Support to Report: Empower your staff and Keep them safe
Workplace bullying and harassment is a very common issue which is continuously increasing. A study by the Financial Times found that the numbers increased by 70% from 2021 – 2023. Bullying and harassment is often not visible to senior leadership, and in some cases, is done by the senior staff. While many organisations will believe they have created an inclusive and friendly environment, employees may say different. Individuals too regularly suffer in silence, because they either don’t know how to report a problem, or feel as though it won’t be properly dealt with.
It is easy to understand how important it is that employees feel valued, accepted and safe in their workplace. It not only benefits their mental health and so overall their quality of life, but it also will benefit the organisation they are working for. For example, how many times have you been into a restaurant and you can feel the tension between the staff? I think many of us will have had experiences where staff have openly been rude or passive-aggressive towards each other in front of customers. This makes us, as the customer, feel uncomfortable and ruins the experience. Whereas if you go into a restaurant where the staff get on and it is a friendly environment you can sense that too. It improves the customer experience, and you would be more likely to come back.
It’s also important to remember that when staff members feel content and safe they will be happier to work, leading to higher productivity and will be more likely to contribute ideas and collaborate with their colleagues, causing the team to grow stronger.
And, crucially, when people feel safe, they are more likely to make a report of any misconduct.
Employers have a legal duty of care to protect their staff from harm and they must follow the requirements of the Workers Protection Act 2023.
A few years ago, I briefly worked for a large, well-known retail company, and I was mistreated there (bearing in mind I was 16 years old). In this store we had radios to communicate with each other as we were working. I had not been thoroughly trained, and this specific incident took place during one of my first shifts. I was tidying up around the store, as I had been shown to do. A few minutes later the store manager announced on the radio, that everyone could hear (even the customers), addressing another member of staff and said in a passive-aggressive tone, “tell Lois to stop just tidying up and actually do some proper work”. This was the first of many incidents that took place with that manager, but also other staff members, in the short time that I worked there, personally targeting me and making me feel belittled and not at all valued in the company. Speaking to my other co-workers at the time, I know that I wasn’t the only employee who experienced this type of behaviour. I also did not know how or where to report this mistreatment. If I did, I may have reported it, and staff mistreatment might have been dealt with.
In 2024, a survey of 2000 employees was conducted by People Management which showed that 1 in 5 of these people did not think there was an accessible or anonymous tool in place to report misconduct. One third of the people asked, said that they would rather go to the media than their senior staff to report a problem as they feel like more progress with their case would be made. In a different study, they discovered that out of the 2000, only 50% felt the reports were taken seriously. Only 54% said they’d be comfortable to make a report, and men were much more likely to feel comfortable than women.
The CIPD found, in 2020, that one quarter of employers think that difficult issues such as harassment and assault are brushed to the side in their organisation. Another finding was that 53% of employees (OVER HALF??) had been bullied at work in the past year and only 44% said they felt like the incident was mostly or completely resolved. This shows that organisations do not have the right tools and procedures for dealing with these types of reports.
In 2024, the CIPD performed some research and found that 70% of employers believe they have an effective strategy for resolving conflict in the workplace, however, their employees disagree, with only 36% on the same page with this statement. There are plenty of actions organisations can take so that their staff know how to report a problem, and know that if they did, it would be taken seriously and resolved properly. For some reason, this seems to not be a priority for many employers, which, in my opinion, is unacceptable and probably does affect the success and efficiency of their business more than they realise. Some examples of the steps they can take are:
· Provide training sessions so that staff understand what mistreatment is and what to do if they witness/ experience it. Also offering regular training on inclusivity and diversity so that everybody knows they are accepted and respected.
· Offering simple and quickly accessible anonymous reporting forms – a great choice because they are easy to use, understand and review
· Help from third party, expert organisations when it comes to reviewing and dealing with these concerns (this is important because some employees may feel that if they report a concern to someone inside the organisation, they may be bias and not deal with it properly)
· Consistently reinforcing the reporting procedures
· Offering multiple means of reporting e.g. in person or on the phone, online form and help through an outside organisation (this is a key point as, depending on the situation, one reporting method may be more suitable than others)
A statistic from thehrdirector.com in 2024, told us that around 50% of the UK workforce have considered leaving, or have left, a job because of mistreatment in the workplace. Many of the statistics that I have discussed in this article, I’m sure would be significantly lower if organisations had proper measures in place for reporting and then dealing with concerns.
I believe that an online reporting tool managed by a third-party organisation should absolutely be compulsory for all organisations. Workplaces will be happier, employees will feel safer, and incidents are much more likely to be dealt with effectively.
https://www.ft.com/content/cc79b742-675d-4b3d-a479-e5bb4945f4db
https://www.cipd.org/uk/about/news/report-bullying-harassment-overlooked/
https://www.cipd.org/uk/views-and-insights/cipd-viewpoint/bullying-harassment/