smallbusiness.co.uk: Helping your business think big

I have grouped these two questions together as, to a degree; they appear to be two sides of the same coin.

Bullying and/or harassment by management towards an employee or by employee(s) to employee(s), especially if it contains any discriminatory overtones such as race, sex, disability etc., is entirely unacceptable. Employees will come from different backgrounds and have different perceptions, ranging from “over sensitive” to “over robust”, as to what is/is not acceptable.

All employers must therefore have in place policies and procedures to deal with this situation. The key one is your equal opportunities policy. It needs to be properly drawn-up and adopted whole heartedly by the Board. All new starters must be taught the policy, normally as part of their induction. In so doing examples of acceptable/unacceptable language and behaviour should be provided so that the boundaries are clearly defined and understood. The policy needs to be supported with disciplinary action (including re-training if appropriate) for transgressors. The policy needs to be periodically reviewed and, whenever an incident occurs, it needs to be re-examined to see if it needs re-vamping in some respect. Finally employees should receive “refresher” training from time to time.

The manner of dealing with complaints/grievances will be defined in your equal opportunities policy. The individual raising the issue must be assured that it will be treated seriously and expeditiously consistent with a proper investigation. It might also be appropriate to ask the individual what they would like to happen as a result of the complaint.

There will then need to be an investigation with witness statements almost certainly needing to be taken. There simply isn’t space to detail all of the investigation steps here. If you do not have properly trained staff (including senior management) who know how to proceed then you will need to buy-in assistance both to investigate and advise, and to teach you how to do it.

Failure to have proper procedures and policies in place and in action will cost you dear, not only in Tribunal costs and awards, but in labour recruitment, performance and retention costs as well.