Bullying and Other Forms of Discrimination

Workplace bullying encompasses a range of behaviours, many of which initially may appear harmless, particularly when viewed out of context. Indeed, a classic type of bullying is to diminish response as an overreaction. Behaviours build up over time and cause real mental and physical harm. Very serious incidents of inappropriate behaviour in the workplace may start out as ‘jokes’, before escalating.  Your employer has a legal duty of care to provide a safe work environment, as far as reasonably practicable. If your employer does not take reasonable steps to prevent workplace bullying, your employer is not meeting their legal responsibility.  Legally, a behaviour must be repeated and unreasonable so that it creates a risk to health and safety for it to be workplace bullying. Some common examples of workplace bullying include:

• Aggressive physical or verbal behaviour
• Unjustified criticism
• Psychological harassment like playing mind games or ganging up on you
• Teasing and ‘practical jokes’
• Excluding or isolating people in the workplace
• Unreasonable work demands or deliberately making your work schedule difficult

Bullying does not have to be physical abuse – it can be verbal, social or psychological. Bullying in the workplace can be by an employer/ manager, or another workmate or colleague in the workplace. Bullying can happen in any type of workplace environment, whether that is an office, a café or a remote worksite. Bullying can be in-person or by other means of communication, such as by email or on social media.  A single incident is not generally workplace bullying. However, if someone’s behaviour begins to repeat or escalate it is important to keep a record of what happened and how you responded in case you need to make a complaint. This will be helpful to establish how persistent the behaviour is and whether it was unreasonable. Whether something is unreasonable must be seen in light of the circumstances and requires an assessment of what a hypothetical “reasonable person” may consider is appropriate or necessary. This means that not everything that happens at work that makes a person upset is workplace bullying: for example, management is entitled to make decisions about how you work and your performance, as long as they are reasonable.