KEY POINTS:
More than a third of public servants questioned in an independent survey reported seeing workplace bullying, said a report released yesterday.
The survey, conducted by the Washington-based Ethics Resource Centre, questioned 4642 people from a range of agencies and said in its report:
* 33 per cent reported observing misconduct in the past year, with 6 per cent believing these incidents were breaches of the law.
* 36 per cent reported seeing breaches involving abusive or intimidating behaviour.
* Only 49 per cent believed their senior managers kept their promises and commitments.
* More than half of those who observed misconduct reported it.
State Services Commissioner Mark Prebble, who released the survey, said it was part of an ongoing process of monitoring and managing levels of integrity and good conduct.
"These surveys will from time to time highlight issues that we need to address, and we can't afford to pretend otherwise," he said.
"What is critical is that we identify the problems and move to fix them.
"This survey looked at our systems and showed us that we have high understanding, that we have good training but that it can be improved, and that we need to do more work in terms of our reporting, followup, leadership and communication," he said.
The Public Services Association said it acknowledged there were "areas of workplace behaviour involving our public servants where there's clearly room for improvement".
The association's national secretary Richard Wagstaff said the association was concerned that a third of respondents said they had observed breaches of conduct.
"The most frequently observed breach of workplace conduct is abusive or intimidating behaviour, also known as workplace bullying," he said.
"This was followed by improper use of the internet, or email and lying to other workers."
Mr Wagstaff said action was needed to address misconduct, particularly bullying and lying.
Dr Prebble and Mr Wagstaff both referred to a recent Transparency International report which rated New Zealand equal first in a global survey of perceptions of lack of corruption in the public sector.
"We are all proud of that, but it is more important to meet the standards New Zealanders expect," Dr Prebble said.
Mr Wagstaff said the Ethics Resource Centre survey "shows that there's higher levels of serious misconduct among American government workers than state sector workers in New Zealand."
- NZPA
