Workplace bullying not properly policed in NZ: Culture Safe

Workplace bullying is being let slide in New Zealand because it is not properly policed, says Culture Safe NZ's director. Photo / 123RF

Workplace bullying is allowed to slide in New Zealand because it is not properly policed, says Culture Safe NZ's director.

Allan Halse told Newstalk ZB that we were behind most other countries when it came to organisations' approaches to workplace bulling.

"The problem is getting worse year by year, simply because in New Zealand we're not treating it as a health and safety issue," he said.

In the UK, where Halse was speaking from, employers and employees alike had free access to Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (Acas), which offered mediation to stop workplace bullying from escalating.

"The problem we've got in New Zealand is it's not policed," he said.

"There are some organisations that believe that bullying managers are strong managers and they're not."

Citing 2009 research, Halse said most bullying - 70 per cent - was top-down, 5 per cent was staff bullying their managers and 25 per cent was peer-on-peer.

"We already know that one in five or 400,000 New Zealand workers are being bullied on a regular basis. It's shocking."

This generally took the form of indirect bullying where, for example, managers set unrealistic workloads and disciplined employees when it was not completed.

"They're pretty much set up to fail," he said.

"About 75 per cent of people bullied by managers [world-wide] are bullied because their level of technical competence is better than their manager's. So the idea is to undermine people who look better than you because you're afraid you'll lose your job."