How do you tackle bullying at work if people don’t complain?

Bullying happens across every sector and at every level

According to CIPD’s 2020 report, 35% of employees have experienced some form of interpersonal conflict at work over the last year. But bad behaviour in the workplace often goes unreported, so the true number is almost certainly higher.

There are lots of reasons why people don’t complain. This is highly emotional territory and it’s complex. What is considered acceptable may be unclear. There might not be a good reporting mechanism. If asked directly about their wellbeing, employees might fear any negativity could limit their career prospects. Or perhaps the individual is not ready to acknowledge that there is a problem.

Exclusionary behaviour is widespread

Exclusionary behaviour can relate to sex, ethnicity, ability, appearance or culture and it isn’t only obvious discrimination that is harmful. Persistent snubs, belittling remarks, even body language, can deeply affect how people feel at work, and these behaviours can be invisible to a third party.

For an individual, negative interactions can impact confidence, affect performance, and damage mental health. And typically, incidents don’t occur in isolation. When behaviours are normalised or validated within a team, with no senior intervention, they can become ingrained in company culture.

Workplace conflict costs UK employers around £28.5 billion a year
Acas, 2021
Workplace ‘banter’ lawsuits up by more than 40%
Financial Times, 2022
1 in 4 ethnic minority workers report experiencing bullying and harassment despite zero-tolerance policies
Business in the Community, Race at Work 2021

Culture is shaped from the ground up

Evidence tells us that productive businesses are happy businesses; safe environments that promote trust, respect and collaboration. And contrary to popular wisdom, internal culture can’t be created by simply communicating corporate values or behavioural guidelines from the top-down. Culture is more organic; it manifests from the ground up.

Culture shows itself in the smallest of interactions; the way people treat each other in everyday situations, in shared spaces, in meetings.

How can organisations promote inclusivity when the true picture is hidden?

The answer is to search harder. We advise to stop relying on data gathered in the annual staff feedback survey. Instead, we champion talking to people, at all levels, in safe, anonymised conditions. In the hands of experienced psychologists and researchers, these qualitative methods tease out stories that paint a realistic picture of what is going on and help us understand why.

Second, we use a diagnostic framework designed to reveal the underlying hidden behaviours that form the basis of poor corporate culture in large organisations. This helps us recognise those small behaviours that can be just as harmful as explicit bias or aggression.

Third, we use the data to spot patterns across an organisation to find practical solutions. We abandon preconceptions and cast our net wide. Interventions may be needed in many different areas, from policy to leadership to company-wide training. What’s important is to identify the priorities – the actions that will deliver the most benefit.

Don’t wait for complaints

Work accounts for a huge part of people’s lives. It’s important that employers make sure it is a positive experience.

This isn’t as simple as looking for perpetrators. At Half the Sky, we look for systems and processes that are letting everyone down. We look to build on the positives within an organisation, to help people behave better. By taking a strategic perspective and building in collective responsibility – a method learned from behavioural science – we unlock the best possible chance of real, lasting change.

Organisations need to act smarter. It’s time to invest proactively in inclusivity, because those that do are the ones rewarded with greater loyalty, productivity and reputation.

References

[1] CIPD’s 2020 report Managing conflict in the modern workplace

[2] Gartner research in 2019 says nearly 60% of misconduct that is observed in the workplace is never reported.

[3] Harvard’s Amy Edmondson coined the term psychological safety in a 1999 journal article exploring its relationship to team learning and performance. Psychological safety means an absence of interpersonal fear.

[4] Acas estimates based on cost of handling conflict that includes informal, formal and legal processes as well as cost of sickness absences and resignations.

[5] Law Firm GQ Littler found the number of UK employment tribunal cases relating to the use of banter in the workplace rose 44 per cent in 2021. Published in the Financial Times.

[6] BiTC Race at Work survey and scorecard report based on a survey of almost 25,000 employees in the UK.