What are harmful workplace behaviours?

Harmful workplace behaviours are defined as:

• Bullying
• Harassment
• Sexual harassment
• Violence and aggression
• Conflict or poor workplace relationships

Like any other physical health and safety risk, psychological health risks from bullying, sexual harassment, violence and other harmful workplace behaviours must be managed.

Such behaviours can have a significant negative impact on individuals and the workplace. They can occur in all types of work situations.

Harmful behaviours may be individual or interpersonal issues. However, broader environmental factors, such as poor organisational culture and a lack of leadership often cause or exacerbate harmful behaviours.

Some things to consider in assessing the incidence and risk of harmful behaviours in workplaces

Assessing the possible incidence and risk of harmful behaviours in your organisation or business can be challenging.

Employee surveys that include measures of harmful behaviours can provide insight into their prevalence, regardless of whether they were formally reported or not.

However, it’s important to consider the results from surveys as indicators only.  This is because they are a measure of self-defined experiences rather than experiences that have been assessed, on the balance of probabilities, as likely or unlikely experiences of harmful behaviour.

Examining available complaints data is another way to gain some insight into how common harmful behaviours may be. However, it’s important to consider:

• that such data only represents complaints about harmful behaviour, not the actual prevalence of harmful behaviour;
• to differentiate between complaints that are upheld or not upheld; and
• the real or perceived barriers for workers to take action in response to harmful behaviours (such as making a complaint, notifying their manager but not making a complaint, or dealing with it informally by asking the instigator of the behaviour to stop).

Workers can be reluctant to complain or take any other action in response to harmful behaviours in their workplace due to real or perceived barriers.  These can include:

• a belief that the behaviour is not serious enough;
• uncertainty about what constitutes harmful workplace behaviour;
• a belief that it won’t be taken seriously – a lack of faith in the ‘system’;
• fear of being seen as a ‘troublemaker’;
• fear of reprisals from others; and
• uncertainty about how to complain.

Some workers prefer to respond to harmful or potentially harmful behaviours in an informal way. For example, they may prefer to talk to the instigator directly about it and ask them to stop.  Or, they may ask their manager or other person to do this. Responding to behaviour that doesn’t pose a significant health and safety threat in this informal way at the lowest level can be effective.

Preventing harmful behaviours