Signs, addressing & solving bullying & harassment in the workplace

How to identify bullying and harassment in the workplace

Workplace bullying and harassment is when someone is made to feel unsafe, unappreciated, unimportant or unwelcome. This can be through a number of ways and you can find out more in these links about the different types of bullying behaviour and harassment that can happen. It is a sadly prevalent issue going on within many workplaces that employers often struggle to deal with effectively but in not doing so, they can have serious knock-on effects not just for the victims but for the business as well.

Unfortunately, too many people do not report or talk about incidents of bullying, discrimination and harassment they experience or even witness in the workplace for a number of reasons. At Culture Shift, we hope to be able to help organisations and their employees overcome those barriers with the power and benefits of our anonymous reporting platform.

Identifying workplace bullying and harassment can be almost impossible unless people are telling you it is happening. However, if you are seeing trends of prolonged sick leave, absenteeism, presenteeism, a reduction in someone’s productivity or you notice someone who is quieter in the office or in meetings, this could be due to workplace bullying and harassment.

The warning signs of bullying, discrimination and harassment when they happen can sometimes be very subtle as well as overt. Our above links to examples may help you understand what can constitute bullying and harassment so you can spot the signs and take action to prevent it from continuing.

Reporting workplace bullying and harassment with Culture Shift

Culture Shift’s anonymous reporting platform, which is trusted by more than 90 partners so far, allows organisations to get a truer and bigger picture of what is happening through the reports they get and the trends they may see from them, whether they are anonymous or named. In addition, it is invaluable to end users, giving them the option of an alternative and sometimes safer route to report incidents that empowers them to say more than they may do if it was face-to-face or their name was attached to a report.

One main takeaway from our recent annual Knowledge Forum, where many of our partners come together to share advice and best practices of using the system and tackling the problem within their organisations to shift culture, was that success means receiving reports. By this we mean that while reports may be hard to receive, read and deal with, it shows that people trust the system and feel empowered to speak up.

Tackling absenteeism with the power of anonymous reporting

One of the key ways to prevent bullying and harassment in the workplace is through education. At our anti-bullying webinar, discussions on how to educate people on what is acceptable and unacceptable behaviour at work were most prominent. In addition, having clear policies in place and leaders who take accountability for following through on those policies and the procedures is how organisations make sure no perpetrator slips through the net and is not dealt with.

Tackling absenteeism with the power of anonymous reporting

As they say, prevention is better than cure, but stopping workplace bullying and harassment is a task that should not be viewed as an impossible one and should not be dismissed as unnecessary if people within the organisation brush it off as it “being how things are”. This is especially important when the Equality Act 2010 holds employers responsible for preventing discrimination and harassment and they’re liable for any harassment suffered by their employees.

As well as following through on policies and procedures to investigate claims and deal with perpetrators, the analytics side of a system like ours can help identify trends of bullying, discrimination and harassment that is going on within your organisation. For example, you may see there are more reports where people are experiencing micro-aggressions, it is mainly happening within one area of the business or where a certain group of people are experiencing discrimination. This helps you take a targeted approach and prioritise actions such as implementing further education so everybody understands what micro-aggressions are and their effects, reviewing structures within particular departments or signposting to resources that help said group.

How bullying and harassment affects the work environment

If an organisation allows bullying, discrimination and harassment to go unchecked and unresolved, the effects on the work environment can be numerous. Our and other market research has shown that from a financial perspective, this can prove to be extremely costly:

It can also negatively affect a company’s reputation, which for some can be just as bad – if not worse:

And finally, when we know that 44% of people have witnessed bullying, discrimination and harassment at work, it shows that without even needing to have experienced it themselves, employees will likely suffer the knock-on effects of problematic behaviour that is happening. This can foster a sense of unease and organisational silence in the workplace where more people fear speaking up and are almost conditioned to accept that their workplace culture is a toxic one that can’t be changed, but it can.

If you want to learn more about the benefits and power of implementing an anonymous reporting system like Culture Shift’s, which has been launched in more than 90 universities, colleges and public and private workplaces already and gives 1.9 million people access to a safe and secure way of speaking up.