour that will be regarded as discrimination.
Providing Training
You should ensure that all managers and supervisors undertake training in ensuring that the workplace remains discrimination-free. Equality training should not be confined to management-level employees. Training, information and skills development in relation to equality should be provided to staff at all levels throughout the organisation. All such training should be structured so that it is accessible to all employees.
- You can communicate on equality issues through:
- Induction training
- Tailored in-house awareness training programmes
- Employee briefings
- Staff representatives
- Information on staff notice boards
- In-house magazine articles
- The staff handbook and policy manual
- Line manager and employee guides
It is important that there is action taken to ensure that discrimination is not in the workplace.
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The WHO?WHAT?WHERE? and WHY? Of The WRC
Bullying in the Workplace: What constitutes as bullying?
Workplace bullying is repeated inappropriate behaviour, direct or indirect, whether verbal, physical or otherwise, conducted by one or more persons against another or others at the place of work and/or in the course of employment, which could reasonably be regarded as undermining the individual’s right to dignity at work.
Examples of bullying behaviour includes but is not limited to the following:
- Exclusion with negative consequences
- Verbal abuse/insults
- Being treated less favourably than colleagues in similar roles
- Belittling a person’s opinion
- Disseminating malicious rumours, gossip or innuendo
- Socially excluding or isolating a person within the work sphere
- Intrusion - pestering, spying or stalking
- Intimidation/aggressive interactions
- Excessive monitoring of work
- Withholding information necessary for proper performance of a person's job
- Repeatedly manipulating a person's job content and targets
- Blaming a person for things beyond their control
- Use of aggressive and obscene language
What is not considered workplace bullying?
An isolated incident of the behaviour described in the above definition may offend dignity at work, but, as a once off incident, is not considered to be bullying. Workplace bullying should meet the criteria of an on-going series of accumulation of seriously, negative, targeted behaviours against a person or persons to damage their esteem and standing in a harmful, continuous way.
Under the Code, the following examples set out behaviours that do not constitute as bullying:
- Expressing differences of opinion strongly
- Offering unwelcome constructive feedback, guidance, or advice about work-related behaviour
- Ordinary performance management
- Acceptable corrective action taken by an employer/ supervisor which relates to the management and direction of an employee (for example, an employer managing a worker’s performance, taking reasonable disciplinary action against the employee, or assigning the employee work)
- Complaints relating to instructions issued by a manager, assignment of duties, terms and conditions of employment or other matters, which are appropriate for referral under other normal grievance procedures, do not constitute bullying.
How does bullying manifest in the workplace?
Workplace bullying ought to meet the criteria of a reoccurring cycle and accumulation of negative directed behaviours against a person or persons to damage their esteem and standing in a harmful, sustained way. A pattern and trend are involved so that a reasonable person would regard such behaviour as clearly wrong, undermining and humiliating. Bullying activities involve actions and behavioural patterns, directly or indirectly, spoken and/or written and could include the use of cyber or digital means for the goal of bullying.
The Bright Contracts Handbook has now been updated to reflect the bullying code of practice for employers and employees on the prevention and resolution of bullying in the workplace. To access the update, log out of your Bright Contracts company file and log back in, you will then see a yellow bar across the top of the page asking you if you would like to upgrade the content.
If you are not a Bright Contracts customer but are looking to adopt or change your HR Software please don’t hesitate to get in touch. Book a free 15-minute online demo to see how Bright Contracts can change your world of HR.
How to avoid harassment in the workplace
The recent allegations against Harvey Weinstein n the US have created somewhat of a snowball effect worldwide with thousands of women and men speaking out about their accounts of sexual harassment and assault, many of them being work related. Allegations involving high profile individuals and people in authority have demonstrated just how widespread a problem this has become across all industries and professions and has exposed a sinister culture of silence, fear and acceptance which we must now turn on its head.
The Employment Equality Acts clearly defines sexual harassment as: forms of unwanted verbal, non-verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature which has the purpose or effect of violating a person’s dignity and creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for the person.
It is important for employers to ensure that harassment will not be tolerated and to portray this to their employees and clients. Employers are therefore compelled to take steps to ensure a harassment-free work environment. Effectively, organisations must set down clearly defined procedures to deal with all forms of harassment including sexual harassment.
There are a number of steps an employer can take to help prevent this type of behavior from occurring in the workplace:
A Bullying and Harassment policy
- to protect the dignity of employees and to encourage respect in the workplace
An Equal Opportunities policy
- to create a workplace which provides for Equal Opportunities for all staff
A Whistle-blowing policy
- to enable staff to voice concerns in a responsible and effective manner.
Transparent and fair procedures throughout
Disciplinary action
- A sanction that is appropriate for the level of alleged harassment – to help try and change the culture of silence that has allowed harassment to become normal and protected.
Provision of on-going training
- At all levels within organisation
Bright Contracts has a fully customisable Staff Handbook, which includes a Bullying and Harassment Policy and also an Equality Policy and Whistleblowing Policy.
To book a free online demo of Bright Contracts click here
To download your free trial of Bright Contracts click here
Workplace Bullying in Ireland amongst the highest in Europe
Newly published research places Ireland as the 7th worst EU country for workplace bullying. The research, conducted by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, also found that Ireland rated highly for cases of physical violence and sexual harassment.
According to the research approximately 6% of European workers have been victims of some form of bullying, whether it is verbal, psychological, physical, or sexual harassment over the last 12 months.
Speaking in response to the finding SIPTU’s Tom O’Driscoll has commented that SIPTU, at any given time could have “over one hundred (bullying cases)”. He said, “bullying mainly comes from managers or those in positions of power but can be colleague on colleague.”
Workplace bullying can have an extremely disruptive effect not only on an individual’s performance at work but also on their home-life and their psychological wellbeing.
Employers need to be vigilant in this area, and take proactive steps to remove bullying from their workplaces. This will include:
- Having robust bullying and harassment policies and procedures in place
- Taking all complaints of bullying or harassment seriously, taking appropriate action
- Acting immediately if bullying or harassment is suspected in the workplace – not procrastinating
- Training all managers fully on managing employees
Bright Contracts - Employment Contracts and Handbooks
Employer Successfully Defends Bullying Claim
Ryanair has successfully defended a claim at the Employment Appeals Tribunal from a former flight attendant, Brian Butler, who claimed he had been bullied by a supervisor.
Mr Butler had claimed that the bullying was to such an extent that he often became nervous, apprehensive and unwell, to the point of being physically sick. The Claimant did raise his concerns informally but because he felt they were not being dealt with fast enough, he decided to resign from his post. The tribunal heard that having submitted his notice Mr Butler went off on sick leave, citing an ear ache.
The tribunal found that although Mr Butler was aware of the Company’s grievance procedure he had not formally raised his issue via the process available to him; he then left the Company before they had an opportunity to address his issues.
Lessons Learnt
This case shows the importance of having a grievance procedure in place and of ensuring all staff are aware of it.
A grievance procedure gives employees a forum to raise issues where they will be dealt with in a consistent, thorough and fair manner.
With no grievance procedure in place an employee has a much greater chance of bringing a successful claim against a company because there was no recourse to raise their compliant internally.
In this case Ryanair’s policies and procedures protected them from what could have been an extremely expensive case.
Bright Contracts - Employment Contracts and Handbooks
