How to develop an anti-bullying policy for your workplace
| NOTE: You can adapt the anti-bullying guidelines in this topic to deal with other forms of workplace harassment. |
Most organisations consider policies and procedures to deal with bullying behaviour in the workplace only after the damage has been done.
Appropriate organisational policies should obviate complaints of bullying. To be effective, such policies should already have been adopted. Potential bullying should never reach crisis point: prevention is always better than cure. Are your staff members clear about your anti-bullying attitude? To develop an effective policy for your workplace, consider the following advice...
1. Follow the guidelines suggested in Topic 554.
Revisit Topic 554 outlining the procedures for developing policy through the use of collaborative and consultative processes. Refresh your understanding of these basic guidelines before commencing work on an anti-bullying policy for your workplace.
2. Choose between a stand-alone and an incorporated policy.
Depending on your circumstances, an anti-bullying policy can be developed as a stand-alone document or incorporated into an existing policy relating to equity, harrassment, or workplace health and safety. If bullying is a problem, however, a specific policy should be adopted to highlight the issue. If written into a broader policy, it is important to ensure bullying does not become lost among the other issues.
3. Develop an anti-bullying policy for your workplace.
In preparing an effective anti-bullying policy, you should :
1. Open with a statement of intent.
This statement should clearly reveal your organisation’s commitment to promoting trust, respect, and courtesy and to providing a workplace free from bullying. Affirm that your organisation finds bullying unacceptable and that it will not be tolerated.
- Define workplace bullying.
Provide a succinct definition and make it clear that bullying can occur at all levels - between senior managers and supervisors, between supervisors and employees, between employees, and between staff and clients. List examples of the types of actions which typify bullying behaviou - yelling, threats, belittling, public reprimands, ostracising, excessive supervision, offensive jokes, maliciousness, unwanted physical contact or assault, trivial fault-finding, and so on.
- Outline the impact of bullying on the organisation.
Make it clear, through examples, how destructive workplace bullying can be to the organisation - through reduced productivity and morale, absenteeism, loss of trained and talented staff, unsafe working environment, loss of profits, and costly legal implications - and to individuals who become stressed, depressed, ill, withdrawn, aggressive, even suicidal, and so on.
- List your strategies for eliminating bullying.
These could include developing a code of conduct to be signed by all staff, general training of all staff aimed at the elimination of bullying, the availability of complaints mechanisms, ongoing review of the issue, and so on.
- Make clear the role of management.
Clarify the difference between management practice and bullying. Make it clear that critical comment relating to performance deficiencies, and constructive feedback or counselling on work performance is appropriate and reasonable, and does not constitute bullying behaviour. (The line between the legitimate use of authority and the beginnings of bullying behaviour is sometimes grey, particularly for a supervisor with a strong management style exercised in a pressured environment.)
Affirm that managers and supervisors must ensure that employees are not bullied, and that they themselves must demonstrate appropriate behaviour, promote the anti-bullying policy, treat complaints seriously and confidentially, and ensure that targetted employees and their witnesses are not victimised.
- Confirm procedures for making complaints of bullying.
List the avenues by which a victim can obtain help or make a complaint relating to workplace bullying - for example, through a nominated contact officer, a supervisor, the human resource manager, the occupational health and safety officer, the union delegate, and so on.
The policy should also summarise the various options available to an employee victim in dealing with a workplace bully.
- Record your organisation’s commitment to prompt investigation of a complaint.
Convey an assurance that any employee complaint relating to workplace bullying will be treated seriously and investigated promptly, confidentially, impartially, and that the victim and any witnesses will be protected from victimisation.
- Outline the consequences for those who breach the policy.
Disclose clearly that disciplinary action will be taken against those who bully fellow employees or who victimise the person who has made or is a witness to a complaint. List the types of disciplinary actions which may be enforced; for example, depending on the circumstances, an apology to the victim, an undertaking that the behaviour will cease, a warning, training, counselling, suspension, demotion, or dismissal. Dismissal might occur after three warnings concerning the same breach of policy.
