It’s that time of year again. As 2012 begins to wind down, HR Acuity takes this time to reflect on issues surrounding employee relations and workplace investigations, and make preparations for the year ahead.
We’re now conducting our Fifth Annual Employee Relations & Workplace Investigation Survey, and this year’s topic is a hot one: bullying in the workplace.
According to Dr. Maureen Duffy, an HR consultant to large organizations and the author of Mobbing: Causes, Consequences, and Solutions, between 35 and 50% of workers have been bullied or otherwise abused in the workplace at some point in their careers. In the United States alone, an estimated $250 million is spent annually on expenses related to health care, litigation, staff turnover, re-training, and other issues arising from workplace bullying. HR Acuity is especially interested in the types of bullying that are taking place, and the steps organizations are taking to address incidents of bullying and prevent bad behavior in the workplace.
The opening of the survey follows on the heels of this year’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s (EEOC) Performance and Accountability Report, a new report that will be issued annually going forward as part of the EEOC’s new strategic plan. During fiscal year 2012, the EEOC recovered a record amount of money ($365.4 million in private sector administrative enforcement) for victims of discrimination. About 10 percent of this figure involved investigations of systemic charges of discrimination, four times the amount the agency obtained for these same charges in fiscal year 2011. In addition, 111,139 new discrimination cases were received in 2012, an increase of 11,192 (10%) over 2011. Clearly, it is in every organization’s best interest to have well-documented and consistently executed policies and procedures concerning employee compliance with established codes of conduct. Equally important, or perhaps even more so, is having standardized processes in place for conducting investigations into employee wrongdoing.
The survey is completely confidential and open to any organization that wishes to participate, regardless of size or industry sector. Your feedback is immensely important to us, as it will help us to identify organizational best practices and improve employee relations. We look forward to your responses so that we can report what organizations are doing (or are not doing) to address workplace bullying, which is unfortunately a behavior that’s being reported more and more frequently in the workplace.
After the survey closes in mid-January, the results will be analyzed and compiled into a report that will be distributed to survey participants and other interested parties.
Participant background data and survey responses are held in strictest confidence and maintained by HR Acuity. HR Acuity will never attribute any data derived from the survey to a specific company or organization when compiling and publishing survey results. HR Acuity does not use any survey data for marketing or solicitation purposes. Any participant who completes the survey and provides contact information will receive a complimentary copy of the survey findings and results.
