Bullying in the workplace can have serious effects on you, your employees and your business, so it's important to understand what it is and what you can do to prevent it.
What is bullying?
Bullying is when a person or a group of people repeatedly behave unreasonably towards a worker or a group of workers at work, and the behaviour creates a risk to health and safety.
Effects of bullying
The effects of bullying on you, your employees and your business can include:
- underperforming and disengaged staff due to low morale
- loss of key staff members
- a high staff turnover rate which may result in needing to re-hire and retrain staff members
- orders made by the Fair Work Commission to prevent further bullying.
New anti-bullying laws
New anti-bullying laws were introduced from 1 January 2014, which means that many workers who believe they're being bullied in the workplace can apply to the Fair Work Commission for an order to stop the bullying. Failure to comply with an order can result in penalties.
Workplace bullying can also be a breach of health and safety laws.
How to prevent bullying
To prevent bullying in your workplace, it's important to put in place anti-bullying measures. These may include:
- having a reporting procedure in place for staff to report bullying
- ensuring staff understand the consequences of bullying
- providing staff with anti-bullying training
- responding quickly and appropriately to incidences of bullying.
It's also a good idea to have an employee manual in place so your staff clearly understand:
- acceptable and unacceptable behaviours in the workplace
- what behaviours are considered as bullying
- how to report and handle incidences of bullying.
source:theage.com
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