According to statistics 9.5% of the Australian workforce changed their employer or the business they operated in the year to February 2022. This is the highest annual turnover rate since 2012, and it represents a 7.5% increase compared to February 2021. This is what the great resignation was referring to. We all knew that coming out of Covid it would be tough for a whole host of reasons; keeping and finding good employees is one of those reasons. I’ve heard stories of people being offered a financial incentive to stay in their current role and I’ve also heard about people who have moved jobs for a substantial increase in take-home money. Perhaps you were one of them? As we see workplaces returning to business as usual, there is also a pressure on recruiting staff and headcount and it’s having a disastrous impact on mental health.
Increasingly I am starting to see capable, confident, conscientious employees seek out counselling for workplace bullying. They took advantage of the job market, only to land in an organisation that is severely under-staffed, and managers are overstretched and stressed out leading to bullying by managers or team members within six months of arriving. In one particular case, the team is missing 5 people that they have been unable to replace through external recruitment for more than 6 months.
What is workplace bullying?
According to SafeWork Australia, workplace bullying is ‘repeated unreasonable behaviour by an individual towards a worker or group of workers that creates a risk to health and safety.’ Workplace bullying can include verbal abuse, offense conduct, intimidation or assault. It can cause employees both physical injuries and mental anguish.
If it hasn’t happened to you, don’t think you will escape it as it is more prevalent than ever. According to research by Beyond Blue, almost 50% of all Australians will experience bullying in some form at work.
Often, by the time the person picks up the phone to speak to a counsellor, the situation has deteriorated to a point where it’s not easy to resolve the conflict especially in small workplaces. You may even have made attempts to resolve the conflict by yourself without much success. If that’s you, you could be considering a mediated discussion including HR, in an effort to resolve the situation. If this your situation you are very brave and in a very vulnerable position, as are your colleagues.
The human cost of workplace bullying?
Bullying affects more than just you and the perpetrator. It affects everyone around you as well, from colleagues who witness this bad behaviour, to the manager who is perplexed by the accusation, through to your partners who watch their loved ones spiral into sleeplessness and workplace anxiety, and your children who watch their parents’ growing anger and despair. Up to 25% of targets of long-term bullying have even been reported to have considered suicide.
The organisational cost of workplace bullying?
Workplace bullying can lead to high absenteeism and employee turnover, low productivity and morale, and damage a company’s reputation. In some instances, the bullying can prompt lawsuits and workers’ compensation claims.
Research by Western Sydney University shows bullying costs Australian workplaces between $ 6 -36 billion each year through direct and indirect costs. The financial costs are possibly even higher as it’s based on reported cases as opposed to those which go unreported each year
How to do due diligence to determine workplace culture
It can be easy to get bowled over by the brand that you’re interviewing with and the amount of perceived effort they are going to, to have you join them. Never mind what they are prepared to pay you! This may or may not be a sign or what is to come. In an effort to avoid ‘accepting in haste and repenting at leisure’, I encourage you to consider asking some pointed questions because choosing to leave where you are and to join a new organisation is a big decision.
9 Questions to consider
Asking questions does not reflect badly on you. It shows that you are seriously considering the opportunity. Remember you are interviewing them as much as they are interviewing you. Here are some questions you can ask to learn more about where you are considering moving to.
- Find out why the position is open and how long it has been open for. This is an effort to find out what happened to the previous person or if this is a new role and what the likely handover might be. If it’s a new role, how does it fit into the strategy for the team, division or organisation.
- Ask what happened to the last person in the role or why it hasn’t been filled internally. This could be a big clue about internal career opportunities and potentially the team or hiring manager’s internal reputation.
- Ask about the team you’re joining and how they interact with one another. This is often instructive by how much or how little is shared with you. It shows how well the hiring manager knows the team. If it’s relevant ask about hybrid working and how you would be inducted in that setting. This will indicate the manager’s preference for task or relationship bias.
- Review the organisational chart and stakeholder maps. Find out where the team is positioned in the hierarchy and who is actually in the team and who has ‘dotted line’ responsibilities. As a part of this you could ask about the team’s reputation in the context of the organisation and/or industry.
- Ask about other vacant roles in the team. This is also a good time to determine any other vacant roles in the team and how recruitment is progressing for those roles. The stress of being under-staffed could lead to workplace bullying behaviour if team members are expected to pick up the slack.
- Ask about your manager’s and their manager’s leadership style. Make sure the leadership style you’re moving to is supportive of how you produce your best work. If your manager is too controlling or too hands-off, reactive or a planner, or a coach or a super techie, etc. then you need to decide what supports you’ll need in place or if you want to work with that person.
- Ask about the real culture. Ask everyone you meet how decisions are made, the company’s appetite for change, the intensity of the work, the politics, and the sophistication of the infrastructure. Don’t buy into the brand you see out in the public domain. Often working inside somewhere is quite different to the public persona.
- Ask to meet the team, if they make you an offer. You will want to meet some key stakeholders and team members before deciding if you’re going to join. This is a lovely opportunity for you to also determine if there are some allies amongst them. If you are inheriting a team, ask about the quality and your opportunity to rebuild it.
- Use your network. If you are seriously considering an offer, use your network to see if you can talk to people who have left the organisation you are considering joining or get some inside information from people who are currently in the organisation or work with the organisation. This helps you to make an informed decision about what you are stepping in to.
While it is an employee’s market at the moment, it may not always be the case. Changing jobs is something to seriously consider because in some cases, once you do your due diligence, it may be better to stay with what you know rather than leap unknowingly into another fire.
If you are considering a career change and struggling to decide what it needs to look like, or if you suspect workplace bullying and you’d like some strategies to deal with it, book in a confidential call with me and we can explore together how you can overcome your challenge and emerge more confident that before.
