Posted By Rob Malcolm I recently posted a thread about Violent Conduct towards Health & Safety Officer, you may recall. I would be extremely grateful if anyone could advise me on a Dignity & Respect Policy to cover stress/violence/bullying etc in the workplace. The MD is not willing to create a violence/stress/or a bullying policy as he feels it highlights that these issues are prevalent within the organisation. Someone commented to me in passing that improving working lives by the introduction of such issues is paramount and I should consider retitling them under one policy i.e. Dignity & Respect Policy. Has anyone done the same or attempted to do the same and would this be seen as being as robust as the 3 separate titles. Re: the Ops Dir is at it again and I have had 3 women in 3 days in tears in my office complaining about Mr. Ops D. HELP..................... I'm still here for all my sins. Rob

Posted By Jonathan Breeze Rob, With all due respect to your MD, you need to ask him can he afford NOT to have such a policy. The HSE have recently put a lot of work into creating guidance on this issue and a set of management standards, so it is a sure bet that they will be going round businesses to check that they are being adopted. On top of that from a purely business point of view (which maybe your MD can understand), while you are dealing with the fallout from these issues, the company is losing productivity. Look at the figures, three members of staff, plus yourself occupied for say a day to resolve an issue means the company has lost 32 work hours! And if this keeps happening, the hours will keep adding up and costing the company MONEY! And that is just the direct cost to the company. On top of that is the indirect cost of reduced productivity due to low staff morale which is a lot harder to measure. It just doesn't add up not to have a policy. It doesn't matter what you call it (dignity & respect is good - although perhaps not while Mr Galloway is using it (keep it apolitical)) as long as you have it and it is enforced. All the best.

Posted By Robin B Have replied directly Robin

Posted By Kieran J Duignan Rob From your question and your summary of your decision, it appears that your own behaviour may actually mirror the faults of directors you criticise. You report that the m.d. (and earlier the Ops D) decline to find common ground with you; now it appears from your own statements that you are focusing on a 'policy' in which they have little or no interest. From your accounts, the root issues concern behaviour of managers and staff, and decisions about how to allocate resources to influence them to behave more productively and profitably as well as more intelligently. There is little, if any, evidence that a policy on Dignity and Respect is likely to have this effect in a context where the m.d. has indicated that he doesn't wish to get to grips with the issues. In the absence of a H R professional, you may have scope to exercise discretion to take effective initiatives; I have worked with an Occupational Health doctor (now Head of Civiilan Medicine in the MoD) who had considerable impact in an organisation employing 10,000 despite recurrent undermining by his own line manager (Director of Personnel). He concentrated on individual and group communications rather than on policy statements which at best would have had no impact and could have been misquoted as criticism. I'm writing this not to discourage you - it is certainly very difficult to make progress in H & S without director-level support - but to encourage you to chose simple, radical measures for influencing some line managers whom you may be able to help, and thereby enlist their active support.

Posted By J Knight Hi Rob, We have used the HSE's assessment tools in one of our workplaces (version 1 as I prefer it), and we have written our workplace wellbeing (aka stress) policy around them. In addition to all the other positive responses about the need to tackle stress, I can also add that running the tools helped us to identify weaknesses in the management structure in the workplace in question and we expect that as well as helping us to improve working conditions it should also help improve the efficiency of the site. All in all it has been a very positive and helpful exercise. We also have seperate bullying, harrassment and wellbeing policies, mainly because the first two are seen as 'pure' hr while wellbeing, as a crossover, fell into my domain, John

Posted By Kieran J Duignan ..... to the extent that the m.d. has shown he is interested in what you write, he is open to 'respecting' it. You've already indicated how lacking in understanding and commitment he is at present. If you think that paperwork is likely to influence him. the Ops Director and other policymakers more than positive comments from line managers, then it's fine to concentrate your limited resources on paperwork. On the other hand, recall what you reported that the Ops Directoralready told you about their perceptions of your behaviour they labelled as 'bureaucracy'.