Ignoring workplace bullying can have a detrimental impact on productivity and work performance. CHROs Boniwe Dunster, Palesa Matoli, Bess Kankolongo, Dr Ngao Motsei and Tantaswa Fubu talk about practical ways to eradicate bullying from the workplace and how best to create psychologically safe work spaces.
There are a number of tiers and types of bullying in the workplace, and ensuring that policies and procedures are in place to address this is crucial to maintaining a healthy workforce – and work space.
According to author, thought leader and subject matter expert Dr Ngao Motsei, HR leaders should learn how to navigate the delicate causes of and remedies for workplace bullying.
“First of all, as HR leaders you cannot not know anything about workplace bullying, especially since the promulgation of the Code of Good Practice on the Prevention and Elimination of Harassment in the Workplace. This code aims to eliminate all forms of harassment in the workplace by providing guidance on the policies and procedures to be implemented in the event that harassment occurs in the workplace,” she explains.
Boniwe Dunster, HR executive at Lanseria International Airport agrees.
“The recent 14th International Association on Workplace Bullying and Harassment conference also affirmed the progress we have made in South Africa with the Code of Good Practice in the Prevention and Elimination of Workplace Bullying, the Employment Equity Act and the various dispute resolution bodies we have,” she says.
“As a country we need to take stock and celebrate the strides we have made and look forward with pride knowing that we have the ability to curb this pandemic.This provides a legal framework on how corporates and employees can address various workplace harassment challenges. Many countries are far from this achievement based on my interaction with counterparts at the conference,” she adds.
It starts with leadership
According to Boniwe, intentionality at a leadership level is important in influencing workplace culture to eradicate bullying.
“Legislation and policies are there to guide but what matters the most are leadership behaviours and the advocacy,” she notes.
Palesa Matoli, Bidvest Bank’s executive head of human capital and transformation, highlights that more collaboration is needed between leaders across organisations.
“I find that HR is expected to hold everyone accountable across all levels of HR, to call out the behaviour at all times, instead of a collective responsibility of all leaders in the organisation not to accept bullying or harassment. Sometimes HR themselves are bullied by their leaders,” she says.
In terms of defining and addressing the issue, Ngao said it is important for HR to make it their business to know what is happening in the workplace. “In bullying scenarios, there are three players – the abrasive leaders, the target (not victim) and the bystander who enables bullying by looking and doing nothing, making them complicit.”
She urges HR leaders to work towards re-humanising organisations, one leader at a time.
“When I say one leader at a time, it’s because many of these abrasive leaders lack self-awareness and do not even have a good sense of the impact that they have on the direct environment.”
Types of bullying
The most common form of harassment is management/upward bullying because it has a high degree of power dynamics or power imbalance. For instance, a manager is in a position to assert authority to perpetuate and justify bullying behaviour. This can show up in the forms of high or unequal work demands towards one or few individuals in a team, expecting high results with less resources to enable failure, being excluded from meetings or given insufficient information to complete tasks.
Another form is peer bullying, explains Boniwe, which occurs when a peer has close proximity to senior stakeholders or decision-makers and uses that to bully their peers or get away with poor performance and being given special treatment in the team.
“In a case of remote work, one would experience less to no boundaries in terms of work hours where one is expected to be accessible at odd times without respecting the individuals’ home life. It can be witnessed with work instructions being sent on email and immediately thereafter followed up on WhatsApp, SMS and a call, without giving the employee an opportunity to respond or contextualise the request in relation to other work demands,” she says.
“Sometimes the bully might even post on social media about the victim or a particular incident and just omit the names, in some instances the manager can even monitor the victims online work activities without a valid reason or making the employee aware. All of this is what we call cyberbullying,” she adds.
Commenting on the types of bullying, Tantaswa Fubu, former CHRO and now CEO of BetterMe says it is very possible that bullies might not be aware of what they are doing. “Are they really unaware or do they pretend they do not know? Don’t we all have a conscience that whispers when you are doing something wrong?”
She adds that abrasive leaders also justify their actions by saying that they are showing up authentically, and usually that is met with silence. “Leaders need to hold each other accountable – most are bystanders. As leaders, they need to call out what is right and what is not. It is also interesting when top executives bully each other and manipulate: other leaders say they do not see what they are doing.”
Resources needed
Bess Kankolongo, regional talent leader at MTN, adds, “Bullying is a result of poor leadership style. You need to have a clear policy and procedure to address it. When you lack integrity and a strong value system you bully others and also become a victim of bullying because you are compromised.”
Boniwe further notes that organisations must invest resources in leadership development as this is the layer that has to address bullying behaviour. “The most common bullying is management bullying/upward bullying as it involves power dynamics. Leaders need to understand their role beyond profits and also get training on emotional intelligence, employee relations/legislation, and mediation amongst others.”
Boniwe reiterates that if workplace bullying is not taken seriously nor addressed, it can lead to low productivity and poor work performance in the workplace, “Employees will always be anxious about the next bullying incident, co-workers will become indirect victims as they have to make calculated moves in their performance and how they react in some situations which will ultimately impact staff morale negatively. The low staff morale will ultimately lead to attrition and this can also impact the organisational talent pipeline.”
