Police workplace bullying claims
CLAIMS of a culture of workplace bullying are always concerning, but when the organisation involved is the police, they assume greater significance.
The police run the Kia Kaha programme in schools to enable pupils to ‘‘develop strategies for respectful relationships where bullying behaviours are not tolerated’’. If it is considered issues of bullying or online safety in schools need to be addressed more deeply, schools can introduce a schoolwide intervention in partnership with police.
But, if the police have not got their own act together on workplace bullying, this risks being seen as hypocritical.
Predictably, the police have damped down any suggestion there is a culture of workplace bullying, citing confusion with reporting bullying processes, in the wake of an RNZ investigation. They have acknowledged their Speak Up tool for reporting bullying and other codes of conduct issues does not seem to be working as it should and will be reexamined.
With Speak Up, when a complaint has been lodged and referred to a manager, the manager is supposed to identify any conflict of interest and if there is one, refer elsewhere.
Complainants interviewed by RNZ found this unsatisfactory. The reporting highlighted a case where a complaint about a manager was referred to the manager’s boss who then bullied the complainant too because the boss had appointed the manager being complained about.
A low point in the reports of bullying was that from three complainants who said superiors had tried to suggest their issues were connected with their menstrual cycles.
Even the head of human resources, or as the police cumbersomely call it, people and capability, seemed flabbergasted by that. The rest of us might have felt moved to check the calendar to ensure we had not been whisked back decades in the Tardis.
This sort of misogyny, even when the number of publicly reported complaints is not large, casts a shadow over police’s attempts in recent years to portray the organisation as a reformed character, teeming with inclusiveness and diversity. That may be how the police want to think they are, but perhaps they have much further to go than they have wanted to admit. The RNZ investigation also reports concerns about police protecting people in the socalled ‘‘boys’ club’’. Those outside the club have an increased risk of being bullied and less chance of being promoted. Maybe the Tardis has been cranked up again.
It was worrying to hear HR staff telling of being encouraged to downplay bullying and having to be ‘‘really creative’’ to reclassify complaints so the bullying word would not appear.
The RNZ investigation also raises issues about the Police Association’s attitude to member complainants, provoking the wider question about how well the public sector unions deal with bullying — whether they are properly recognising it and taking it seriously enough, and not falling into the trap of thinking the victim moving on is the convenient solution.
Some eyebrows were likely to be raised in local nursing circles recently when a retiring New Zealand Nurses Organisation organiser referred to only dealing with one ‘‘real issue’’ of bullying by a manager in her 16 years on the job, although she did concede nursing was well known for its ‘‘horizontal’’ bullying.
How well are these unions dealing with situations when both the alleged bully and the victim are their members, ensuring all are adequately and fairly represented?
Now the police are under the spotlight because of the RNZ investigation, there is opportunity for them to set a good example with a more rigorous and honest approach to bullying in the ranks.
They could heed the advice from one of their own schoolwide intervention reports: ‘‘To change the attitudes of the community, which have developed over a long period of time, will not be a quick fix. It will require regular consistent input to overcome these ingrained attitudes.’’