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Psychosocial hazard #12 – Bullying

The next psychosocial hazard that is listed in Safe Work Australia’s Model Code of Practice on Managing Psychosocial Hazards at Work is “bullying”.
Why is bullying a psychosocial hazard?
This hazard involves repeated unreasonable behaviour directed towards a worker or a group of workers that creates a risk to health and safety. This includes bullying by workers (employees and contractors of the same or a different business), customers and clients, patients, visitors and others.
Some questions that you might ask to assess whether there are any psychosocial hazards involving bullying in your workplace include:
- Does the presence of other psychosocial hazards such as high or low job demands, lack of role clarity, low job control or organisational justice issues affect workers’ temperaments and behaviour?
- Are leaders autocratic and directive rather than giving workers a voice on decisions that affect them?
- Is demeaning and abusive behaviour tolerated and not appropriately addressed in a timely manner?
- Are there inadequate systems of work that give rise to frustrations among workers due to inadequacies in resources or poor work organisation or scheduling of work?
- Are there cliques in your workplace which result in some workers being socially excluded?
- Are there people in your workplace who habitually fail to provide the support that other workers rely on them for?
- Are there any people in your workplace who repeatedly play practical jokes on certain other workers?
This list is not exhaustive and while we have based these posts on the model code produced by Safe Work Australia, there can be differences in the specific details for each State or Territory. So you need to check that in the jurisdiction in which your workplace lies.
Need help?
Give us a call on 1300 108 488 to arrange your free first consultation to see how we can help with advice and support on this or any other HR matter.
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