Australian workplace rife with bullying

Australian workplaces are positively infested with bullies, with a new survey showing almost a third of Australian workers say they have experienced bullying at work in the past two years.

Australian workplaces are positively infested with bullies, with a new survey showing almost a third of Australian workers say they have experienced bullying at work in the past two years.

Workplace training firm WorkPro surveyed more than 2000 Australian employees on their experiences with bullying at work.

Just under half said they have seen co-workers bullied or discriminated against in the past two years, while 27% said they had been bullied themselves.

It appears at least some of the discrimination occurring could be inadvertent – while 71% say they worry about doing or saying something discriminatory at work, 27% say they are uncertain about what their rights actually are.

WorkPro business manager Tania Evans says she is surprised by the prevalence of bullying revealed by the survey.

“It’s quite shocking to hear from employees that this sort of behaviour continues to happen in modern times, but organisations need to realise that bullying and unfair treatment of staff is occurring and could be impacting their own workplace culture or worse still, exposing them to the risk of liability, possible fines and even brand damage,” Evans says.

Read more on discrimination