Employers have a duty of care to provide a safe and healthy working environment for all employees. Bullying behaviours and organisations with bullying cultures can have a negative impact on customers and bullying continues to be a problem within the UK. 

'Bullying may be characterised as offensive, intimidating, malicious or insulting behaviour, an abuse or misuse of power through means intended to undermine, humiliate, denigrate or injure the recipient.'  ACAS

I was recently speaking to a manager, Evelyn, from a care home and she was being bullied by one of her staff ‘upward bullying’ and she was in a desperate state. The bullying had been going on for two years and she was now very tearful, it was affecting her sleep, her stomach was upset frequently and it was impacting on her family life. Evelyn was good at her job and she now found that she had difficulty managing the other staff without getting tearful. She found that her confidence had dropped also low self-esteem.

This seems to be common just now and the main reason behind the bullying was that Evelyn had applied for the manager job she was currently in and so did Jean who now was downright ignorant and spoke to Evelyn in a rude manner often excluding her from what was going on and talking behind her back with some other staff.

Often the bullying was when no one was within earshot and Jean was refusing to carry out duties when asked to do them and refused to anything that Evelyn asked her to do and it was in the manner that Jean spoke to her which was hurtful and was impacting on her health.  

What could Evelyn do?

She had spoken to HR who were supportive and had told her to document everything. I reiterated this and said ensure that you keep a diary with the date, time, document what has happened, how you were made to feel, who was there at the time, and how did she respond.

Evelyn had spoken to Jean about the behaviour and was rude back to her. She was keen to follow any advice she could get.

HR did offer mediation but Evelyn felt it had gone past that stage and was going down the formal route as per her work policy.

Evelyn had contacted her EAP for counselling which helped and reinforced that she needed to be more confident.  She also knew this was going to take time but the best news she had received was that Jean was moving away to another job. She was going to continue down the investigation route as she was concerned that Jean would do this again to someone else.

Please note the names have been changed.