Bullying is a major issue surrounding high school students, and many, if not all of us may have gone through it at some point in our lives. However if you thought that bullying stops after you complete high school then you are mistaken. Bullying can also take place within a working environment filled with �adults�, this �has led to laws being enforced in order to fight against workplace bullying.

What is workplace bullying?

Workplace bullying is defined as being a repeated and unreasonable attitude directed towards minority groups or individual workers through harassment and victimising. These actions tend to create work safety risks.

Fair work act

The fair works act of 2009 states that bullying claims can now be filed by anyone working or offering their services to the organisation, e.g trainees and volunteers. After receiving�a receipt of formal complaint, the organisation can either take care of the problem by itself or use external party�s such as the work safety and health regulator operating in your state. �The commission of fair work also has the right to deal out penalties reaching up to $30,000, additionally they can force the organisation to implement new policies to counter problems that may arise in the future.

The act now also allows workers to go directly to the commission in order to file this report, rather than waiting for the employer to do so, due to the �no cost� policy. An employer who has been accused of bullying can; in a reasonable time period take certain actions that would allow him to go on the defence . It is the employers job to ensure that all staff are taken car of appropriately to protect them against bullying.

How to prevent workplace bullying:

• Communicate and clarify the consequences of what will happen if there has been a report of bullying, use past events as an example�(withhold names). This will allow those who have been engaged in bullying to speak up.

• Create and introduce new policies that are effective in handling these situations in the workplace. The policy should indicate the meaning of workplace bullying and it�s examples in easy to understand terms. It should, and hopefully, include more than one way to handle bullying in a civilized manner.

• In this policy the process of handling various examples of bullying should be defined, this will allow the employees to be able to sort it out without having to file a report. If in case a report is filed, then the steps undertaken from then on should be specified in the new policy as well.

• The most important thing to consider when coming up with new policies is to ensure that equality is maintained, everyone should be treated as equals and no particular group of workers should be favoured over the other.

The effectiveness of your policy will depend on your employees, as each and everyone of them is different in more ways than one. As such the way an employer reacts to every complaint is very important, they should be quick to ensure the problem dissipates, however they must do this by following the laws and regulations set by the state.