It’s a nightmare scenario for any HR team: a senior employee is accused of a long-standing bullying habit, and the employees ‘have the receipts’ – as they say! How do you deal with it? What happens when the accused individual is significantly more senior than the accuser? How does a person’s seniority and length of service impact your reaction? And how much does the stress and high stakes of the subject matter excuse bullying behaviours?

Bullying is generally used to mean behaviour that is:

• offensive, intimidating, malicious or insulting
• an abuse or misuse of power that undermines, humiliates, or causes physical or emotional harm to someone.

Bullying at work can be a regular pattern, or a one-off incident. It can occur in many places including digital bullying, and it can occur outside of the workplace setting.

Examples of bullying at work include:

• spreading malicious rumours about someone
• consistently putting someone down in meetings
• deliberately giving someone a heavier workload than everyone else
• excluding someone from team social events
• someone consistently undermining their manager’s authority (known as upwards bullying)
• putting humiliating, offensive or threatening comments or photos on social media.

What does the law say?

Bullying itself is not a crime, but creating a respectful and inclusive work environment is crucial for employee well-being and productivity. There are a number of legal frameworks in place to address poor behaviours such as workplace bullying...

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