Bullying

What do we know about this? Here are my notes, which refer to bullying at work. …

ACAS

Let’s start with ACAS.

1. Bullying and harassment at work a guide for employees, from ACAS

who say

Everyone should be treated with dignity and respect at work.

They offer the following definitions

Harassment as defined in the Equality Act 2010 is:

Unwanted conduct related to a relevant protected characteristic, which has the purpose or effect of violating an individual’s dignity or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for that individual.

and

Bullying may be characterised as

Offensive, intimidating, malicious or insulting behaviour, an abuse or misuse of power through means that undermine, humiliate, denigrate or injure the recipient.

So Harassment relates to a protected characteristic.

There can be no “I didn’t mean it” defence to bullying although it’s not a crime, it would seem unless the bullying can be covered by the Equalities Act.

ACAS also have,

1. a home page, called Bullying and Harassment
2. Seeking better solutions: tackling bullying and ill-treatment in Britain’s workplaces

More Links

1. From the TUC, “Bullying at Work, Guidance for workplace representatives”
2. If you believe that you are being bullied the chances are you are, from the UCU
3. Bullying and harassment/, from Unison
4. Workplace Bullying/, from dontstickit.org.uk I found the featured picture here.

Quotes

From the Unison document,

Bullying includes:

• offensive, intimidating, malicious, or insulting behaviour;
• abuse of authority which violates the dignity of an individual or a group of people;
• creating a hostile environment against an individual;
• the undermining, humiliation or injury of an individual.