‘It’s happening on a monthly basis’: Leaders urged to tackle rising workplace bullying and harassment

Leaders are in a prime position to address rising rates of workplace bullying and harassment, with new statistics showing higher levels of prevalence in Australian organisations.

Speaking on a recent HR Leader webcast, in partnership with Flare and Winc, Skye Buatava, director of Centre for Work Health and Safety at SafeWork NSW, said recent studies have highlighted the incidences of bullying and harassment in the workplace, showing some shocking figures.

“We generate six monthly reports that not just describe the problems and prevalence of problems within our workplace but go further to actually look at the barriers and the enablers. [When it comes to] harassment and bullying, some people were telling us that they’re experiencing it monthly,” Ms Buatava said, noting that “this is absolutely linked back to leadership”.

“There are certain sectors where we’re seeing it with greater prevalence. For example, the healthcare sector, which is really quite ironic because they’re the people that we rely on so heavily in society, yet they’re significantly subject to harassment and bullying.”

During her segment in the webcast, Ms Buatava also shed light on other workplace issues that can play into psychosocial risks, such as burnout, which she noted is also increasing among Australian businesses.

“We’re generally hearing not only from individuals themselves but also from leaders that they’re noticing that there’s increasing volume of burnout, which absolutely links back to the psychosocial risk,” she explained.

“Without trying to scare anyone, we believe that this will continue in at least the short term. [As such], we’re seeing an increase in turnover, an increase in the normalisation of staff shortages and thus greater workload. And as a result, this is our future for now. Which means we need to be smarter; we need to be taking care of the whole person in order to be able to operate in business moving forward.”

Ms Buatava pointed to The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)’s Total Worker Health Program as a valid resource for HR professionals looking to navigate these challenges in the workplace.

“NIOSH is an American occupational safety and health institution, and they came up in 2004 with this concept of total worker health. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think anyone’s now the implementation of it, but conceptually, it is what we should all be striving for,” Ms Buatava said.

“Essentially, what this total worker health concept does is it looks at all of those elements very much based on the social determinants of health out of the World Health Organisation (WHO) and starts to think about what you can and cannot influence. So, that’s a really wonderful and practical tool but also great definitions around what total worker health could look like.

“[It helps us ensure] we’re giving people that role clarity, we’re making sure they’re not overworked, we’re giving them really basic things like the appropriate meal times and otherwise. It also talks a lot about compensation and some of those other elements such as adequate wage, paid time off, etc.”

Ultimately, Ms Buatava said the right is ripe for Australian organisations to go further with their attempts to tackle psychosocial risks and other areas they’re falling short in. These aren’t limited to the aforementioned things such as workplace bullying, harassment and burnout; they can often relate back to staff wellbeing.

“This is an ongoing, cyclic kind of environment. Managing psychosocial risk is different to wellbeing,” she explained.

“… Wellbeing and thinking about the whole person is equally as important. People need to be comfortable to bring their whole [selves] to the workplace. You need to create a level of psychosocial safety, and this is all part of the role of the leader. It’s a tough gig, the role of a leader in any avenue, but I guess those soft skills are often downplayed. And being able to be approachable, being able to bring out or provide that safe environment for our colleagues, to bring them their whole selves to work, but also to do really simple things like raise an issue [is key].

“If they see an issue or have an issue, whether it’s something within the workplace or outside of it, that’s extremely powerful [to be across]. And some of our largest multinationals have capitalised on that: tapping into their workforce to identify and help them solve the problems that they’re seeing within a workplace or within their work environment can be extremely powerful.”

To view a playback of the webcast featuring Ms Buatava, click here.

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