Research from law firm Fox and Partners had found there were 835 employment tribunals relating to bullying in 2021/22, up 44% from the previous year, with the number of claims having more than doubled since the 412 recorded in 2017/18.
The firm has dubbed the findings a “canary in the mine” moment suggesting that it signals a failure of leadership in not addressing a growth in toxic work cultures.
Amongst the findings was that remote and hybrid working have brought with them new forms of bullying to the workplace, such as leaving colleagues out of remote meetings, comments over video calls, and gossiping over messaging platforms. This makes “old-fashioned” strategies for identifying and dealing with problematic behaviours risk being ineffective, the report argues.
