Bullying has been around a long time but in recent years appears to have led to some really bad outcomes, including the suicide of some of the victims of this bad behaviour.
Everyone seems to be working hard to solve the bullying problem. We have trained everyone that bullying is not ok. We have asked Human Resources Departments to oversee issues of bullying. We have made it a workplace safety issue. We have got statutory authorities involved. We are now asking Fair Work Australia to step in.
There is a lot of talk about the outcomes of bullying but not a lot of talk about what it is and how it happens.
There is the obvious physical mental bullying of one individual by another individual or group just ‘because’. There is the organizational bullying of people who don’t get on board to the ‘new way’. Bullying comes in many different forms, but in my opinion it’s only allowed to continue due to a lack of leadership.
If there was a strong enough culture with strong leadership involved, then everyone would know what was acceptable and was not.
If there was a strong enough culture with strong leadership involved, then when bad behaviour occurred it would be safe to identify it and it would be addressed immediately.
If there was a strong enough culture with strong leadership involved, then bodies such as Fair Work Australia would only exist for oversight, industry bodies would not need to worry about the alarming number of bullying cases capturing Fair Work’s attention, and we could work in productive and protected environments.
There are No Responses to this post. Jump In!