Individual/Organisational name: Kenneth Malcolm

Model Work Health and Safety Code of Practice Preventing and Responding to Workplace Bullying - Public Comment Response Form

Code or Guide

See Page 2 of the draft model Code of Practice
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Model Code of Practice – Preventing and Responding to Workplace Bullying

Chapter 1: Introduction
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Chapter 2: Preventing workplace bulling
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Chapter 3: Responding to Workplace bullying
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Chapter 4: Investigations
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General Comments
Including references to and describing “mobbing” would be extremely useful. Scandinavian actions on workplace violence tend to consider mobbing behaviour.
Anecdotally, as a safety consultant, the level of bullying and method of delivery has become more subtle than the “traditional” form of one on one intimidation. Mobbing is probably less risky as bullying behaviour to the bullies as it is difficult to completely discipline or identify culprits when they act in groups. As has often been reported, those who are bullied are more likely to be moved or terminated than those who bully. Bullying by a group or by enlisting a group to do your dirty work is the hallmark of the psycho or sociopath and quite devastating.
When I run courses on this behaviour, I describe the behaviour of magpies at a roadside where a group will attack an individual. It is instantly understood. This is a useful analogy for peer to peer bullying
In another sense you have a group of mongeese that swarm around a cobra. The constant quasi attacks put the cobra at such a disadvantage it will retreat. Again this is easily understood as being similar to upwardly focussed bullying in that attacks come from everywhere, are not in themselves actually that threatening but cumulatively quite distressing.

Workers Guide

A Worker s Guide to Managing Workplace Bullying
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