Professional body the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) has released statistics which show that bullying is still rife in the workplace.

The news comes despite revelations that a huge 83% of bosses have an anti-bullying policy in place.

In spite of this, the CIPD say that managing conflict at work costs the average employer nearly 450 days of management time every year in addition to loss of productivity, sickness absence and high staff turnover.

Tackling bullying at work has been launched by the CIPD in an attempt to suggest alternative ways to handling the bullying problem.

Imogen Haslam, CIPD Professional Adviser commented: “Employers should work with staff to create a dignity at work policy that defines the positive behaviour expected from all employees. This will help make sure staff know what is expected from them and it will be easier to identify when someone is acting unreasonably.

“The next step is to provide training to all line managers and team leaders to help them recognise the signs of bullying or undesirable behaviour and take action to encourage people to recognise and change their behaviour before situations escalate.”

Haslam urges employers to move away from traditional ‘autocratic’ management styles and adopt in their place a style which seeks to motivate staff through engagement.

“This will help reduce conflict within the workplace and deliver benefits to the business by improving performance, improving the working environment, helping to retain staff and reducing absence rates, especially that caused by stress-related illness.”

Last month, HRZone reported that Leicester based PTP Training and Marketing Ltd, found that bullying is still not perceived to be a key issue at work, only 17% of its respondents claimed it is a problem.

PTP said that it was not surprising therefore that managers had difficulties dealing with bullying incidents in the office as most had not had proper training.