The Andrea Adams Consultancy

We have today launched a new ‘Resources’ page on the Andrea Adams website. We intend to add to this as the weeks and months go by. Please come back frequently and check for new additions.

The resources are downloadable free or at a nominal charge for both individuals experiencing workplace bullying and harassment and managers who are dealing with allegations of bullying and harassing behaviour.

The first items on the resources page will focus on individuals and provide advice and guidance about what to do if you are experiencing bullying and harassing behaviour. Since the Andrea Adams Trust closed in 2009 we have not been able to provide a helpline to support individuals on a one to one basis and in some small way wanted to do something to help the many people out there who we know are going through hell.

We were contacted by someone recently, herself a target of bullying and harassing behaviour. She asked what she could do to help the work we do. We suggested that she might like to write an article to go on the website about her experience together with some hints and tips about what helped her cope during her ordeal. ‘Alma’s Story’ is now online – her story, her words. We hope it will help some others out there who are looking for ways in which they can begin to address these awful workplace behaviours. Thank you ‘Alma’ for letting us publish your story. We know it will mean a lot to a great number of people.

We would be happy to receive other stories if you feel you have advice to give to help others.    

To read ‘Alma’s Story’ now – go to the resources page and click on the section for individuals.

Have you ever stopped to wonder, just how much bullying and harassing behaviours in the workplace cost in financial terms?

If we were dealing with fixed assets or capital, businesses would soon get interested if they saw they were haemorrhaging money. Human and organisational costs however rarely appear on any balance sheet. If they did, it would be quite a revelation and not a positive one at that.

The tribunal service is reporting a 52% rise in claims of bullying and harassment. Not all of these are genuine, in fact, a good proportion according to our legal counsel are not. However, it’s clear, employees are more aware of their rights, and it is more and more likely that workplace bullying and harassment will continue to secure a place on the  Tribunal ‘hot’ list  whether cases are genuinely brought or not.

For employers, without clear and robust systems and procedures to protect them from legal challenge, they may find themselves ill equipped to defend such claims. What of the need to promote healthy workplace cultures? Even without the dreaded Tribunal cases the business case really stacks up and it really is too costly to ignore.

In organisations where bullying and harassment thrive, these negative behaviours are either condoned or fly beneath the radar, because organisations do not have the infrastructure in place to detect and deter.  The first an organisation may know of the prevalence of bullying in their workplace might be when an ET1 comes in for constructive dismissal.

High turnover can be an indicator of negative workplace cultures and behaviour, amongst these bullying and harassment. Think about the cost of your human assets leaving your organisation, taking with them the skills, their knowledge without a backward glance. It isn’t just a case of replacing resources, like with like, it takes time to train and develop new employees to the level of the exiting team member. One HR metric which is quoted in terms of the ‘real cost of recruitment’ indicates that this is 1.5 x salary. So for every employee paid £20K your real cost of recruitment is £30K. If we really thought about our ‘human assets’ and their financial value to the organisation surely that’s the business imperative for doing something? Are we doing all in our power to make good employees want to stay in organisations?  We don’t often think of our employees in financial terms, beyond salary and associated tangible costs – but it might be an interesting exercise to actually do so and really start to put a figure on their worth and value to the organisation.

High absence can be another indicator of negative workplace culture. If you are being bullied or harassed in the workplace, sure enough you are not going to be motivated and productive – if you can face coming into work at all. The business case builds.

If organisations are not looking to take a clear stance on bullying and harassment in their workplaces – they tread a risky path. We can’t count the number of occasions where we have been asked to help organisations who suddenly realise they are exposed because of an incident which hits them like a curved ball. They weren’t looking for inappropriate behaviours so they didn’t see the warning signs.

Costs of investigations into grievances, management and HR time, hearings, potential costs of health and stress claims, difficulty in attracting necessary talent to your organisation, loosing good people, low morale, low productivity – all are bad for the bottom line.

Organisations sometimes fear the results of looking at this issue but the costs of doing nothing can be extremely high. Organisations need to have the courage to tackle workplace bullying and harassment, as only by examining the subject can they begin to deal with it.

Genuine cases of bullying and harassment come at a high personal and organisational cost – and the saddest thing of all – is it is entirely preventable.

Andrea Adams Consultancy has a history of raising awareness of workplace bullying and harassment through a unique programme of training and development interventions to help companies deal with bullying in the workplace.  We focus on prevention of bullying and harassment at work through training, awareness raising and a range of consultancy services.  Take a look at our newly refreshed website!  More to come…