...HRM855 – The legal Environment | Bullying in the Workplace | The law, its implications, and the future | For: Bob Thompson | By: Anthony DeRose Mike MortonPerna CaputoSaralyn ManzanoTara Knight | 3/24/2015 | | Bullying in the workplace is a serious issue and more prevalent than ever. The University of Windsor’s Odette School of Business in 2011 found 40% of Canadians experience one or more acts of workplace bullying a week. The Canadian Safety Council reports that 75% of victims quit (CBC News). Not only does workplace bullying have serious negative consequences for an individual’s career, it can have a devastating impact on mental and physical health. The damages associated with bullying are exemplified in the following. The legislation in Canada that protects workers from bullying is in its infancy. It does not use the term bullying at any point. Victims of bullying can receive remediation through the common law and statutes. However, as Human Resources Professionals it is our legislated duty to provide safe workplaces for the employees we manage. Additionally, our responsibility is to mitigate the costs of litigation posed by bullying. Proactive HR policies that emphasize education and open communication, combined with legislation that deters this negative pattern of behaviour will help to minimize this risk and associated expenses. ------------------------------------------------- What is workplace bullying? According to the Canadian Centre for Occupational...
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...Canada is a great country and we have many good things here. There is also a huge void and as grade 9’s we need to get the message across to others - meaning no more racism, bullying, and gender equality. We need to have love, tolerance and respect for each other. We can make the choice to end these issues and make Canada even better! Racism has been going on forever! We need to stop hurting people just because of their color, heritage or beliefs. Immigrants are in constant fear of being the target of a hate crime. Global News reported that “The number of police-reported hate crimes targeting Muslim-Canadians more than doubled over a three-year period.” The hate crime rate across Canada is 3.7 per 100,000 people. Ontario has the highest...
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...analyze the detriments and implications of a workplace tainted with harassment issues, as well as to provide recommendations to assist organizations on how to avoid legal liability regarding harassment claims and how to achieve a harassment-free work environment. Drawing on scholarly sources, the report identifies three forms of harassment, which are bullying, sexual and racial harassment. It examines the differences in people’s perception of harassment in general as well as the factors influencing individuals’ experience of it. The report describes the risks for businesses experiencing harassment in the workplace; it examines the negative effects they can have on organizational environment, and its impacts on the organizations’ professional image. The findings of this report suggest that organizations can prevent and resolve harassment in the workplace by improving leadership and communication among employees, and by implementing and enforcing a clear and effective anti-harassment policy. The recommendations made in this report are to: * Provide basic guidelines on how to create and enforce effective human rights policies in organizations * Provide the necessary elements an effective anti-harassment policy should have * Provide adequate training and education programs for everyone at the organization INTRODUCTION Over the last years, there has been a rising concern over the issue of harassment in the workplace. Despite some employees may ignore or find...
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...Social Actions on bullying A social problem is any certain condition or a group of events that causes public attention/troublesome situation, and requires a change for the betterment of the society and the individuals affected by it. Human beings face plenty of issues in their lives and not all of them become social problems. The construction of social problem highlights how the society defines to be the appropriate way to do things. The critical thinking model has been used to analyze today’s social issue “Bullying”. What is critical thinking? Basic critical thinking is inquiring the nature of the issue using problem solving skills. It involves maximizing and minimizing parts of the social problem, keeping in mind its’ importance. Changes are required as action plans and hence they need to be clearly identified. What is bullying? Bullying is any kind of unwanted behaviour where an individual mistreats anyone to a point such that his/her personal or mental stability gets in risk. These situations affect directly the victim and the witnesses, it´s existence and lack of attention affects the human rights of the principal victim and the witnesses. Who defines bullying? Bullying can be defined in many different ways depending on the nature of bullying. Bullying can be done in various numbers of ways: i. One-on-One, where the stronger individual has the upper-hold of the weaker one. ii. A group of people bullying a single individual. iii. A superior group of people...
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...About Workplace Conflict The Cost of Conflict Conflict is defined as a difference of wants, needs, or expectations. The workplace is filled with people who have differences of wants, needs, and expectations. So, of course, conflicts will occur. These conflicts can be an asset to the organization. They may be opportunities for creativity, collaboration, and improvement. But conflict can also be costly to an organization. The trouble isn't necessarily the fact that conflict exists. It's how we deal with those conflicts or what happens when they aren't resolved. The impact of conflict in the workplace can be devastating - to the parties involved, to colleagues and teams, to clients, and to the business as a whole. Some of the results of unresolved conflict in the workplace include: * Stress, frustration, and anxiety * Loss of sleep * Strained relationships * Grievances and litigation * Presenteeism * Employee turnover * Loss of productivity * Increased client complaints * Absenteeism * Sabotage * Injury and accidents * Disability claims * Sick leave These symptoms of unresolved conflict are a significant cost factor in organizations. Take a look at some of the facts and figures below. How much is conflict costing your organization? Mental Health / Stress "Unresolved conflict represents the largest reducible cost in many businesses, yet it remains largely unrecognized." (Dana, Daniel (1999). Measuring the Financial Cost of...
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...Workplace bullying and union involvement Introduction Bullying is all around us. We’ve seen it on the school playgrounds as children all the way through to the companies which we are employed. I’m sure at some point in our lives we ourselves have fallen victim to bullying or have even the person doing the bullying. Unfortunately, bullying is an increasing problem within the organization. To date, there are approximately 54 million people out there who have been victims to workplace bullying; of which, 45 percent suffer from various health problems due to stress and 40 percent were either fired because their work productivity diminished or they eventually quit because they couldn’t handle it anymore (Bennett-Alexander, 2012). Since bullying is such a common offense, it is often difficult to detect. This briefing will provide information about the problem, guidance on how to tackle it before it gets out of control, and what to include in an effective prevention policy and how to put it into action. What is bullying? The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) classified workplace bullying not only as a form of harassment; they also gave bullying its own category under their definition of workplace violence (“Workplace violence”, n.d.). If not dealt with immediately, the bullying has the potential to lead into something more severe or fatal. Bullying is not just an employment problem; it’s an issue of power and feeling dominant. It can also raise...
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...A White Paper from the Society for Human Resource Management BULLIES IN THE WORKPLACE: A FOCUS ON THE “ABUSIVE DISRESPECT” OF EMPLOYEES By Teresa A. Daniel “Bullying is the sexual harassment of 20 years ago; everybody knows about it, but nobody wants to admit it”. —Lewis Maltby (Russell, 2001) The purpose of this paper is to review the current research and literature about workplace bullying, to provide information about how organizations can learn to more quickly identify bullies and to suggest ways of dealing with these toxic people so that the corporate culture is not negatively impacted by their behavior. Overview To be successful, organizations must create an atmosphere that inspires both innovation and risk-taking. In an increasingly competitive global economy, such innovation is more important than ever before (Hamel, 2000). However, not only does workplace bullying stifle productivity and innovative practices, but bullies often target the organization’s most talented employees—those individuals who are generally the most threatening to bullies (McCord & Richardson, 2001). As a result, the creativity and productivity of the organization’s most talented human capital is often negatively affected by this type of behavior at work or, worse yet, good employees are driven out of the company altogether. Bullies are often hard to identify because they operate “under cover”—that is, on the surface they appear to be civil and cooperative, while they do ...
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...York University Liberal Arts & Professional Studies Workplace Violence in Healthcare By: Alyssa Mohammad - 210477172 Colleen Duncan-Reid - 209503145 Fifame Sonou - 208122467 Manjot Singh - 210688679 Course: HRM 3470 - Recruitment, Selection, and Performance Appraisal of Personnel Instructor: Dr. Souha R. Ezzedeen Date of Submission: Thursday, November 25, 2010 An emerging health and safety issue in today’s organizations which has detrimental effects on employees as well as employers is workplace violence. This type of violence can be physical or verbal assault. Healthcare organizations recognize that there is a potential for four types of violence. The most common of these four types is client or patient. This occurs when the patient, a visitor or family of a patient is violent towards workers or another patient. Type two is criminal intent which occurs when the perpetrator has no relationship to the workplace. Type three is worker-to-worker. This often includes the perpetrator either employed or previously employed by the organization. Type four which is often not recognized by employers is personal relationship violence (PRV). This type raises the issue of domestic violence in the workplace. The perpetrator has a personal relationship with an employee or a client and is trying to intimidate/hurt the victim through the use of physical force, verbal harassment or manipulation (financial or emotional) in order to maintain control over the...
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...You are an HR practitioner in a medium-sized company that will soon be hiring 20 summer interns. You have been directed to provide a 1500-word briefing for all line managers outlining the legal obligations that your company has to these new employees. Write a memo that outlines the most important legal requirement that managers must know about when hiring and managing these employees. You may wish to make specific reference to your jurisdiction’s laws addressing employment standards, occupational health and safety, and human rights. * Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act * Managers must make sure that they comply with this act’s ten principles in regard to maintaining the standards for privacy. According to this act, the human resource department and the company are responsible for safeguarding the privacy of employees. According to this Act, employer can barely keep anything from an employee. Employers are allowed to gather information about employees such as performance, attendance, and possibility of advancement. * Employee Standards Legislation: * There are minimum standards that employers are required to meet * Human rights employment standards in Ontario: * Protects people in Ontario from employment discrimination * The protected grounds of discrimination in employment in Ontario are: race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion or religious creed, age (18 and over), sex (including...
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...almost everyone have their own Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and Blogs account. Nowadays social media is becoming increasingly popular; a survey (SilkRoad Technologies, 2012) shows 75% of employees logged social media while at work at least once a day, with 60% accessing multiple times. The report also pointed out that most of companies have not develop clear guidelines and policy for using social media in workplace, only less than 10 % offering social media training to their staffs. The workplace should not prohibit the use of social media sites? Some people said it should be but some ones said should not. Each has their own justifications, it is benevolent see benevolence and the wise see wisdom. Whether employers permit or not, to develop a set of the company’s social media policy is a must. Although, Singapore Airlines (SIA) have guidelines stating that all employees must not posted confidential business information or tweeted about a colleague, but the rule is usually not strongly enforced. Social media is not easy to manage in the workplace, based on historical experience cyber bullying, harassment, discrimination and victimization are constantly recurring in between colleagues, similar incidents have also occurred in the Singapore Airlines (SIA). Therefore, in order to design an effective social media policy of the organization, first must consider and resolve a number of important issues. 1. Aware of the danger areas where employees can potentially inappropriate use social...
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...Effects of Bullying Introduction Having been recognized as an expected yet serious problem in the society, bullying is no longer considered as new problem in the society. Bullying can come in various forms and it can happen to both children and adults. There is a high likelihood that most adults and children each have stories to share which relates to each of their personal experiences either of bullying, or victimization, or witnessing acts of aggression toward others. As perennial as it can get, becoming a victim of bullies has often received the notion of being viewed as a normal part of growing up, or as some have put it, a rite of passage for children and adolescents. In the late 1970s, perspectives began to change as this outlook was looked into by the different researches. It sheds new light on the damaging effects on youths’ growth and development with respect to bullying and victimization. An increase in the awareness of bullying and victimization as well as how it resulted to be a widespread societal problem has been the initial outcome of the innovative research which has encouraged other research on this phenomenon. The beginnings of research on this social issue have been primarily conducted in Sweden and other Scandinavian countries for a number of years. As the research has been shared with other experts the world over, it resulted to the spawning of the exploration on this topic and has reached other countries, including Japan, England, Netherlands,...
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...High levels of stress currently affect the Canadian work force. We will explore a contrast between Great Britain’s and Canada’s workplace causes of stress and industries that provide most stress within the two nations. We will also identify some Canadian companies strategies to assist their employees with managing stress. Throughout this research it will become evident the importance of taking responsibility for managing stress to maintain a healthy work life balance. It is also important to recognize the impact of advancement in communication tools and their positive and negative impact towards work related stress. Different cultures and nations can experience similar stressors but also have unique stress contributing factors and industries. Employee stress in Great Britain and Canada According to the Health and Safety Executive (Buckley, 2013, p. 6-7), Great Britain has a total of 10.4 million working days lost between 2011 and 2012, as compared to Canada of 100 million in 2010 alone (Langton, N., & Robbins, S.P. & Judge, T., 2013, p. 122-129). Data shows the main stressors in Great Britain are workload, lack of managerial support, and violence/bullying (Buckley, 2013, p. 6-7). Canadians tend to stress over job security, technological change, workload, managerial/co-worker support and personal life balance (textbook). When comparing this data, the Canadian workforce appear to struggle with more stressors, one key cause is personal life affecting work life and vice versa...
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...navigation, search Bullying is detrimental to students’ well-being and development.[1] Bullying is a form of aggressive behavior manifested by the use of force or coercion to affect others, particularly when the behavior is habitual and involves an imbalance of power. It can include verbal harassment, physical assault or coercion and may be directed repeatedly towards particular victims, perhaps on grounds of race, religion, gender, sexuality, or ability.[2][3] The "imbalance of power" may be social power and/or physical power. The victim of bullying is sometimes referred to as a "target". Bullying consists of three basic types of abuse – emotional, verbal, and physical. It typically involves subtle methods of coercion such as intimidation. Bullying can be defined in many different ways. The UK currently has no legal definition of bullying,[4] while some U.S. states have laws against it.[5] Bullying ranges from simple one-on-one bullying to more complex bullying in which the bully may have one or more 'lieutenants' who may seem to be willing to assist the primary bully in his or her bullying activities. Bullying in school and the workplace is also referred to as peer abuse.[6] Robert W. Fuller has analyzed bullying in the context of rankism. Bullying can occur in any context in which human beings interact with each other. This includes school, church, family, the workplace, home, and neighborhoods. It is even a common push factor in migration. Bullying can exist between social...
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...C H A P T E R 7 Work-Related Stress and Stress Management Learning Objectives AFTER READING THIS CHAPTER , YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO : I Define stress and describe the stress experience. I Outline the stress process from stressors to consequences. I Identify the different types of stressors in the workplace. I Explain why a stressor might produce different stress levels in two people. I Discuss the physiological, psychological, and behavioural effects of stress. I Identify five ways to manage workplace stress. S ylvia Noreen thought that working at a small hospital in Prince Edward Island would reduce the stress she had experienced as a nurse in Ontario for 17 years. Instead, she discovered that Stewart Memorial Hospital nurses in Tyne Valley also experience unacceptable stress levels due to budget cuts and staff shortages. “There can be a lot of demands made on you,” says Noreen. “The workload can get quite strenuous at times.” With no vacations during her first year at Stewart, Noreen’s scheduled days off were precious time to recharge her batteries. Unfortunately, those moments were fewer than she had hoped. “We’re faced with being called back on our days off,” Noreen says. “It is trying at times.” Canadian nurses and other health care workers are feeling some of the highest levels of stress and burnout of any occupation across the country. With Montreal-area emergency rooms filled to 167 percent, nurses at St. Luc Hospital in Montreal recently...
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...Bullying is the use of force, threat, or coercion to abuse, intimidate, or aggressively impose domination over others. The behavior is often repeated and habitual. One essential prerequisite is the perception, by the bully or by others, of an imbalance of social or physical power. Behaviors used to assert such domination can include verbal harassment or threat, physical assault or coercion, and such acts may be directed repeatedly towards particular targets. Justifications and rationalizations for such behavior sometimes include differences of class, race, religion, gender, sexuality, appearance, behavior, strength, size or ability. If bullying is done by a group, it is called mobbing. "Targets" of bullying are also sometimes referred to as "victims" of bullying. Bullying can be defined in many different ways. The UK currently has no legal definition of bullying, while some U.S. states, including Oklahoma have laws against it. Bullying consists of four basic types of abuse - emotional, verbal, physical, and cyber. It typically involves subtle methods of coercion such as intimidation. Bullying has become such a problem in many places. How can we solve this problem? Bullying ranges from simple one-on-one bullying to more complex bullying in which the bully may have one or more "lieutenants" who may seem to be willing to assist the primary bully in his or her bullying activities. Bullying in school and the workplace is also referred to as peer abuse. Robert W. Fuller has analyzed...
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