Bullying in the civil service

The public and commercial services PCS union says that recent surveys of its members have indicated that bullying is still an issue of major concern at work. A 2013 survey found that one in six respondents said they are “always, often or sometimes bullied” — this increased to one in five working in the Department for Transport and its executive agencies.

One PCS rep told LRD that bullying is on the increase due to “draconian performance management systems” taking the form of micro-management of particular groups of members, including those with disabilities, those with caring responsibilities, those with learning issues and those that are active trade union representatives. He estimated that “around 90% of the bullying cases that we deal with have a reasonable adjustment element” normally due to a disability and in most cases the disability is a mental health issue.

He also said that each department or agency must find at least 10% of its staff falling within a “needs improvement” category. Those labelled as such then find themselves under a level of scrutiny akin to bullying “as everything they do is monitored, remonitored, documented, discussed and analysed over and over again”.

He added: “Draconian sickness absence policies then are brought into play and we have seen many members being dismissed on capability grounds.”