Bullying

Bullying

Workplace bullying is repeated and unreasonable behaviour against a worker or group of workers at work that creates a risk to health and safety. 

You can experience bullying from your supervisor, colleague or manager.

Examples of bullying include:

• nasty comments about your personality or appearance
  
• being teased, belittled or demeaned 
• inappropriate touching, including pushing and shoving
• being treated differently or unfairly to other staff
• being allocated inappropriate or unfair workloads and tasks
• being deliberately set impossible deadlines or workloads and set up to fail 
• being excluded from workplace activities.

In some cases, bullying can continue outside of the workplace, making it more pervasive.

Bullying can have a serious impact on your health and your ability to do your job. It can be harmful whether you are experiencing it or witnessing it and it impacts everyone differently. 

Bullying can also be discrimination if it is based on a person's background or personal characteristics, such as their gender identity, race, age, marital status, sexual orientation, disability, pregnancy, breastfeeding, intersex status, or carer's or family responsibilities. 

For more information, Discrimination at work.

If the bullying involves physical violence, threats of violence, or stalking or intimidation, it may be a criminal offence. 

Bullying online is also known as adult cyber abuse. 

For information about what to do if you are being bullied online instead of at work, see Adult cyber abuse on the eSafety Commissioner website.

Your employer's legal obligations

Your employer has a duty of care towards you and other workers to ensure your health and safety while you are at work.

Your employer must ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that you and other workers are not exposed to risks to your psychological or physical health in the workplace. This includes risks of harm from bullying. Where it is reasonably practicable, your employer must eliminate health and safety risks at work. If this is not possible, these risks must be minimised so far as is reasonably practicable.

If your employer doesn’t take all necessary steps to prevent bullying in the workplace, they may be breaching Work Health and Safety (WHS) laws.

For more information, see Understand your work health and safety responsibilities on the NSW Government website.

Reasonable management action

Reasonable management action refers to steps that your employer or manager can take when you are not doing your job well, to help you improve your performance at work, and address poor performance or behaviour.

Reasonable management action that is carried out in a reasonable manner is not bullying.

It may include:

• starting performance management processes
• taking disciplinary action for misconduct, including investigating alleged misconduct
• informing you about unsatisfactory work performance or inappropriate work behaviour
• asking you to perform reasonable duties in keeping with your job
• maintaining reasonable workplace goals and standards.

The way that your employer or manager takes these actions must be reasonable. If their actions are not carried out in a reasonable manner, their behaviour could still be considered bullying.

For more information, see Reasonable management action on the Fair Work Commission website.

Taking action against bullying

Bullying is against the law. If you are experiencing bullying, you may be able to:

• talk to the person involved directly, if safe to do so and you are comfortable with doing this
• speak with your manager or supervisor
• speak with the Human Resources team, if your workplace has one
• report the behaviour to your union, if you are a member
• report the behaviour to a Work Health and Safety Officer
• follow any policy that your workplace has in place for dealing with bullying
• apply for an anti-bullying order from the Fair Work Commission
• complain to SafeWork NSW
• if the bullying involves unlawful discrimination, complain to Anti-Discrimination New South Wales or the Australian Human Rights Commission
• speak to the police
  
• speak to your GP or counsellor
• apply for workers compensation
• make an insurance claim.

For more information, see Taking action against bullying.