Risks of ignoring bullying
Thanks to widespread publicity on bullying in the workplace, few employers today are unaware of it. And, as innumerable court and tribunal decisions demonstrate, no-one can afford to be. Costly legal representation and compensation packages ram home the lesson that there must be a better way. The experience is an ordeal for workers too. Hearings are harrowing, they often fail and many complaints never even get that far.
Organisations with a culture of bullying frequently suffer from high employee turnover and absenteeism, not to mention the possibility of legal actions for damages by employees made ill through their working environment.
Bullying is recognised as a major cause of stress in the workplace and by law, stress must be dealt with in the sane way as any other health and safety hazard.
Despite all this, bullying remains part of the landscape in many organisations. The Dignity at Work Partnership was established with funding from the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform to find ways of avoiding such problems.