As a member of the health and safety organisation, you can help monitor your psychosocial working conditions. You can suggest initiatives and solutions if you think there’s a problem, or if you’re approached by colleagues about offensive behaviour.
You can also suggest increasing focus on the psychosocial working conditions if the workplace wants to reduce absence due to sickness, streamline processes or prepare for organisational changes, for example.
Increase knowledge about offensive behaviour, bullying and harassment
Start by reading the understanding offensive behaviour, bullying and sexual harassment sections on this page to learn about what constitutes offensive behaviour, bullying and sexual harassment, including the most common signs that someone is being exposed to offensive behaviour, bullying or sexual harassment.
Preventing offensive behaviour, bullying and sexual harassment
Preventing offensive behaviour, bullying and sexual harassment at the workplace is part of the general measures to establish good psychosocial working conditions. The health and safety group should be involved in the prevention of offensive behaviour, bullying and sexual harassment.
Put offensive behaviour, bullying and harassment on the agenda
If you’ve identified cases of offensive behaviour, bullying or sexual harassment, it’s the responsibility of the management team and the health and safety group to come to together and discuss specific measures to deal with the violations and prevent them from happening again. For example, you can:
- Conduct an impartial investigation in which everyone involved is consulted. Be discreet to everyone involved. Don’t draw any hasty conclusions.
- Make it clear that offensive behaviour, bullying and sexual harassment are unacceptable and must be stopped.
- Look for constructive solutions.
The quick method
If you want to start working on preventing offensive behaviour, bullying and sexual harassment, a staff meeting may be a good place to start. The meeting will help you put into words your experiences and thoughts about offensive behaviour, bullying and sexual harassment at the workplace. At the end of the meeting, you can all assess whether there is a need to launch initiatives. For example, you can:
- Watch the film about offensive behaviour together.
- Talk about the film: What is it like at our workplace?
- Talk about what you can do to prevent offensive behaviour, bullying and sexual harassment.
Initiatives based on a health and safety risk assessment
If you feel that offensive behaviour, bullying and sexual harassment is a widespread problem among several employees at your workplace, you can carry out a health and safety risk assessment (APV).
In connection with mapping psychosocial working conditions, you can identify the factors to be improved to prevent offensive behaviour, bullying and sexual harassment in the future. The health and safety risk assessment will give you an idea of the scope of the problem with offensive behaviour, bullying and harassment.
There are several ways to conduct a health and safety risk assessment:
- The dialogue method by which you identify the problems at a staff meeting and discuss causes and solutions together.
- The questionnaire method by which you collect employees’ opinions and experiences in writing, and then find causes and solutions either in the health and safety group or at a staff meeting.