"Shut up and put up" - barriers to tackling workplace bullying in a public sector organisation.

Abstract

Workplace health promotion, concerned as it is with promoting the health of those in the workplace setting, has paid suprisingly little attention to the phenomenon of workplace bullying, despite its prevalence and well-documented negative impact on health. Tackling workplace bullying provides an opportunity to work coherently within the settings approach, focusing not only on what health difficulties workers report, but how the organisation and work itself contributes to these difficulties and how the organisation (as opposed to the worker) can change to reduce ill health. Such an approach assumes that how work is constructed, how the organisation is structured, work-based relations, the explicit and implicit expectatioins of workers all are central to improving health.