A new national report on workplace bullying in Australia has been hailed by some as a tremendous breakthrough to improve corporate wellness, but it has also been hailed by some critics as ‘ridiculous’.
There are fears amongst certain sectors that the new report will open up the opportunity for petty workplace disputes to arise, which will be time-consuming and counterproductive. Some feel that there is a chance that reports will be made over inconsequential matters such as difficult deadlines or eye rolling.
The report, titled Workplace Bullying: “We Just Want it to Stop”, makes 23 different recommendations to help improve corporate wellbeing by tackling the serious issue of workplace bullying, including providing victims of bullying with the legal right to take claims about their experiences to court.
This report also calls on all workplaces to form new regulations to help manage bullying, in line with Safe Work Australia’s code of practice.
Serious reservations have, however, been noted from some members of Parliament due to some of the language and terms used in the code. In particular, there were concerns that ‘not providing enough’ work was cited as a form of indirect bullying, along with setting difficult deadlines. The code also prohibits responses that might ‘diminish a person’s dignity’, such as eye-rolling. Some feel that these clauses are ridiculous, and would encourage frivolous lawsuits, or even people using the code with malicious intent to harm someone’s career for no just reason.
Due to this, there are calls for the report to be re-written, removing the more controversial clauses. Others are demanding that laws should be put in place to impose penalties on anyone who is found to be making a spurious claim against a coworker or employer for no good reason.
Comments are closed.