ADULT BULLYING IN ORGANISATIONS

It’s easy to assume everyone can identify adult bullying. The term bullying is often used to describe aggressive behaviour. This can make it hard for workplaces, employers and employees (including volunteers), and the wider community to accurately identify and manage workplace bullying or sexual harassment.

The standard response to an adult bullying complaint is to redefine the problem so it becomes easier to deal with. Organisations often label a problem between two people as a personality conflict and then manage it as an ‘employment issue.’ The result of this approach is that one side is labelled as a victim and the other as a villain, which also leads to finding someone right and someone wrong.

This never leads to the heart of why bullying happens in the first place, nor does it take into account the interconnectedness between people and the culture or environment they work in.

Adult bullying in organisations is complex and cannot be understood as an isolated event or event(s).

It is an intricate set of interplays between work practices, culture and behaviour, and the way power is constructed. While there are many similarities, this is what makes adult bullying in organisations distinct from schoolyard bullying and domestic abuse.

Adult bullying identification requires a holistic evidence-based view of the interconnections and how they shape and influence all people in a conflict, as well as a consistent scale against which it can be measured.