The Health and Safety Authority will investigate reports of bullying in the workplace, a conference in Dublin was told yesterday. An authority member, Ms Mary Darlington, said the HSA had decided to look at the issue in depth this year.
"We consider bullying a health and safety issue," she said.
If employees complained to the HSA about being bullied at work "we will undertake to have a look at it".
Bullying caused sickness and absenteeism and had to be dealt with if we were to have the healthiest possible workforce, she said.
The conference, "Beating the Bullies", was organised by the Institute of Personnel and Development.
According to speakers, bullying at work included public humiliation, constant criticism, spreading rumours, isolating the victim and taking credit for the victim's work.
Victims of bullies had worked for an average of seven years before the bullying began, said Dr Mona O'Moore, of the Anti-Bullying Research and Resource Unit at Trinity College Dublin.
Victims tended to be persistent, hard-working people who held out until the strain on their psychological and physical health became intolerable.
Her research suggested that bullies had low self-esteem and envied their victims. This was also true of schoolyard bullies.
There was a strong link between aggression at the age of eight and aggression later in life, including crime, workplace bullying and domestic violence. "What is needed is a national intervention campaign to counter aggression at a very early age."
Mr Tim Field, a victim of workplace bullying in the UK three years ago, has since started a helpline which has received 2,400 calls, he told the conference.
Half the victims worked in the public sector, just under half in the private sector and about 5 per cent worked in voluntary organisations or were retired.
By and large they were popular and good at their jobs before the bullying began. But they also tended to be deferential.
Bullies made more than average use of disciplinary procedures including verbal and written warnings, and this was a pattern which should suggest to employers that they might have a bully in their midst.
The Employment Equality Bill, on its way through the Oireachtas, will ban bullying under nine discriminatory headings, the conference was told by Ms Fiona Tiernan of Resolve-Progressive Employment Services.
Examples of bullying behaviour were given to the conference by Mr Tony Moriarty of the Manufacturing, Science, Finance trade union. They included a woman with a bad back being instructed to carry out work which further damaged her back. When she was late for work her boss reprimanded her in front of her colleagues and forced her to apologise to them.