Workplace Investigations

When an organisation receives a complaint from an employee alleging either bullying, harassment, sexual harassment or a complaint about another employee attending the workplace drug or alcohol effected it is crucial that organisations ensure that obligations of  procedural fairness and natural justice are met.

Our investigators are highly experienced and have the ability to conduct investigations into allegations of bullying, harassment, gross misconduct and high profile, sensitive or complex cases.

We understand that all complaints  need to be addressed urgently and we have the ability to meet this urgency.

What is workplace bullying?

There are hundreds of different definitions of workplace bullying or abuse, some far more complex than others.  We define bullying generally as a repeated pattern of unprovoked, unwelcome hostile behaviour that intentionally inflicts, or attempts to inflict, injury, hurt, humiliation or discomfort. *

What is psychological bullying?

Psychological bullying is abusive, intimidating behaviour that:

• intentionally inflicts humiliation or discomfort upon another person;
• is repeated and unprovoked;
• almost always occurs in a situation where there is an imbalance of power, for example, an employer or manager bullying a subordinate, but this type of bullying can also occur sideways between colleagues, or from below upwards, that is an employee bullying a manager;
• gets worse over time and is able to continue long-term because victims and witnesses are afraid to report or confront the bully, this could be they feel they will not be believed or are in fear of losing their job.

Psychological bullying behaviours include:

• verbal bullying, such as taunts, threats, name-calling, hurtful or crude personal remarks, malicious teasing, spreading lies or rumours; and
• undermining of performance and competence by subtle strategies such as isolation, humiliation, excessive supervision, sabotage of work, denial of leave, or intentional exclusion from the work group.

We at Sheila Freeman Consulting also understand that sometimes what appears to be bullying behaviour could in fact be a Manager that is totally unaware of his behaviour and this could be due to the lack of managerial skills.

*Bullying In the Workplace An Occupational Hazard by Richards and Freeman