Thanks for your question. It’s important for employees to understand how to deal with bullying behaviour in the workplace. And this is crucial if the bully is in a position of responsibility.

Worksafe has an excellent paper you can download which highlights what is and what is NOT bullying. We recommend all staff are informed and understand your company’s process to address any bullying concerns.

The principals of trust and good faith in an employment relationship apply to both employees and employers. Further to this, under our Health and Safety laws, everyone has a duty of care to ensure that no action (or inaction) is harmful to another worker.

Bullying behaviour that isn’t dealt with may get worse. Address the unreasonable behaviour as soon as you become aware of it. Try to address it informally at first, unless you feel your safety is at risk – if your safety or wellbeing is at risk, then you need to escalate your complaint straight away. It’s important to keep a record of your interactions. If you take the matter further you’ll need to describe the bullying behaviour, its instances, and how it affects you.

In your case Malcolm, where an employee is in a situation where they are being bullied by a senior staff member or a business owner, they should tell someone in the business who has supervisory capacity and alert them that something needs to be said to the owner. However if the business is a flat structure with employees all reporting into the business owner, you may need some independent support to resolve the situation.

You can phone Worksafe (the NZ crown entity for workplace health and safety) for support. You may also approach the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, for professional mediation to resolve the situation. For any mediation you need to be able to describe how the behaviour affects you, and its helpful to keep notes of when the incidents occur.

So what happens at mediation?

• A date for mediation will be agreed by both parties
• Both parties will arrive at the mediation and be put into separate rooms
• The mediator will brief both parties on the process and then bring them into the room together
• Both parties will state their case without interruption
• The mediator will ask some questions, and questions can be asked across the table
• Once discussions are no longer productive, the mediator will break both parties back into separate rooms
• The mediator will then go over the strengths, weaknesses and possible liabilities of each case
• The mediator will attempt to negotiate a settlement
• If no settlement is agreed then the parties go their separate ways

What does this mean in practice?

• Mediation will take approximately 4-6 hours (sometimes longer)
• A settlement doesn’t have to be reached at mediation
• The issue may be taken further by filing a personal grievance claim with the Employment Court
• The average award for an employee to win in Employment Court is three months pay plus $7,ooo for hurt and humiliation

Don’t be nervous when dealing with intimidation in the workplace. Just be fair, reasonable and courageous.

At HRtoolkit we have everything you need to help manage those courageous conversations. Let us show you how, call 0800 HRtoolkit (09 302 9935).