What is bullying at work and what can you do about it?
Watch the video above where Kate explains exactly what to do if you are being bullied at work.
Bullying and harassment may include abuse, excessive workload, and unreasonable performance expectations. First, report the issue to your immediate superior. If unresolved after multiple attempts, you can file a grievance.
Employees have 90 days from when they first identified the bullying to raise a personal grievance claim under the Employment Relations Act. We can help you at the outset to try and resolve your problem and we can help you with your grievance and subsequent progress towards a solution.
What Workplace Bullying IS:
- Repeated and unreasonable behaviour directed towards a worker which can lead to physical or psychological harm.
- Repeated behaviour occurs more than once and can involve a range of actions over time.
- Unreasonable behaviour means actions that a reasonable person in the same circumstances would see as unreasonable. It includes victimising, humiliating, intimidating or threatening a person.
- Bullying may also include harassment (including sexual harassment), discrimination or violence.
What is NOT Workplace Bullying:
- One-off or occasional instances of forgetfulness, rudeness or tactlessness.
- Setting high performance standards.
- Constructive feedback and legitimate advice or peer review.
- A manager requiring reasonable verbal or written work instructions to be carried out.
- Warning or disciplining workers in line with the business’ or undertaking’s code of conduct.
- A single incident of unreasonable behaviour.
- Reasonable management actions delivered in a reasonable way.
- Differences in opinion or personality clashes that do not escalate into bullying, harassment or violence.
We must be able to prove that the bully caused harm and also intended to cause harm on more than one occasion.
You will be expected to have kept records of the incidents and to have told someone else, preferably management.
Bullying Formal Complaint Form
If the bullying is not an immediate threat to your health and you know your employer is not yet aware of the situation you can use this form to raise a formal complaint:
Work Safe NZ have forms you can complete to give to your manager, or to your HR department. This is to make sure your employer is aware of the bullying situation, and gives them the opportunity to respond. These complaint forms have been provided for workers to report bullying or other upsetting behaviour to their businesses. The assessment form can assess how well your business prevents and responds to bullying. Click here for the Work Safe forms.
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