Seven steps for an anti-bullying culture at work

When people hear the word bullying, they often picture a schoolyard scene. But bullying doesn’t stop when we leave the playground, it follows us into the workplace, often changing form to more subtle, insidious ways.

Bullying includes any behaviour which causes someone to feel humiliated, undermined or intimidated. It may surface in written communication, on social media, in emails or chats; through verbal exchanges, body language, deliberate actions or in the quiet complicity of inaction. Examples include:

• Being regularly excluded from meetings or discussions without reason
• Having ideas constantly dismissed or ridiculed in front of colleagues
• Micromanagement while others are trusted with autonomy
• Jokes about personal traits, appearance, or background

Bullying doesn’t need to be intentional to be damaging. Even if someone doesn’t realize their behaviour is bullying, it can still have serious consequences. It often thrives on nuance, making it difficult for bystanders and leaders to identify.

The cost of failing to identify it:

A survey of 1,000 UK professionals showed that the majority had either left or considered leaving a role due to bullying from a colleague or manager.

In corporate environments, where reputational and compliance risks are high, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is sounding the alarm. Their October 2024 Culture & Non-Financial Misconduct Survey revealed that bullying was the most-reported form of misconduct across all sectors, above sexual harassment and discrimination. And yet, leaders remain reluctant to admit it exists in their organisations.

That hesitation has real consequences.

What happens when bullying goes unchecked?

On top of the often-longstanding psychological damage and wellbeing issues for the individual employee, a workplace that allows bullying to thrive faces:

• Low productivity: decreased collaboration as employees avoid teamwork to protect themselves; the organisation no longer operates as a unit working towards a common goal but as a group of internal competitors.
  
  
• High costs: Talented employees silently exit, driving up hiring and onboarding costs. Legal and regulatory penalties loom for failure to protect staff.
  
  
• Reputational damage: Negative reviews and word-of-mouth which harm both talent recruitment and client business, exacerbated by the possible legal and regulatory challenges mentioned above.
  
  
• Leadership challenges: Failure to address bullying can undermine leadership credibility and cause distrust in management; there’s likely to be increased resistance to organisational change due to a fearful and/or disengaged workforce.

What steps should leaders take to foster an anti-bullying workplace culture?

1. Start with listening exercises

You may think that you know what’s happening, but only a tiny percentage of bullying and harassment will ever be reported. Find out from your people what’s happening. Tools like InChorus can help here.

Or it could be a mystery shopper exercise – pick at random a few people who’ve accessed your policies. Use an independent person to talk to them about their experience of your system.

2. Treat bullying as a health and safety risk (it is one)

A risk management approach starts by identifying the risk factors, and considering what steps we can take to make the workplace safe with this in mind.

3. Create an accountable committee

 During Covid, committees were quickly set up to change everything about how we approached work to tackle the problem. The same can be done for bullying.

4. Appoint credible senior leaders to lead your anti-bullying initiative

This isn’t an HR initiative, it's a leadership imperative. If the campaign fails, the reputational consequences will be felt and real (because this was their campaign).

5. Involve all senior leaders as role models

Next, have other senior people explain why this is so important and tell their own stories in company-wide sessions.

6. Set clear standards of positive behaviour

Make sure your people know what’s expected of them. In terms of how to behave, and what to do if they’re feeling unsafe or think someone else may be.

7. Keep yourself accountable

Change often begins with introspection. Remember that we can all be bullies. Most of the time we just don't realise we're doing it. Problems that amount to bullying are often subtle and nuanced - the overtly problematic behaviours are less frequent. 

We say things and do things impulsively (we are human after all!) that can have a much more negative impact than we realise (being slightly short-fused when giving feedback, teasing someone at the wrong moment, making a flippant remark about their appearance etc.).

It’s important to understand that intentions don’t matter nearly as much as how something lands. If it hurts, there’s an issue. This is a much better litmus test as to whether a certain behaviour could be seen as problematic and can give you the drive to do something about it.

By pairing introspection with the steps laid out above, organisations can start to root out bullying and, importantly, show their people that they are taking the issue seriously.

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