More than one in three Western Australian workers believe that bullying exists in their workplace, and two in three perceive their workplace to have significant pockets of negativity.
More than one in three Western Australian workers believe that bullying exists in their workplace, and two in three perceive their workplace to have significant pockets of negativity.
A survey of almost 1,000 members of the WA business community undertaken earlier this year by the Australian Institute of Management in Western Australia (AIM), in conjunction with Perception Mapping (PM), looked into how positively or negatively people viewed their work environments and themselves.
Deputy executive director of AIM Shaun Ridley said that, considering best practice dictated no-one should suffer from bullying in the workplace, the findings were met with concern, but limited surprise.
“It is clear that a reduction in bullying would improve organisational performance quite considerable,” he said.
“Bullying is almost a taboo subject within workplaces, but we hope our study’s findings raise awareness and encourage action to eliminate bullying.”
The research was prompted by a growing interest by AIM and PM in the need for heightened community attention on the issue of mental stress and its impact on the business sector.
As a result of these concerns, AIM and PM have formed Positive Workplace Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation to help implement positive workplace practices.
The foundation’s executive director, Leigh Farnell, said the research findings reiterated the need for strong and proactive support structures.
“Positive workplaces outperform negative and toxic workplaces by 200 to 500 per cent,” Mr Farnell said.
The survey found that almost one in five workers is unhappy in their work, and while the survey sample was generally positive about personal and work lives, large numbers of those surveyed indicated they suffer from tiredness, and believe they make mistakes in their work.
The research also showed a small but concerning group that suffers from consistently poor sleep and tiredness.
These findings were steady across all demographics, and match international data suggesting the pace of modern working life is leaving its mark on some.
Mr Farnell said a small number of de-motivated people could have a dramatic effect in de-motivating others, with self-evident implications on an organisation’s bottom line.
One quarter of the business community surveyed feel worthless at least some of the time, and one in seven (or 4 per cent of the total sample) feel this way often or always. Of equal concern was that 41 per cent of the sample felt they did not have much of a future, at least sometimes.