Queensland Law Society Symposium 26 March 2010
Anne Wyatt Rebecca Michalak
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What is ‘unacceptable workplace behaviour’?
Common types & differences between types What workplace bullying is not Current data on behaviour in legal profession Factors affecting incidence Target responses Organizational and individual outcomes / costs Prevention and management Where to go to for further information 
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Bullying?
Sexual Harassment?
Discrimination?
Violence?
Mistreatment?
Incivility?
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Repeated, unreasonable behaviours
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Causing, or with the potential to cause harm
 Ongoing humiliating, offending, intimidating or hostile behaviour, which occurs repeatedly over a period of time where the victim has difficulties defending themselves, most often due to a power imbalance of some sort between victim and bully.
 Mobbing, a specific form of bullying, is usually undertaken by a group of people, rather than one perpetrator, where the overriding intent is to force the victim to leave the organisation.
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Threat to professional status, threat to personal standing, isolation, overwork & destabilization, e.g.
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Social and physical isolation
Setting people up to fail
Undue public criticism
Malicious gossip
Undermining
Claiming the work of others as one’s own
Allocating work beneath one’s skill level
Shifting goalposts or removing responsibility without consultation / reason
 Withholding necessary information / resources etc
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Three subtypes of behaviour:
 Gender harassment – Broad range of verbal and nonverbal behaviours not aimed at sexual cooperation but that convey insulting, hostile and degrading attitudes about women / men.
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 Unwanted sexual attention – Wide range of verbal and non verbal behaviour of a sexual nature that is offensive, unwanted and unreciprocated by the victim.
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 Sexual coercion – the extortion of sexual cooperation in return for job related considerations – may be considered a form of ‘blackmail’.
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A range of verbal and nonverbal abusive behavior intended to intimidate, humiliate, obstruct, and undermine the victim.  Verbal abuse  Work obstruction  Emotional neglect
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“Precursor” to bullying (no temporal requirement)
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Low intensity behaviour in violation of workplace norms for respect, which may or may not be intended to harm the target. 
Uncivil behaviours are characteristically rude and discourteous, displaying a lack of regard for others.
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Illegal or legal?
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EEO, Anti‐discrimination, IR & OHS legislation
 E.g. Naidu versus Group 4 Securities case
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Australia is behind US / Europe in legislating
 http://www.crvawc.ca/documents/Bill%20168.pdf
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Industry / Organisational Professional Codes of Conduct starting to include clauses on this front 
E.g. Occupational Health Safety and Welfare Act 1986 – Section 55A
 Reasonable managerial actions for example performance management, justified decisions e.g. re promotion, disciplinary procedures for proven misconduct, managed re‐structuring conducted in consultation with employees.
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One off / infrequent events
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False positive / false negatives
THE LEGAL PROFESSION
“(Firm X) have a very bad culture within the firm and it had a lot of workplace bullying. Others had horrible things happen to them as well. One guy –
he’s (‘x’ tall), but the guy who’s a (position) in his department – a different one – used to throw the files at him. I mean, at (Firm X) it was allowed. HR and the partners just allowed this bullying behaviour, and still do from what I understand.”
“I have recently changed jobs. The answers I would have given when employed in private practice would have been substantially different.”
“While I enjoy my job a great deal, the workplace behaviour which is condoned at law firms is frequently appalling. This survey is really welcome.”
“The thing is law firms, egos get in the way, and Partners often have very poor management skills. They often have very poor people skills. It’s a very adversarial culture. …… I think it’s almost one of the worst places to work is a law firm. I can see why lawyers drink. They all drink far too much.”
“ I’ve worked in (Country X), (Country Y) and now Brisbane, okay. And I actually think Brisbane is one of the worst places in terms of law firms, in terms of how they behave to women, and behave just to their staff generally. And I just think that it’s just a horrible culture that exists for the law firms and I just think something has to change. I don’t know if it ever will. It just seems so ingrained.”
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Frequency of mistreatment – “Often / Always”
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Verbal abuse up to 10.9%
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Work obstruction up to 17.7%
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Failed to get you the resources / support you needed to do your job – 17.7%
Ignored your requests for information – 12.7%
Emotional neglect up to 26%
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Criticized you without good reason – 8.4%
Spoke to you in a cold, harsh tone of voice – 10.9%
Failed to praise you when you deserved praise – 26%
Gave you negative feedback that was unwarranted or destructive – 16.8%
Failed to publicly credit you for work or other accomplishments ‐ 19.4%
Overall, 69% of respondents experienced enough to progress through all sections in survey
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Frequency of incivility – “Often / Always”
Ignored or excluded you from professional camaraderie – 10.9%
Doubted your judgment on a matter over which you have responsibility –
5.6%  Addressed you in unprofessional terms, either publicly or privately – 6.6%
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Frequency of interpersonal deviance ‐ “Often / Always”
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Acted rudely towards you – 7.4%
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Incidence of bullying – “Weekly / daily” (up to 15%)
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Threat to professional status
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Threat to personal standing
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“Freezed” you out, ignored or excluded you– 8.4%
Withheld necessary information – 4.6%
Overwork
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Used destructive innuendo or sarcasm – 2.8%
Isolation
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Engaged in unjustified and persistent criticism or monitoring of your work ‐ 8.4%
Placed undue pressure on you to produce work – 10.2%
Set impossible deadlines – 6.5%
Destabilization
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Constantly undervalued you – 15%
Shifted goal posts without telling you ‐ 5.6%
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Frequency of sexual harassment – “Often / Always”
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Gender harassment
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Unwanted sexual attention
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Told you suggestive stories – 4.7%
Made crude sexual remarks– 4.7%
Attempted to discuss sex 3.7%
Sexual coercion
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Made it necessary to cooperate with them to be well treated – 4.7%
Made you afraid of poor treatment if you did not cooperate – 3.7%
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Male (71.6%)
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Older than target (81.5%)
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Position
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Equity Partner (or equivalent): 59%
Salaried Partner (or equivalent): 8%
Administrative / Shared Services Managerial: 8%
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Organizational variables influencing incidence
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Laissez‐faire leadership – Positive, r = 0.31**
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Formalisation – Negative, r = ‐ 0.40**
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Power – Positive, r = 0.33**
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Ethical climate – Negative, r = ‐ 0.44**
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Organisational change – NS (different to bullying)
Percentage of targets exiting and reporting
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Overall, emotion ‐ focused coping is more common than problem ‐ focused coping
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Most common response was social support seeking
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Venting (type of social support seeking)
“Yeah I mean please, I’m the best whinger of all time. You know, I told everyone, I’m sure I told the clerk at the grocery store that I was miserable about my boss. Yeah, I told a lot of people.”
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Targets more likely to leave than report “We left (the employer) in less than two months. I was planning my resignation. I used to talk to the other guy which was the younger guy. And we were saying, “Oh shit, who will resign first?”
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Why do targets not report it?
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Deterrents to reporting
 Fear of no action and / or negative consequences
 HR only there to serve / protect the employer, not employees
 “Culture of silence” (e.g. QH and Patel Inquiry)
“You just don’t. It’s just…You just wouldn’t do. You’d try and deal with it yourself. ….. And you’re frowned upon by your peers if you start doing that sort of stuff. There’s guys that do it and they’re like, no one talks to them. You just get ostracized….. And I didn’t want that, so you just sort of shut your face and just get on with it”.
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Against perpetrator (4.9% Often / Always)
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Tit for tat spiral Conflict escalation cycle, may end up “Going postal”
“I just played it, I played like a ping pong game of tennis. That’s what I did in the end. If she was nice, I’d be nice. If she wasn’t, I wouldn’t. I just played her game.”
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Against others (6.1% Often / Always)
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Let off steam at others at work
Displaced tit for tat spiral : A – B, B – C, C ‐ D
Bully – Victim
Infectious
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Against organisation (3.7% Often / Always)
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Deliberate withdrawal of effort (as opposed to neglect)
“Sickies”
Sabotage (e.g. client relationships, the “Pineapple” story)
“It’s been part of my, I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t part of my own form of retaliation because um, I’ve already bought the CEO a very nice card. Very nice, it’s not horrible, but um, I’ll send him that, um, and say thanks very much for the, you know, the step up to get to the position where I was and um, without what you’ve done to me I would never be where I am today and here’s my company folder and this is why you’ve just lost 10 contracts.”
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Psychological wellbeing – Negative, r = 0.26**
 NB Low score on this measure is indicative of high wellbeing
 Subclinical and clinical mental health issues, e.g. depression and anxiety disorders
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Health wellbeing – Negative, r = ‐0.21*
 Translates into absenteeism
 Positive relationship between work stressors and recreational drug use / substance abuse. 
Witnesses / teams also vicariously impacted
 Observers of bullying reported higher levels of general stress and psychological stress than non‐observers
 Observers of uncivil and sexually harassing behaviour suffer lower psychological well‐being and job satisfaction
 Positive relationship between ambient sexual harassment, and relationship and task conflict  Ambient sexual hostility (negative, explicitly sexual verbal comments and insults) is negatively related to team cohesion and
team financial performance.
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Job satisfaction – Negative, r = ‐0.61** (!!)
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Commitment – Negative, r = ‐0.22*
 For work obstruction only
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Citizenship behaviour – Direct effects are NS
 Affected through JS (attitudinal moderator), r = 0.24*
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And don’t forget EXIT / RETALIATION
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Was your job satisfaction impacted?
Oh yes, definitely. In what way? It went from high to low, definitely.
And what about commitment to the organisation?
There was none. None?
No.
Was there commitment before that?
Oh yes, absolutely. But when I saw that when I took very valid concerns to the Partner and then to HR and nothing was done I thought well, it’s a two way thing you know.
PREVENTION / MANAGEMENT
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Primary
 Commitment from employer / resourcing
 Inclusion in risk management program
 Development of policy & procedures in consultation with staff
 Link to other policies and procedures e.g. Code of Conduct. 
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Complaints procedure, Respect Charter
Include in selection criteria
Include in performance criteria / core competencies
Training / induction / information provision
Data collection e.g. surveys, early reporting and intervention
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Secondary ‐ “Damage control”
 Individual level e.g. formal and informal reporting, grievance procedures, counselling, suspension  Group / Team / Departmental level e.g. investigation, discipline, coaching, team building & facilitated moving forwards
 Organisational levels e.g. external investigation
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Tertiary Prevention
 Rehabilitation of individuals (target and perpetrator)
 Implementation of recommendations (e.g. from enquiries)
 Monitoring  Continuous improvement
 Changes to organisation and its image
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Workplace Health and Safety, Queensland
Anti Discrimination Commission, Queensland
IR / ER lawyers
Fair Work Ombudsman
QLS EAP (for support / advice)
HR Consultants
www.beyondbullying.com.au
Employee theft ‐ $200 billion. Stealing software ‐ $10 billion. Lost productivity from substance abuse ‐ $200 billion. Every workplace violence claim ‐ $250,000. The destructive effect of mistreatment on the individual victim? Priceless.
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As practice managers, it is your role to ensure you address any unacceptable behaviour
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Be aware of your own behaviour
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Work with your HR / IR staff and experts on prevention and management
QUESTIONS?
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Anne Wyatt  ajwyatt@eftel.net.au
 M : 0414 511 596
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Rebecca Michalak
 Rebecca.michalak@apma.com.au
 R.michalak@business.uq.edu.au  M : 0400 720 752
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A : It doesn’t really matter. Perception can still cause issues…. E.g.  Anorexia ▪ Individual believes themselves to be “fat”, but reality / fact is they are not.  Psychological Impotence
▪ Individual believes they “can’t perform”, leads to anxiety, leads to impotence, when reality / fact is there is no physical reason why they would not be able “to perform”.
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Most targets should just take a cement pill…….  FALSE : Inconsistent results in target research
“For me personally last year would have been a ten. It really, really stuffed my life up. ….And it’s taken me a lot of effort to get back up mentally as well from back to where I’m confident again. So yeah, it’s probably at the moment, probably been the worst thing that’s happened to me in my life so far. I can’t think of anything worse. And I’ve done multiple fatals. I’ve done cot deaths and things like that, and they’re terrible, terrible things, but they’re things that I’ve dealt with quite easily. But this has torn me apart. It has just destroyed me. Although it was over a long period of time, it definitely destroyed me”.