If you work for an IT company and have experience of being bullied, then unfortunately you are not alone.

In research carried out over the three months to February 2008, nearly two thirds (65 per cent) of the 860 Unite members surveyed in the electronics and IT sectors reported that they had experience of bullying at work, and more than half (55 per cent) said they had witnessed bullying in their workplace. This is also borne out by a further survey carried out by the Work Life Balance Centre and Coventry University, reported recently in the human resources journal Personnel Today, which highlighted the IT sector as being one of the sectors with the worst incidence of bullying.

Bullying at work is deeply destructive of workplace relationships and undermines people’s health, confidence and ability to cope. In the Unite survey, we found that more than one in five of respondents said they had to take more than a month off work as sick leave because of their experience of bullying.

We know from our schooldays that there is usually a bully in every playground, but most people do not get up in the morning to go to work intending to bully their work colleagues. It is the working environment that creates the circumstances where bullying arises, and all too often is then tolerated or accepted as a feature of working life.

Bullying is organisational and can only be adequately combated by an organisational approach. At the very least, employers should have a clear statement that bullying will not be tolerated, have procedures in place on bullying and harassment, send a strong message from the top of the organisation that complaints of bullying and/or harassment will be taken seriously, and provide training on how to apply and operate the policy, in particular for managers.

Sixty per cent of respondents in our survey reported that their employer did not have an anti-bullying/harassment policy, and even where such policies were in place, nearly a quarter said they had not received any information or training about the policy. In addition, and as borne out by our survey and experience, all too often people are reluctant to make a complaint because they do not believe this will be seriously considered, or even worse they are too scared of the consequences.

Employees and their know-how are the key assets of most IT companies and it is vital that employers improve the way in which people are treated. Since workplace bullying was recognised as a problem more than a decade ago, many organisations have adopted policies to address the issue. However, a policy is no use unless all parties work together to take on the challenge.

The Dignity at Work Partnership has been established with funding jointly from the Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform and Unite to tackle the problem of bullying and harassment in the workplace. The aim of the project is for employers and employee representatives to work together to find ways of addressing the issues around bullying, and develop sound practices based on sharing of experience.