“We have fallen short”

Wednesday 20 June 2018

An independent hotline for States employees to report bullying is being set up after a damning report revealed a culture of harassment, intimidation and fear across all sectors of government.

HR Lounge consultants formed the conclusion after undertaking a £22,000 six-month review between November and February this year, involving surveys, focus groups and one-to-one interviews with staff, managers and trade union representatives.

Their findings were revealed by Express for the first time yesterday, following a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to release the previously confidential report into the public domain.

The 57-page document contained descriptions of employees being “shouted at”, “belittled” and gossiped about by senior staff. It also revealed that staff were fearful of reporting their experiences over concerns that doing so would be “career wrecking”, and alleged that some bullying investigations had not been impartial.

Pictured: “Controlling”, “empirical”, “overbearing”, “aggressive” and “micro-managing” - just some of the adjectives employees used to describe management staff throughout the course of the review.

HR Lounge subsequently made several “inexpensive or nil-cost” recommendations to help stamp out the issue. 

Responding to the report this morning, a States spokesperson said that the government acknowledged that it had not fulfilled its responsibilities as an employer.

“The 2017 report into bullying and harassment shows that we have fallen short and need to make improvements,” they said. 

Nonetheless, they stated that they were “committed to providing a safe, supportive and respectful work environment, where all employees feel valued.”

According to officials, the government is already on its way to implementing some of the report’s recommendations, with funds due to be allocated to draft new and “easy to use” policies. They declined to confirm the exact amount of additional funding and did not provide a timescale for the improvements to be implemented, however. 

Pictured: One of the States' improvements will involve creating an independent hotline for staff to report concerns.

They commented: “We are working to implement the recommendations from this report as part of the organisation-wide culture change that is underway. Some work has already been completed – for instance, unwritten complaints are now accepted, cases are now closed formally, support continues to be provided after complaints are resolved and there is help available for line managers during demanding cases. 

“We will focus on early informal resolution, with managers expected to take responsibility for dealing swiftly with issues as they arise… We will also introduce new measures to prevent bullying and harassment as part of the culture change work, using the successful work done at Health and Social Services as an example of how change can be introduced.

We are also establishing a new whistleblowing policy and independent hotline, and developing a new training programme and 14-day resolution process.”