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Taurai Musakaruka People Issues
A workplace where employees get along well and enjoy their work is always more productive. Few of us expect to like everyone we work with but the right culture can ensure that even those who might not naturally get along outside of work can respect and work effectively with one another. Bullying and harassment can, of course, have a significant detrimental impact on the victim but many forget the negative impact the behaviour can have on others, including the bully, witnesses and the organisation itself.

Workplace victimisation, bullying and harassment is often hard to identify and even harder to manage. It comes in many forms, occurs at every level and is often unnoticed and unaddressed until it leads to more devastating consequences.

Bullying is any negative behaviour that demonstrates a lack of regard for other workers. This can include a vast number of disrespectful behaviours including mobbing, incivility, teasing, gossiping, purposely withholding business information, overruling decisions without a rationale, sabotaging team efforts, demeaning others and verbal intimidation.

While the behaviours that constitute harassment and bullying are often the same. Harassment can be a severe one-off event where the behaviour is obviously inappropriate.

Harassment also tends to be associated with the six key legislative strands i.e. comments made about someone’s sex, or sexually related comments, race or ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, religion or belief or age.

Bullying tends to be much more ongoing or persistent behaviour and often extends beyond the legislative strands and can involve a misuse of power.
Bullying behaviour can range from very obvious verbal abuse or physical violence to very subtle psychological harassment.

This behaviour may include, but is not limited to physical violence verbal abuse including yelling, screaming or offensive language, excluding or isolating employees, psychological harassment, intimidation.

It also involves spreading false or malicious rumours about someone, assigning meaningless tasks unrelated to the job, giving employees impossible duties and or time frames, deliberately changing work rosters to inconvenience particular employees and or undermining work performance by deliberately withholding information vital for effective work performance.

For harassment to occur there does not have to be an intention to offend or harass. A person is subjected to harassment if the person is subjected to behaviour by a person or a co-worker or group of co-workers of the person, that is unwelcome and unsolicited, considered to be offensive, intimidating, humiliating or threatening by the person and behaviour that a reasonable person would consider to be offensive, humiliating, intimidating or threatening.

Victimisation occurs where a person subjects, or threatens to subject, another person or an associate of that other person to any detriment.
The Labour Act Chapter 28:01 prohibits the victimisation of an individual who makes a complaint or intends to make a complaint.

Bullying is a form of harassment and is defined as the repeated less favourable treatment of a person by another, or others, in the workplace, which may be considered unreasonable and inappropriate workplace practice.

Lawful and reasonable decisions and directions given by a person having authority to give such directions do not constitute harassment, victimisation or bullying.
Reasonable management actions include legitimate performance management processes, action taken to transfer or retrench a worker, a decision not to provide a promotion in connection with the worker’s employment, disciplinary actions, work allocated in compliance with systems and policies and business processes, such as workplace change or restructuring.

If an employee feels that he is being subjected to victimisation, bullying and harassment he may use the Grievance Management Procedure to make a complaint. The HR department can provide the appropriate advice and support in regard to the appropriate process for the management of compliant(s).

All managers and supervisors have a responsibility to model appropriate standards of professional conduct at all times and to ensure the workplace is free from harassment, victimisation and bullying.

Managers and supervisors who observe unacceptable conduct occurring are encouraged to take appropriate action in terms of company procedures or Code of Conduct.

If an employee becomes aware that someone else is being subjected to inappropriate or offensive behaviour, that individual can provide assistance in a number of ways which may include acting as a witness if they decide to make a complaint or by backing them up or supporting them in saying “no” to the alleged offender or by assisting them with referral to a manager or supervisor if appropriate or relevant HR department.

It is not the responsibility of another employee to say anything to the alleged offender without the consent of the complainant and individuals should be careful not to spread any rumours about someone else.

Any reports of workplace harassment or discrimination should be treated seriously and investigated.
Such allegations might be considered under the Grievance Procedure but may also be investigated as a potential breach of the Code of Conduct.

Appropriate action should be taken against an employee or manager who is found to have behaved in the course of employment in a harassing, victimising or bullying manner towards another person.

This may include disciplinary action which may result in a sanction being imposed against the employee, which may include the termination of their employment.
A policy to ensure managers and employees are aware of their responsibilities and the procedures in relation to the prevention of workplace harassment, victimisation and bullying should also be put in place.

One of the key responsibilities of managers is to ensure that people are treated professionally and with respect by their colleagues.
If managers or other employees witness or hear about any bullying or harassment taking place, they must take action. Equally, if managers receive a complaint from a member of staff, they must take that complaint seriously even if they personally don’t feel it is a serious issue.

It is the impact of this behaviour on others that matters. Organisations therefore must train their workforce to make them feel confident and skilled in challenging inappropriate behaviour in the workplace.

This needs to happen in both one-to-one situations as well as in groups. If managers keep quiet rather than challenging poor behaviour, their lack of reaction is frequently interpreted as condoning or accepting the poor behaviour. This means that not only could their organisation be open to complaints which could end up before an employment tribunal, but that they too could be found to be personally liable.

• Taurai Musakaruka is a human resources practitioner. For feedback e-mail to [email protected] or [email protected]