Why Anti-Bullying Policies Should Be Leading Indicators

To have a credible safety culture, management must be responsive to concerns of visible and hidden, verbal and non-verbal abusive conduct.

To earn credibility with employees, management must be responsive to a variety of workplace concerns.

One important worker concern is workplace bullying, or what Tennessee, California, and Utah laws refer to as “abusive conduct.”

The December 2019 issue of EHS Today covered many topics, including leading indicators, workplace violence and safety culture. Each of these is connected to an organization’s anti-bullying policies.

Many organizations do not have such policies. Some have policies but do not communicate or enforce them.

Contributing Editor David Sparkman wrote “OSHA Embraces Leading Indicators” and gave as much detail as anyone could put on a single page in the magazine. As I read about this interesting new strategy, I wondered whether OSHA and employers recognized an anti-bullying policy as a leading indicator.