Union research reveals high levels of workplace bullying

The Australian Workers’ Union (AWU) has revealed high levels of workplace harassment and bullying are taking place across countless industries, including healthcare, aged care and community services. 

In addition, unrealistic workloads, poor training and exposure to traumatic events are causing harmful psychological injuries, the fasting growing type of workers’ compensation claim.

Key points: 

• 50% of those surveyed have experienced some form of bullying, harassment or discrimination while at work
• More than half of the respondents cited instances of poor organisational justice, including inconsistent application of policies and procedures and poor communication and consultation from employers
• Health and community service workers are twice as likely to be exposed to a violent or traumatic event compared to the average worker (39.75% compared to 19.19%)
• Low recognition and reward, poor support (including support from supervisors or via training) and poor workplace relationships were the top three negative contributors to mental health for health and community service workers

Mental health is in the spotlight this October for Mental Health Month, while October 10 was World Mental Health Day. The combination of events has drawn even more attention to the challenges facing employees, including the high number of psychosocial hazards in the workplace.

Psychosocial hazards are risk factors that can cause psychological harm, such as bullying, high workloads, poor organisational support and low recognition. These risk factors can impact employees differently, but it’s important for employers to understand the role they play in reducing or preventing them.

You can learn more about how to manage psychosocial hazards here. 

What do the statistics say?

The research – which comes from AWU and HeadFirst – shows some concerning trends for mental health in the workplace. Building on previous research that revealed 60% of workers are concerned about mental health and stress at work, one-third of respondents have suffered from some sort of mental health injury at work within the past 12 months. This could include post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety and depression. 

“To see in black and white one in two Australian workers have experienced being bullied, harassed or exposed to conflict or inappropriate behaviour in their workplace is disturbing,” explained Paul Farrow, AWU National Secretary.

“We know Australians spend on average 90,000 hours at work in their lifetime, that’s about 5,000 days or 13 years in total, it’s a really big part of your life, so to see the level of unhappiness reflected in this survey is shocking. We are seeing chronic levels of unrealistic workloads, poor training and exposure to traumatic events.” 

“Last year all states in Australia brought in new laws to hold employers responsible for psychological and psychosocial hazards in the workplace, this survey is a wake-up call to them to start being proactive otherwise they will feel the consequences,” says Mr Farrow.

A quick look at the health and community services results, which included aged care workers, also found that 66% of workers have experienced some form of bullying, harassment or unreasonable workplace behaviour, which is worse than the survey-wide average of 50%. 

Reports of high job demands, violent or traumatic events and low recognition or reward were also higher than the survey-wide averages. 

Recommendations for improvement

Survey results found that the most utilised support method for staff is the employee assistance program (EAP), but often it’s the only one consistently utilised by employers. Almost 90% of respondents said they had an EAP in place, with effective health and safety procedures the next most common control measure only available to 22% of respondents. 

This means employers can and should invest in more control measures to ensure staff have consistent and varied mental health support at work. 

Recommendations made by AWU include:

• Reviewing mental health hazards in the workplace to determine what appropriate control measures should be developed
• Introducing or reviewing existing control measures to meet legislative requirements
• Monitoring employee mental health through regular surveys
• Communicating regularly with employees to identify and rectify mental health hazards
• Providing more mental health training for relevant management 
• Addressing common causes of mental health injuries, such as regularly reviewing rosters to ensure workloads and overtime levels are not impacting the work-life balance