Author: Anna Denton-Jones

Happy New Year.

I am in the middle of preparing a training session on ‘respect in the workplace’. Naturally in that session we will be discussing what ‘respect’ means and looks like on a daily basis for the delegates.

I have been reflecting on the trend I have been seeing where certain individuals behaviours are overstepping the mark. For example:

• They might have a grievance against the organisation but write quite toxic emails to the manager concerned.
• These might be sent at night, early hours of the morning or at weekends or when they know a manager is on holiday.
• Typically these emails demand a somewhat immediate response from the recipient.
• The behaviour gets worse if the person perceives that the manager has not responded fast enough.
• The sender is undoubtedly dumping all their emotions about something on the recipient.
• The emails can be above average in length. A recent example of this was a manager having a meeting with someone following normal management processes on a Friday afternoon. Cue a 26 page ‘grievance’ the next day, a Saturday.

All of this might fall within what Acas calls ‘extreme difficult behaviour’. All of those who work in this space have become inured to having the odd one – we used to joke about that one personnel file that outpaced all others.

However, this is becoming more normalised. I think this is because of the general themes outside of work of expressing your views on social media, a more polarised world and people post pandemic being wrapped up in only thinking about themselves.

What is clear is this is not healthy for the recipient of this. One manager I have been liaising with mentioned her hair falling out as a result of dealing with ‘that’ person. We all get triggered when we see the name of the person who is doing this flash on our phones/inboxes.

Upward bullying is a thing. I’ve even witnessed people doing this to judges! What we are not great at is setting boundaries about this and putting some controls in place. I am struggling with this as much as you. What can we do?

The things I have thought of are:

• Have a short policy on expectations around answering emails so it is clear what out of hours rules and KPIs on response times are.
• Communicate to staff eg:- in newsletters that you expect all communications to be respectful and polite.
• Be brave enough to call out the person being toxic – this becomes a performance management issue. You would be saying you are entitled to raise XYZ issue but not in the manner that you have.
• Include in email footers the organisation policy that any email which is not respectful in tone will not be dealt with and then if people send problematic correspondence draw their attention to why they are not receiving a response.
• Empower managers not to feel they have to put up with inappropriate behaviour – not encouraging cross grievances but saying it is OK to say when you are finding it hard to deal with something, speak out and we’ll agree a strategy.
• Amend bullying policies specifically around this kind of behaviour – communicate that inappropriate emails won’t be tolerated
• Write to warn people of the Protection from Harassment Act and that their behaviour could be tipping over into this.
• Have a system of escalating upward bullying to a anti-bullying tsar who would step in and say disciplinary action could be taken if behaviour isn’t modified? Often the threat puts someone in their box.

Any other ideas?.

Anna Denton-Jones
Refreshing Law