Bullying

 March 17 – There are days when I think I am fortunate.

We had a senior management team meeting this morning – this being the new structure of which just East, AM and I are members. That said, my PA sits in to make minutes (and may contribute) and today East was on holiday and Office joined instead as we had issues of concern relating to her areas of work.

So, I was in a meeting with three women, all of whom I greatly like and admire, and all of whom (if I’m quite candid) I think are not just really attractive people, but are all really attractive women – their age range of over 25 years notwithstanding.

It’s fascinating to note largely female meetings (I am not, after all). They do work differently. The dynamic is more productive, the capacity to listen tends to be stronger, the intensity of jumping in too often abates when male egos aren’t clamouring for attention all the time. And some things get discussed that otherwise may not be.

Today it was clear that Office might have been there for one agenda item but there was desire to take opportunity of the meeting to do something more. The issue of bullying came up.

This is a sensitive one. There’s surely not a business in the country of any size where the problem doesn’t exist at some – after all, it does in every school.

Office and my PA are in many ways my eyes and ears in the business – feeding me information I would not otherwise get. They sued this meeting to do so. They think there is a problem with bullying in one of our divisions right now. They’re quite sure it is not the divisional manager doing it – but that there deputy is running a vendetta against a couple of staff whose lives are being made miserable as a result. They’re getting unfair work allocations, information too late, and passive aggressive behaviour which is uncalled for.

I thanked them. Second I agreed I would follow it up. I hate this sort of thing. But thirdly we agreed that we would have something we’ve not had before – a bullying policy. ACAS have good materials on this. We’ve decided to make them available – and nominate a person to whom information can be passed in confidence. Because she works in no department but is seen as having high status that is going to be my PA.

I hope it will work.

If it’s happening it’s overdue that we did it.