Working Well Together Insights

A guarantee of maintaining confidentiality is a key element in successful workplace investigations whether completed internally or by an external party. It protects employees from retributive action, encourages participation, and creates confidence in a company or...

Have you noticed that in this modern world we never seem to be alone? Of course, we may be physically alone, but all around us we are connected to others more than ever through technology including social media and mobile messaging. Our social connection to others is...

Have you ever worked in a company or organisation where it resembled a battlefield more than a workplace? Where whispered conversations in the corridors, the kitchen or around the photocopier stop when management, the perceived enemy, walked in? Or team meetings were...

One of the many challenges that exist for organisations within health, community or social welfare based services are individual clients who use aggressive behaviours. Organisations within those sectors can have a tendency to dismiss the behaviour as being caused by...

For many of our fellow colleagues (and ourselves) there is an expectation that prevention and management of workplace bullying starts with line management. General employees look to local management; local or middle management seek support from executive management...

Resilience. It is a word that embodies flexibility and strength; a capacity to bounce back; a response where no problem is unsolvable. That is how one client, Nick (not his real name), described resilience to me. However, for him the word has taken on tarnished...

Are you hurt? Are you injured? These are two specific questions that we are likely to ask if somebody has been physically injured in the workplace, be it by falling off a chair or incorrectly lifting a box. We may even send them off to a doctor to be checked for...

For some of us, the question of why people are injured by workplace bullying, sometimes so severely, is a question that is difficult to understand. Sometimes, the target of the bullying behaviours is asked the question “Why don’t you just tell them to get stuffed?” or...

The word intent implies that a person who uses bullying behaviour has the goal, purpose or aim to bully another person. It implies choice. Yet not all individuals know they are using bullying behaviour. In fact, when confronted and labeled as being a bully many...

For just under two decades, I worked in the community services sector that has managed risk through the completion of individualised assessments. We completed those assessments to understand the client, respond to his or her needs, identify hazards and manage risk....