Surveying workplace abuse in Australia

Too many times, we’ve read newspaper articles about abusive people who, for decades, were able to pick their victims in the workplace. All while people in the know, managers, boards, colleagues, and investors all chose to look the other way.

Abusive workplaces don’t occur in isolation. They are situational. One person, even one who looms too large, does not a situation make. What happens is a series of excuses are let through, boundaries let slide, and conversations that should be happening don’t.

People begin to normalise abuse by clearing a path to it. They make excuses. They prioritise the value of some people over others.

The board that worries without the problematic players, there’d be nothing to oversee. The decision makers that know the manager was totally over the top with their reaction, but on the other hand, gets results. The manager who decides that sales matter more than the salesperson’s continually questionable behaviour. The colleagues who write things off as “that’s just their way – you’ll get used to them.”

All this and more becomes justified. And it becomes part of the process of grooming the culture to become harmful. Just the same way a family may care more about “what will people think” than exposing and dealing with abuse, workplaces become adept at normalising dysfunction and dysregulation. All because they place a value on what people see on the outside that is higher than what happens within.

And the problem is, most victims and survivors are treated as the fly in the ointment. They are disbelieved, silenced, or passed like hot potato through the processes quickly, ineffectually, and with vibes that scream “phew, I’m glad that’s over!”  Meanwhile, victims and survivors are shuffled off to make sense of the pieces alone. Often denied justice because fail to meet the burden of proof because they were so flat out surviving, they failed to collect any that meets actionable standards. Or because what was collected is yet another symptom of the system that allowed for the abuse to happen – ill-prepared, incomplete, and geared towards supporting the problematic situations.

Any remediation is placed on the individual to identify and work on, bearing the cost and further shame of not having their pain acknowledged by a system in ass-covering mode. This reliance on the individual to work out how to move forward doesn’t allow for them to process what’s happened, let alone deal with it. And so, the cycle continues.

The situations that created the perfect storm aren’t dealt with; the victims are saddled with the shame and slurs and accusations of not being able to hack it or of being the problem. The organisation lacks the scaffolding and incentive to make a worthwhile change. And the perpetrators take the lack of consequences as proof they are even more valuable, becoming even less likely to change and more of a future liability.

No wonder Beyond Blue found 1 in every 2 workers are facing burnout, and LinkedIn is flooded with psychosocial hazard related content these days.

Workplace violence needs a targeted strategy

Psychosocial harm is one of the greatest challenges facing Australian workplaces. The legislation is there to support people navigate it. But what then? Mostly, a silence that doesn’t allow for any kind of meaningful recovery.

It needs to change. But how?

Firstly, we need to call it what it is – workplace violence.

The hallmarks are all there. When you’re stuck in a toxic workplace, you’re:

• Dealing with people in charge (and a culture) going through the cycle of violence – a sweet phase, tension building, everyone walking on eggshells, an explosion or an event, followed by buyback and remorse before cycling around again
• Not in a position of power, influence, and reliant on potential perpetrators to see change enacted
• Financially, socially, and emotionally tied to the situation
• Reputation matters – and can be easily ruined and influenced by people you stand up to
• Surrounded by people who are eager to normalise the behaviour for the good of the company in the same way people say it’s for the good of the family
• Worried about the impact your exit might have on the people left behind
• Gaslit by people who benefit from the situation into staying or staying silent
• Held to unreasonable standards of conduct by outside systems that fail to recognise that survival mode limits choices and creates trauma-based behaviours

Secondly, we need a strategy that deals with this violence wholistically.

That means things like:

• Developing meaningful strategies and programs for recovery to move beyond counselling to support groups, expressive therapies, and beyond
• Listening to victims and survivors, and normalise sharing their stories for greater public awareness and targeted campaigns
• Valuing lived experience in the policy and prevention frameworks, program evaluation process, and in frontline recovery programs
• Investigating addictions such as workaholism and the role they play in both perpetrator and victimology
• Researching the role previous exposure to abuse plays in creating toxic working environments
• Naming coercive control in the workplace – and building the supports to identify and challenge it
• Owning the intersection between marginalisation and poverty in worker susceptibility
• Challenging outdated notions about work such as presenteeism, workplace inflexibility, and hierarchal management that allow power to be pooled and routine to be weaponised
• Applying modern governance at an operational level that has a people-first lens
• Challenging the support and narrative that allows the dysregulated adult to hold court because they deliver in other areas

Third, it needs to be built with innovation and change in mind

I’m currently working with a bunch of committed individuals to create more recognition for the issues outlined above and what we can do to tackle them.

If you’d like to share your own experiences, please take our survey.

If you’d like to stay connected to the project as it unfolds, sign up on Substack and LinkedIn.