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The root of the problem
Better management can reduce bullying in academia .
Michelle Tuckey interviewed by Emilie Lauer
New research shows workplace bullying does not arise from interpersonal issues or personality clashes but is linked to organisational and management issues and impacts every sector , including tertiary education .
In Australia , around one in 10 workers is exposed to ongoing bullying at work , lead researcher from the University of South Australia Professor Michelle Tuckey said , costing workers their physical and mental health and about $ 36 billion each year to the global economy .
Tuckey joined Campus Review to discuss bullying in the workplace and what actions universities can take to reduce bullying in the sector .
CR : What does workplace bullying look like in Australia ? MT : Bullying is defined as any action that creates a risk to health and safety that ’ s unreasonable and repeated over time , but it doesn ’ t include reasonable management action taken in a reasonable manner .
Bullying is a really serious problem in Australia , actually . Around one in 10 of our workers are exposed to ongoing bullying for a significant period of time , and in a way that really creates a risk to their health and safety .
Where does workplace bullying come from ? Most people think about bullying as an interpersonal issue : a conflict between one , two or a few people ; a personality clash .
But one of the most important things to know about bullying is that it ’ s actually an organisational issue . The causes lie in organisational systems , structures and processes , and everyday ways of working .
Why is there so much bullying in Australia ? Our bullying rates in Australia are higher than 34 EU countries . So we ’ re right up there on the global spectrum . We have had a lot of awareness raising in Australia over the last 10 years . We ’ ve had a federal parliamentary inquiry . We ’ ve had the establishment of a fair work jurisdiction and anti-bullying jurisdiction to hear workers ’ complaints and potentially issue stop bullying orders .
What are some of the common issues you ’ ve noticed that could create bullying ? We looked at 342 workplace bullying complaints lodged with our local regulator ,
SafeWork SA here in South Australia . What could explain bullying in all of these cases is 10 different types of people management practices .
They fell into three different areas . One is how working hours are coordinated and administrated . When rosters , schedules , overtime , pay , leave entitlements aren ’ t going well , people feel bullied . The second area is around managing work performance : having really clear and well defined job roles and ways of evolving those job roles in a fair way , and how performance is motivated and guided and directed .
This also includes training , development , personal growth , having the right training to start the job and good pathways , and having fair ways of allocating tasks and workload . Feedback , monitoring and managing under-performance is the last one in that second area . That ’ s a really critical risk area for perceptions of bullying .
The third area is around how the relationships are shaped and the work environment . Is there a physically safe work environment and a mentally healthy work environment ?
What are the impacts of bullying on businesses and people ? Bullying really undermines and erodes people ’ s mental health , even their physical health . That can show up in things like anxiety and depression and other psychological illnesses . It can affect their sleeping . In the worst case scenario , targets can think about suicide .
There ’ s also more and more evidence building directly for the impact on organisations . In teams where there ’ s bullying happening , there ’ s lower morale , there ’ s lower team cohesion , there ’ s reduced commitment to the organisation , and other people wonder if they should speak up or not or whether it might start happening to them .
All of these factors can undermine the performance of the organisation . And in Australia , the productivity commission actually estimated that all of these direct costs of compensation claims , and all of the indirect ones , cost the economy up to $ 36 billion every year .
What does bullying look like at university ? In our education sector broadly , the latest national data show that it ’ s about the same prevalence rate of 10 per cent . Looking
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