Accused of bullying

EuskalHerria

An old friend and former work colleague has been accused of bullying and has been reprimanded for a disciplinary meeting on Thursday. They work in Dublin for a well known company and have been working in a relatively new store of this company for the last number of months.
They have worked in retail for over 10 years, 4 years in management, and this claim has never previously been made or any claim of unfair treatment.

I know this person well and working under his management for first hand experience also leads me to believe this accusation to be false. The staff making the accusation have made their hatred for this person known but it was never contemplated that this could escalate to an essentially false claim of bullying. My friend has the support of a number of staff and management, however they have been suspended until at least Thursday.

Essentially what I would like to ask has anyone gone through this before and how they dealt with it? The awkward nature of this claim is that it is almost impossible to prove so its the word of more than one member of staff who have teamed up against this one.
This person is on a probationary period and is now concerned that his place will ultimately be lost due to these false accusations.

Any help with previous experience in this scenario or help in how to deal with this would be very much appreciated.

BuffyBot

While it's easy to work on our own knowledge of someone, we never truly know people and how they behave towards others. That said, working on your assumption: without knowing the ins and outs of the entire situation, any advice will be rather vague. If he has management and staff support, then I'd imagine any decent HR staff would want to find out more about why that is and would/should speak to the management team members (at least) about it.

The suspension may be just a matter of policy, to avoid any awkward scenes or contact until an investigation is done.

thomur

Went through it with an employee who was pregnant and claimed I was bullying her by asking her to do a job she always did. My backup was that a pregnancy risk assessment was done and she was ok to do that job according to the doctor.

Does the complainant have documentary evidence of your friend bullying(ie on front of other people, evidence of your friend ignoring them etc). If so then your friend is in trouble. If not, then counterclaim to HR. Its not all one way.

EuskalHerria

thomur wrote: »

Does the complainant have documentary evidence of your friend bullying(ie on front of other people, evidence of your friend ignoring them etc). If so then your friend is in trouble. If not, then counterclaim to HR. Its not all one way.

The person who has made the complaint has said that another member of staff was witness to it. That other member of staff just happens to be her best friend.
Apparently the two in question are incredibly lazy and there has been a tension there as asking them to carry out their contractual duties have been a nightmare.
It seems as a way to put te fear into my friend this accusation has been made on a whim by them without a seconds consideration for the seriousness of their accusations and its effects.

I've tried a number of avenues to help my friend. Until I get more information its hard for me to so so. I was just hoping to get some general lines of defense against a false claim of bullying. That counterclaim could be an option. Should he keep the job I'd imagine he may need a day or two off as its caused a lot if stress.

tatli_lokma

TBH as Buffybot says, you never really know how someone treats others unless you see it. It could be that when you worked with this guy the dynamics were different, and therefore you only saw a good side to his management skills. Hardworking, straightforward, proactive people are much easier to manage than lazy people.

It could well be that this pair accusing him are lazy soandso's, in which case his management experience should have kicked in and provided he followed procedures correctly, documented everything and had everything on the record and behaved professsionally at all times, he need not worry. As Buffybot says, if a complaint is lodged, then HR have an obligation to at least investigate. This could be to your friend's benefit as it might just confirm his management style was the correct one.

But as I say, certain people are easy to manage, and therefore the managers are thought to be 'good' managers when in fact they aren't. If he hasn't handled this situation properly he may well find himself with questions to answer, and rightly so. If this is the case any decent investigation will show that there were faults on both sides and mediate to resolve the issue.


The truth of the matter is, if this pair were lazy and underperforming, he should have been preformance managing them appropriately and documenting everything. If he has done this, then I doubt he has little to worry about and the claims of 'bullying' will be seen to be nothing more than proper performance management but the staff member being performance managed is not prepared to accept fault.

EuskalHerria

Cheers for that reply tatli_lokma. As far as I'm aware there has been issues of employee under performance raised and noted, so it does seem as a scare tactic by the staff towards management in case it was a case of them being let go for under performing.

My friend hasn't even received a written account of the claims against them so it's hard to prepare a defense when there is uncertainty about the specific nature of the claims. Hopefully all will be revealed shortly and some good news Friday after the outcome of the meeting is given.

HansHolzel

Always keep records, even a diary, and always follow procedures. I once got that simple advice confirmed from an old friend who had been HR manager for a large company.

Mrs OBumble

EuskalHerria wrote: »

The staff making the accusation have made their hatred for this person known

It's too late now - but IMHO if someone ever finds out that staff or colleagues have made their hatred known, then thie shoudl be notified to HR.

Firstly, the very "hatred" message can be seen as intimidation of the hated one.

Second, it's a good thing to have on record if the "haters" do progress to false accusations.


(We all have colleagues who we dislike. But expressing this - except to trusted freinds - is a total no-no.)