Types Of Personal Harassment

The types of personal harassment are easier to recognise as patterns of behaviour than as a list of prohibited acts.

• Verbal. Persistent criticism, mockery, shouting, or remarks about someone’s appearance or personal life.
• Social. Exclusion from meetings, conversations and informal contact, including being left out of things that look trivial. The hardest of the four to evidence and among the most damaging.
• Work-related. Withholding information needed to do the job, setting impossible deadlines, removing responsibilities, or allocating only menial tasks.
• Intimidation. Physical presence used to unsettle, aggressive gestures, or slamming and throwing objects nearby.

Most workplace policies describe only the first of the four. Managers then struggle to categorise a complaint about the second or third, and frequently conclude that nothing actionable has occurred when it plainly has.

Safe Work Australia covers psychosocial hazards. This is general information rather than legal advice, and obligations vary by state and territory.

See Sentrient’s workplace bullying course and workplace policy templates.