Combating Harassment And Bullying In The Workplace
It is a sad fact of life that harassment and bullying takes place in the work environment. This course is designed to enable delegates to identify the traits of bullies and deal effectively with the bully and their victim(s).
Why Combating Harassment And Bullying In The Workplace Is Important
Incidences of harassment and bullying in the workplace are increasing. The difficulty with this problem is that it can sometimes be hard to identify. It is easy to think of harassment and / or bullying as experienced in the playground.
Intimidation in the workplace is often very subtle and can take many diverse forms. It can be overlooked if takes the form of small digs, jibes or even physical contact that when reported individually may seem petty but multiplied over many instances are divisive and threatening to the recipient.
Bullying in the workplace is offensive or insulting behaviour and humiliation. It may be a gradual process of undermining confidence about ability or personal characteristics. Others may be obliviously involved and shocked an upset when they realise what they have been a party to. Bullying is an attack on dignity.
Harassment in the workplace on the grounds sex has long been recognized by the law as direct discrimination. That does not mean to say that it doesn’t exist. Harassment occurs where there is unwanted conduct in the legally protected areas of sex, race, disability, sexual orientation, religion or other belief. It is where the purpose or effect is the violation of the individual’s dignity and creates an intimidating, hostile, humiliating or offensive atmosphere.
Examples of harassment are embarrassing jokes, unwelcome physical contact or sexual advances or abuse. There is much legislation covering harassment in the workplace that can lead to dismissal. Where harassment is not covered by the law under anti-discrimination legislation, it is still unacceptable in the workplace and could give rise to constructive dismissal, which would be bad for the employer if missed early on.
Harassment and Bullying in the workplace are not good for business. The outcome of such behavior include low morale and poor employee relations; loss of respect; reduced productivity or profits. It can increase absenteeism and staff turnover and damage the image of the business. Worse case scenarios are employment tribunals or civil court claims.
It is important that employers have a Code of Conduct for dealing with perpetrators of intimidation in the workplace. Having these in place means that once such a situation is identified it is dealt with swiftly and successfully.
Taking away the threat of expensive court action or detrimental effects on business, harassment and bullying is wrong. It offends and undermines the victim of the intimidation. The upset and grief such behaviour causes is unimaginable to any one who has not experienced it. Thus it is important that vigilance is kept to identify the early signs of bullying or harassment at work.
The person who bullies or harasses colleagues at work may be doing so without their own knowledge or for reasons of stress to do with their own job. This does not mitigate the crime but does mean that both victim and perpetrator must be given help in the first instant.
This Harassment and Bullying course is designed to help you identify how bullying and harassment manifests itself in the workplace takes place. It looks at why people become bullies or begin to harass people. It gives an opportunity to discuss your feelings towards such situations and shows the legal support to you to assist in preventing this behavior.