03:51 pm, Thursday 21 March, 2013

Slater and Gordon, a national law firm, recently commissioned independent research into bullying in the workplace. The results of this research showed that more than 1 in 3 participants said that they had experienced bullying in the workplace.

For the survey more than 1000 Australian workers over the age of 18 were questioned and 34% on average responded that they had been bullied.

When these figures are examined more closely they show that the figure is the highest in regional Queensland as 39% of participants said that they had been bullied compared to 31% in the metropolitan areas.

The research also showed that women in Queensland were more likely to feel bullied at 36% whereas men was 34%.

Across the country the research indicated that:

- 53% said that co-workers were the bullies, 47% were managers, 36% were supervisors and 16% were business owners – participants could nominate more than one culprit.

- The most common behavior for the bullying was speaking in a hostile or condescending manner at 72%, followed by being blamed for others’ errors 60%, stealing credit for your work 60%, gossip or malicious rumours 51%, and race, gender, sexuality or religion at 31%.

- Physical violence or threatened violence was at 10%

Out of the people that felt they had been bullied, 1 in 10 felt that they had also experienced sexual harassment.

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03:09 pm, Monday 25 February, 2013

The last few years has seen a dramatic increase of bullying allegations, some real and others that are mainly unsubstantiated.

What this means though for business is that regardless of the substance of an allegation there is a process that must be followed which has an associated cost.

Experts in mental health are saying, according to a report on the weekend in the Sydney Morning Herald, that the spin-off from this trend is that there has been an increase in what is referred to as “bogus” claims.

These are aimed at employers who automatically end up on the defensive because of a lack of appropriate advice and training.

Increasing awareness about bullying

Claims of bullying, especially cases that are high profile and attract media attention, have increased the general awareness about workplace bullying.

However, according to organisational psychologist Peter Cotton, this doesn’t mean that the level of understanding has also increased.

Dr Cotton works in advisory roles for Comcare, WorkSafe Victoria, beyondblue and large private insurance companies so he sees and manages workplace bullying in a number of different contexts.

He said that he sees statistics from a number of different areas that all point to a remarkable increase in the reporting of bullying over the last few years and that the current challenge is that a portion of this increase is due to “frivolous” reporting.

Dr Cotton said that people are using the term bullying to cover any type of work discontent and it is difficult to separate the seriously genuine cases so that both workplaces and individuals can be held accountable for their behaviours.

An organisational psychologist from the FBG Group Simon Brown-Greaves said that FBG were experiencing a significant increase in people and businesses looking for advice as well as support on bullying.

He said that it looks like it may be the new catch-cry that people use for compensation, there are genuine cases of workers experiencing bullying in their workplaces but others are seeing bullying as a way to deal with circumstances that are challenging.

Mr Brown-Greaves said that bullying is now a term that is overused and that some are taking advantage, bullying is being used to cover a number of different behaviours in the workplace such as rudeness and impolite communication.

Defining behaviour

The difficulty is the subjective nature of bullying and no accepted definition however the federal government announced that it would soon adopt a national definition to standardise what is considered to be bullying.

WorkSafe Victoria said that ”workplace bullying is characterised by persistent and repeated negative behaviour directed at an employee that creates a risk to health and safety”.

Bullying in the workplace is covered with the Occupational Health and Safety Act in Victoria and it is considered a breach of the act ”when an employer or another person at work has failed in their duty to maintain a safe environment for others”.

Ian Forsyth the WorkSafe health and safety executive director said that it is a personal issue that involves emotion and as a result a number of challenges must be addressed to ensure that the response to allegations of bullying is appropriate.

He said that simply feeling upset, undervalued or dissatisfied and dealing with poor management practices doesn’t necessarily mean that bullying is taking place.

The cost of bullying

Thirty prosecutions by WorkSafe have been successful for bullying since 1999 even though there have been more than 5000 calls to the advisory service related to bullying in the last few years.

The reason is that only a few of the complainants were able to give detailed allegations so that the complaints could be followed up in court.

Richard Clancy, the Victorian Employers Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VECCI), said that all employers should have procedures in place in case of bullying allegations as employers are increasingly facing bullying allegations after they have raised legitimate performance concerns with workers.

He said that, ”Workplace bullying is currently covered by OHS laws and while not specifically defined, bullying-type behaviour is generally characterised as a pattern of negative behaviour directed at an employee that creates a risk to his or her health and safety.”

Mr Clancy said that whilst employees may encounter a single incident of inappropriate management this is not necessarily considered workplace bullying even though it is an unpleasant experience.

He said that if a bullying complaint is lodged employers and managers must investigate the claim, which takes both time and money. Some complaints are serious and legitimate however there are many that do not have substance and do not constitute bullying.

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02:18 pm, Wednesday 5 December, 2012

Comcare, the federal work safety authority, has instructed the CSIRO to ensure that its workers are protected from psychological injuries caused by harassment and bullying.

An improvement notice was issued to the scientific organisation by Comcare that stated that the way it responded to bullying, misconduct, workplace conflict, psychological stress or injury was not up to the required standard.

According to a Canberra Times report this week there have been numerous complaints about the workplace culture at the CSIRO who employs 6600 workers and maintains 50 locations in Australia and overseas.

The CSIRO confirmed that the notice had been received and that they are willing to comply with the requirements.

Neil Quarmby, a senior official at Comcare, confirmed in the report that the notice was issued after a comprehensive review of the workplace systems in place that covered the prevention and management of bullying at the organisation.

Senior Comcare official Neil Quarmby wrote that the decision to issue the notice had been made after the insurer spent several months ”thoroughly reviewing the workplace systems relating to the prevention and management of bullying behaviour at CSIRO”.

Some of the points in the extensive improvement notice included:

- The review and improvement of the governance systems around the management of workplace misconduct and of allegations of bullying

- Training needs to be provided to workers about misconduct, bullying and workplace conflict

- Support and management of workers displaying psychological distress or injury

- The development and implementation of processes and systems to assess and manage psychosocial risk factors

- Comcare needs to be notified of bullying incidents

A spokesman for the CSIRO said that they were working with Comcare to implement the requested measures, a process that will be completed by the 31^st December 2012.

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12:02 pm, Sunday 2 December, 2012

According to an ABC news report today a survey of Ambulance Victoria employees has revealed that there is widespread bullying and issues with morale in the wokplace.

The Opposition in Victoria stated that 880 employees were surveyed and one in three were bullied according to the results with two thirds thinking of leaving because of low morale.

Greg Sasella, the Ambulance Victoria chief executive has said that respondents are interpreting rostering and procedural changes as bullying. He added that delays at hospitals are frustrating and the ambulance service is handling it “tightly”, this is also being interpreted as bullying.

Mr Sasella said that the attrition rate is less than 3% at Ambulance Victoria.

Steve McGhie from the Ambulance Employee’s Association said that the findings were not a surprise and that there had been issues for some times. He said that the Union had passed on members concerns to management however they have not been addressed.

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05:04 pm, Tuesday 11 September, 2012

A bullying case wherein a young worker was set on fire by a co-worker points to serious workplace health and safety system deficiencies, says legal experts.

Prominent anti-bullying lawyer Moira Rayner is pushing for the establishment of a national tribunal to allow civil claims. In an interview with ABC News, she said that bullying laws in Australia is unsatisfactory because it does not give the victim a personal right of redress.

“I have always regarded bullying as a failure by management and all our bullying laws is unsatisfactory because they don’t give the individual a personal right of redress,” she said. “If they make a WorkCover claim or a WorkSafe claim and it doesn’t end up because of technicalities in addressing their problems, then the person who’s been bullied, victimised and psychologically of not physically harmed may well have on top of that a sense of grave injustice.”

She also said the case of the young worker set on fire by a bully co-worker is not isolated and that WorkSafe could and should have done more.

“When someone could’ve been killed in a classic apprentice-playing-with-fire incident, there should’ve been an immediate and effective intervention in the workplace so the employer, the employees and the apprentices got the message very loud and clear that this could’ve ended up in a manslaughter charge.”

According to ABC News, the autistic victim started work in early January at a farm machinery dealership in Shepparton as a diesel mechanic when a co-worker squirted him with highly flammable cleansing solvents and was set on fire. As a result, he suffered burns to his legs and was brought to the hospital.

The apprentice who set him on fire retained his job after pleading guilty to assault in Shepparton Magistrates Court in August. He was given a 12-month good behaviour bond and a fine of $500.

WorkSafe, which investigated the incident, decided not to take any action because of the police charges.

The victim’s family plans to lodge a victims-of-crime complaint with the Director of Public Prosecutions.

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10:37 am, Thursday 16 August, 2012

An Australian Airline has lost its appeal against a fine for mistreating an employee who submitted a complaint about his conditions at work. But in the historic decision one of the Airlines senior managers who was allegedly responsible for the unfair treatment was fined as well.

The worker is an aircraft engineer who made a complaint after returning from an overseas posting in 2009. When back in Australia he became aware that, due to a workplace enterprise agreement, he had missed out on about $10,000 worth of payments.

When he approached the airline management about remuneration all overseas postings for engineers were suspended and his co-workers were told that nobody would be posted overseas until he withdrew his complaint.

In February 2011, the Federal Magistrates Court ruled that the Airline contravened the law when it subjected the worker to coercion by suspending the postings overseas. It was the first time that the Court had determined that a worker was unfairly pressured to withdraw a complaint under the Fair Work Act.

The Court fined the Airline $13,200 and the senior manager $2,200, amounts that were appealed but upheld in a recent Court hearing. The lawyer representing the worker stated that it was a significant decision because it is rare for a manager to be fined along with the company.

The airline has since ensured that their managers undergo the appropriate training regarding their responsibilities under the Fair Work Act.

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12:34 pm, Friday 11 May, 2012

Bus drivers have threatened to ban students from a Gold Coast High School, after a student allegedly assaulted a driver on Wednesday.

According to Yahoo News, the bus driver stopped to collect more children and asked some students to make space for more passengers when he was suddenly punched in the face.

The Education Department is conducting an investigation on the incident but said that it is too early to lay blame and that there is no evidence violence occurred.

The victim suffered a few minor injuries and was back at work on Thursday.

The 16 year-old student from Helensvale High involved in the attack made his own complaint against the bus driver.

Scott Connelly from the Transport Workers Union condemned the attack, saying it was a malicious, surprise attack that the driver did not see coming.

“It was a vicious, unprovoked assault on the driver, who was just trying to do his job,” said Mr Connelly.

“He’s fallen to the ground; just smashed in the face by this youth. Straight afterwards, a teacher on the bus wrestled the youth to the ground.

“If we’re focused to, we’ll look at putting a ban on this school until the situation’s fixed.”

Director General for Education Glen Hoppner said that Education Queensland is unable to substantiate any of the allegations at this stage.

“We’ll thoroughly investigate it and we’ll find out the facts.”

Just last month, another driver abandoned his bus claiming that the students were abusive.

The union says that there have been 15 assaults on Gold Coast bus drivers in the past 12 months, resulting to an urgent meeting with the Transport Minister demanding for tighter security.

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