This week, we need your help to understand better the scale of bullying in
the UK workplace.
Personnel Today is conducting new research with the Andrea Adams Trust
charity to provide data to compare with a similar survey we did five years ago.
We need to know whether you have ever been bullied, what your own personal
experiences of it have been, its prevalence in your business, the consequences
and how your HR department handles it. All responses will be treated in the
strictest confidence.
Since we last surveyed the HR profession, there has been a significant shift
in attitudes, with much more effort centred around tackling bullying head on.
The £1.8m campaign by the DTI and trade union Amicus, announced a few months
ago, is a great example of this.
Its message is to educate employers and encourage them to launch ‘dignity at
work’ policies, look for early warning signs, investigate bullying claims
thoroughly and train their managers.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that offensive, intimidating, malicious or
insulting behaviour is still very much a part of working life, despite the
introduction of formal bullying and harassment procedures in some quarters. A
new trend is e-mail bullying, most common higher up in the organisation when
tempers run high.
Many employers are paying too heavy a price through lost productivity,
sickness absence and payouts for damages. In a typically frank moment recently,
one senior executive admitted that bullying was endemic within the Royal Mail,
and just one of the many challenges it faces in its relationship with
employees.
Workplace bullying could be responsible for up to half of all stress-related
illnesses. Personnel Today would like to get a real measure of the problem from
the people that should know the truth – the HR profession. So visit the
Personnel Today website and take a few minutes out to complete our
questionnaire. Full survey findings will be published in the magazine and on
personneltoday.com shortly.
http://b2bresearchonline.com/bullying
By
Jane King, editor
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