No Bullying Problem? Think Again!

Jo Brown

DignityWorks met with lots of HR Professionals at last week’s CIPD Annual Conference and I was surprised there were quite a few people say they don’t have much bullying or it’s not a problem in their organisation. Of course there were many who agreed there was, we heard disturbing cases and even got a flipchart overnight to start recording some of them – the pic was tweeted @DignityWorks if you want to read them

Of those saying there’s no bullying problem, they broadly fitted into three camps – the first were smiling and we heard from two people how they work at really lovely places, they’d worked hard to create the right environment and were genuinely happy. That is so refreshing to hear and certainly somewhere where most people would love to work!

The second were those who said ‘we don’t have a problem’ in a hushed breath, looked down and scurried off. They’re likely the most desperate in need of our help but often stifled by the culture and the pressure from the top. It’s sad that at these kind of organisations if you’re affected by bullying and nothing is being done, the harsh reality is put up, shut up or get out. For your sanity and financial/career health I’d suggest the latter. It doesn’t make it right and it’s not fair but sometimes it’s the best you can do in a bad situation.

The third camp were the HR professionals who said ‘we have a policy’ or ‘we don’t get many complaints’. These are the perfect audience for my latest research that we announced at CIPD and in advance of Anti Bullying Week.

A year ago, the TUC announced the results of their research with YouGov which said 29% of people report being bullied at work, with 72% of bullying being from the line manager. That’s great but I don’t see the complaints internally matching that but wondered what statistics or research was available to show that.

I noticed someone had submitted the same Freedom of Information request to UK local authorities in Nov/Dec 2015 based on ‘All councils have very similar anti-bullying/dignity at work policies, but there seems to be a difference in the level of bullying’. It asked the same set of questions including, among others, the number of formal grievances, how many were upheld, how many appealed, how many appeals were upheld and the number of staff.

I’ve collated consistent and complete responses for 81 organisations, covering over 300,000 staff over a period 6 years (don’t worry I enjoy statistical analysis!). The key result is that statistically for every 1,000 employees, less than 1 person annual will make a formal grievance.

Over the 6 year period 0.5% of staff made a formal grievance and that’s so disconnected to what was reported to YouGov/TUC a year before. It just shows that for those complaining, it really is the tip of the iceberg of those being bullied. There are many reasons for not speaking out but the key ones are people are afraid, they believe nothing will change or things will get worse and be seen as a troublemaker.

It’s such a hard step to speak out and raise a formal grievance. Many see no other way of dealing with it and take that leap of faith. So how do they fare? The results from over 1600 formal grievances, is that only a quarter are upheld or partially upheld. That’s 75% of people find their allegations are not upheld. Obviously some of those genuinely won’t be bullying and quite rightly not upheld, but 75%? It certainly sends out the message to the rest of the employees not to bother making a complaint and reinforces silence over this very serious health hazard. Of those not upheld, just less than 1 in 5 went to appeal but 85% of those were also not upheld. It’s certainly not encouraging that this is a good way to resolve bullying and harassment.

The range for the results in individual organisations for the formal grievance outcome, the number of appeals and the appeal outcome ranged from 0% – 100% eg some organisations upheld all of the grievances, some upheld none; some organisations had no appeals, some had every grievance not upheld go to appeal; and some organisations upheld all of the appeals, some upheld none. This clearly highlights differences in culture and is a true postcode lottery for employees whether their employer takes bullying seriously and is open to true resolution.

Some organisations refused to respond with comments including “it would take 18 hours to collate the information”, “we don’t maintain these records centrally” and “it’s not the sort of information we need for our day to day business”. I challenge that if you don’t measure it, you can’t manage it. Even if these complaints are just the tip of the iceberg, how do you as HR professionals or your Board lead and manage your organisation and its resources if you don’t know what’s happening? What is the true cost of this?

If you’d like more information on the research please let us know. Our infographic is below, please feel free to download and share it widely.

bullying-infographic

If you’d like your organisation to  improve the way they deal with bullying and harassment, then please check out our HR Mastermind starting in January. This isn’t us coming in and doing a piece of consultancy for you, this is a 6 month rapid engagement program for us to share our specialist skills with you and transfer it into your business so that you can do it yourself. It provides both theory and practical, with guest experts from around the world and ongoing case management coach mentoring. We are offering a 25% discount for CIPD if booked by the end of November.