Industry representatives attend bullying and harassment forum in New South Wales
Bullying and harassment are issues in most workplaces and the bus industry is no exception.
Numerous operators attended the Bus & Transport Industry Leaders Forum, hosted by The Interact Group, in Sydney this month to help combat the issue.
The forum included topics such as how to handle a bullying complaint from a member of staff, the top five solutions you can use to manage workplace bullying how to increase driver productivity.
About 25 delegates represented organisations including APTIA (Australian Public Transport Industrial Association), BusNSW, Pitcher Partners and various operators.
The Interact Group Managing Director Nikki Brouwers and Registered Therapist Emma Howard led the group in a prominent discussion about bullying and harassment in the workplace.
“Typically, workplace mental health issues come to the attention of management or colleagues when everything reaches rock bottom. This is simply too late,” says Brouwers.
“Early intervention and prevention is the critical. Often all it takes is applying a good fair common sense approach to prevent workplace bullying incidents from occurring.”
Howard says about one in five drivers will experience some form of bullying in the workplace.
She encouraged operators to put prevention and support strategies in place if they had not already done so.
Operators gave examples of incidents in their own workplaces and strategies which have been used to help support staff.