Preventing & Responding to Workplace Bullying

This month we take a closer look at Section Seven of WorkSafe NZ’s “Preventing and Responding to Workplace Bullying Guide”

In February 2014 WorkSafe New Zealand and the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment released a best practice guideline about how to prevent and respond to workplace bullying.  The guidelines are extensive, and include the following sections:

  1. Defining workplace bullying
  2. Providing advice to employees
  3. Preventing bullying in your workplace
  4. Measuring bullying
  5. Advice for employers about what to do
  6. Roles and responsibilities
  7. 7.   Tools
  8. Three case studies

For a full copy of the Guideline, refer to the WorkSafe NZ website: http://www.business.govt.nz/worksafe/tools-resources/bullying-prevention-tools

In our monthly newsletter we will look at each section of the Guideline in some detail.  This month we will review section seven – tools.

The tools covered in section seven include:

Notification of undesirable behaviour – template – a form which staff can use to report undesirable behaviour and what they have done about it.

Sample bullying policy – a simple two-page policy that includes a definition of bullying, the employers commitment and process to address bullying, and what is expected from employees.

Healthy work template – a survey tool to gather and analyse trends across a group or organisation compared to healthy workplace features, to assist with identifying possible improvements.

Desirable workplace behaviour – identified positive behaviours and the ability to score the workplace on the use of each one.

Assessment measure of management competencies – key management competencies with the ability to score each manager on each one.  This can be used for management development.

Hazard register with example of bullying hazard completed – as a significant hazard, identifying the potential harm and controls.

Workplace features assessment tool – a survey tool that identifies how effectively bullying is managed, with traffic light colour-coding to identify areas for future focus/improvement.

Difficulties and benefits of corporate values – explains personal versus professional values, diversity and the differing priorities people can place on various values.

 In our next newsletter we will review Section Eight – the final section in the guide, covering 3 case studies.