Personnel Today
  • Home
    • All PT content
  • Email sign-up
  • Topics
    • HR Practice
    • Employee relations
    • Learning & training
    • Pay & benefits
    • Wellbeing
    • Recruitment & retention
    • HR strategy
    • HR Tech
    • The HR profession
    • Global
    • All HR topics
  • Legal
    • Case law
    • Commentary
    • Flexible working
    • Legal timetable
    • Maternity & paternity
    • Shared parental leave
    • Redundancy
    • TUPE
    • Disciplinary and grievances
    • Employer’s guides
  • AWARDS
    • Personnel Today Awards
    • The RAD Awards
  • Jobs
    • Find a job
    • Jobs by email
    • Careers advice
    • Post a job
  • Brightmine
    • Learn more
    • Products
    • Free trial
    • Request a quote
  • Webinars
  • Advertise
  • OHW+

Personnel Today

Register
Log in
Personnel Today
  • Home
    • All PT content
  • Email sign-up
  • Topics
    • HR Practice
    • Employee relations
    • Learning & training
    • Pay & benefits
    • Wellbeing
    • Recruitment & retention
    • HR strategy
    • HR Tech
    • The HR profession
    • Global
    • All HR topics
  • Legal
    • Case law
    • Commentary
    • Flexible working
    • Legal timetable
    • Maternity & paternity
    • Shared parental leave
    • Redundancy
    • TUPE
    • Disciplinary and grievances
    • Employer’s guides
  • AWARDS
    • Personnel Today Awards
    • The RAD Awards
  • Jobs
    • Find a job
    • Jobs by email
    • Careers advice
    • Post a job
  • Brightmine
    • Learn more
    • Products
    • Free trial
    • Request a quote
  • Webinars
  • Advertise
  • OHW+

Personnel Today

Bullying: feedback from the profession

by Personnel Today 28 Sep 2004
by Personnel Today 28 Sep 2004

Guy Pink, head of personnel at Victim
Support

"Recruitment is key to getting in people with the right approaches – its not just about experience, but their behaviour values
and beliefs. Training managers is also vital in ensuring that they are aware of
these issues and what the organisation expects of them and their staff, so
issues are less likely to arise or where they do they can be resolved as
quickly as possible. From personal experience I can look back to managers who I
now recognise were bullying both myself and my colleagues. At the time there
was little written or spoken about this – it was just accepted as part of the
work culture – and I think that there is now far more awareness backed up by
legislation as to what is acceptable behaviour for people when they are at
work. Sometimes HR is so focused on working with others that it forgets the
need to lead by example."

Danny Kalman,
HR director at electronics company Matsushita Europe

"It’s important to raise this issue, not only by having HR policies,
but with a message from the top that bullying of any kind will not be tolerated
and will be dealt with firmly. If that message is not only delivered by words,
but by deeds, it will be heard very loudly. All companies should follow their
values/business principles, and ‘respect for the individual’ and ‘fairness and
honesty’ are fundamental points which should be adhered to at all times."

Alan Warner, corporate director of
people and property at Hertfordshire County Council

"What we are seeing is an upsurge of people reporting bullying. Some
years ago there was unfortunately little credence given
to bullying and people got away with it. The HR community has led the way in
getting the issue dealt with seriously and it is marvellous that people now
feel able to come forward. HR people must stick to their quest to help
eradicate what can be a very corrosive influence in the workplace. The
processes they put forward must be fair, accessible and as speedy as possible.
It is hard to see why any right-minded manager could find an argument to do
anything other than support a bullying-free environment."

Martin Moore, HR director, British
Museum

"This is always tough to deal with. In a previous role at a
manufacturing organisation we carried out a management review, encouraging our
staff to give us feedback on how they were managed. It soon became clear that
some staff felt they were being treated in a coercive fashion. This was clearly
quite incompatible with what we were trying to achieve, and as HR manager I
tried to help the plant’s management team to realise that its style was
inappropriate and that it could achieve a great deal by changing it. This
didn’t go down well, and I left some months later to pursue my career
elsewhere. Enough said."

Saudagar Singh, HR director, utility firm Npower

"HR needs to work on improving management and leadership skills so that
managers have the capability to create the level of productivity and financial performance
without the need to bully or create unnecessarily stress. This requires HR to
engage and obtain the commitment of the senior team. Rather than focusing on
so-called anti-bullying training pro-grammes,
companies may be better advised to invest in improving their managers’ people
management skills as well as the prevailing culture."

Sign up to our weekly round-up of HR news and guidance

Receive the Personnel Today Direct e-newsletter every Wednesday

OptOut
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Mel Northfield, HR director at
investment bank Mitsubishi Securities International

"It is important to remember that the definition of bullying is quite a
personal or subjective thing, and what really matters for
harmonious working conditions is
the way the recipient feels. The hard
job for HR is to sort the wheat from the chaff and opine on what is bullying
and what constitutes a legitimate management action as part of a ‘normal’
working relationship. We have implemented compulsory online training for all
line managers covering a range of subjects including bullying and harassment so
as to raise their awareness."

Personnel Today

Personnel Today articles are written by an expert team of award-winning journalists who have been covering HR and L&D for many years. Some of our content is attributed to "Personnel Today" for a number of reasons, including: when numerous authors are associated with writing or editing a piece; or when the author is unknown (particularly for older articles).

previous post
Old World, New World, and the Real World
next post
Rutherford and Another v Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, Court of Appeal, 3 September 2004

You may also like

Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders receive 400% pay rise

4 Jul 2025

FCA to extend misconduct rules beyond banks

2 Jul 2025

‘Decisive action’ needed to boost workers’ pensions

2 Jul 2025

Business leaders’ drop in confidence impacts headcount

2 Jul 2025

Why we need to rethink soft skills in...

1 Jul 2025

Five misconceptions about hiring refugees

20 Jun 2025

Forward features list 2025 – submitting content to...

23 Nov 2024

Features list 2021 – submitting content to Personnel...

1 Sep 2020

Large firms have no plans to bring all...

26 Aug 2020

A typical work-from-home lunch: crisps

24 Aug 2020

  • Empower and engage for the future: A revolution in talent development (webinar) WEBINAR | As organisations strive...Read more
  • Empowering working parents and productivity during the summer holidays SPONSORED | Businesses play a...Read more
  • AI is here. Your workforce should be ready. SPONSORED | From content creation...Read more

Personnel Today Jobs
 

Search Jobs

PERSONNEL TODAY

About us
Contact us
Browse all HR topics
Email newsletters
Content feeds
Cookies policy
Privacy policy
Terms and conditions

JOBS

Personnel Today Jobs
Post a job
Why advertise with us?

EVENTS & PRODUCTS

The Personnel Today Awards
The RAD Awards
Employee Benefits
Forum for Expatriate Management
OHW+
Whatmedia

ADVERTISING & PR

Advertising opportunities
Features list 2025

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • Linkedin


© 2011 - 2025 DVV Media International Ltd

Personnel Today
  • Home
    • All PT content
  • Email sign-up
  • Topics
    • HR Practice
    • Employee relations
    • Learning & training
    • Pay & benefits
    • Wellbeing
    • Recruitment & retention
    • HR strategy
    • HR Tech
    • The HR profession
    • Global
    • All HR topics
  • Legal
    • Case law
    • Commentary
    • Flexible working
    • Legal timetable
    • Maternity & paternity
    • Shared parental leave
    • Redundancy
    • TUPE
    • Disciplinary and grievances
    • Employer’s guides
  • AWARDS
    • Personnel Today Awards
    • The RAD Awards
  • Jobs
    • Find a job
    • Jobs by email
    • Careers advice
    • Post a job
  • Brightmine
    • Learn more
    • Products
    • Free trial
    • Request a quote
  • Webinars
  • Advertise
  • OHW+