Although half of all workers have experienced or witnessed bullying, policies and laws dealing with it are far less prevalent. This is, in part, because bullying can be hard to identify and address. It is essential to understand what bullying is, as well as what it is not, in order to better identify it in the workplace.
Broadly, bullying can be defined as physical acts or verbal comments that can hurt or isolate a person in the workplace. Bullying involves repeated instances of behaviour that is intended to intimidate, degrade, or offend a specific person, or even a group of people. Some common examples of bullying include spreading rumours, isolating someone, blocking requests for training or leave, or even physically abusing someone.
Bullying can create feelings of anger, frustration, loss of confidence, and even low morale and productivity. Consequently, bullying can negatively impact the productivity of an organization by increasing stress, absenteeism, and turnover. As such, it is essential to ensure that all individuals feel comfortable and safe within the workplace.
One of the best ways to ensure that your employees have a strong understanding of what bullying behaviours are and what to do when occur is by implementing harassment and bullying training in the workplace. Anti-bullying training in the workplace is one way to assist employees in learning how to identity appropriate solutions for a bullying situation both within, and outside of an organization.
Incorporating harassment and bullying training into your workplace can help to ensure that your employees can identify bullying behaviours and the reasons behind them. Subsequently, it can help employees to understand the costs of bullying to both people and organizations.
