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A safe and productive workplace is essential for any organization. If an employee’s conduct contradicts your values, company policies, or the law, you must act immediately. Investigating the matter quickly limits potential risks and prevents further complications. Investigations are a vital tool for managing disruptive behavior. Whether the concern involves performance, misconduct, or competence, an … Read more

Workplace bullying is not a new problem. However, we now understand that it targets an employee’s identity, not just their work tasks. This makes it incredibly damaging. In the modern workplace, bullying takes many forms. It affects employees from all walks of life. This article explores what bullying looks like. It also explains how to … Read more

When a problem is reported in the workplace, Human Resources (HR) must step in. It is your job to figure out exactly what happened. To do this, you must conduct a methodical inquiry. Unless you are a sole trader, HR usually handles this process from start to finish. However, for complex or high-risk cases, many … Read more

When you receive a formal complaint, it is natural to feel blindsided. You might ask: “How could they think we are doing something wrong?” However, ignoring a complaint is dangerous. As a leader, you must determine if there is validity to what the person has told you. To do this effectively, you often need to … Read more

In today’s business world, reputation is everything. It takes years to build trust, but only one incident of unchecked misconduct to destroy it. Working effectively is challenging enough without the added stress of internal conflict. Yet, in any workplace, issues will arise. An employee might allege fraud, harassment, or safety breaches. If an employee makes … Read more

Gaslighting is a form of emotional manipulation where someone tries to make you question your own reality. While it is often discussed in the context of abusive relationships, it is dangerously common in the workplace. Gaslighting is subtle. Unlike overt bullying, it creeps up on you. A colleague or manager manipulates the truth to make … Read more

As Australian companies embrace the flexibility of remote work, the office landscape has changed permanently. For many, working from home offers a welcome reduction in commute times and petrol costs. However, this shift has introduced a new, often invisible challenge: remote workplace harassment (or cyber-bullying). Without the physical visibility of an office, toxic behaviour can … Read more

When individuals think of workplace bullying, images of high school often come to mind. You picture a group of “mean girls” or boys out to bring another employee down. While these cliques do exist in the corporate world, the reality is often more subtle and insidious. Understanding the difference between bullying, discrimination, and harassment is … Read more

Two forms of workplace violence are bullying and psychological violence. Both are types of workplace harassment. However, they have different characteristics and implications. There are some differences in the way these two phenomena operate in the workplace. Both involve an imbalance of power between the aggressor and their target, which can be seen in many … Read more

They say a happy workplace is productive. But what about the opposite? An unhappy workplace isn’t just “unproductive”—it is a liability. Toxic cultures breed silence, fear, and eventually, expensive legal claims. Workplace bullying is often subtle at first. It starts with a sarcastic comment or a withheld email. But if left unchecked, it can metastasize, … Read more