Social safety at work
Find out what you can do and what help you can get if you encounter transgressive behaviour at work, such as bullying, gossiping, aggression, (sexual) harassment or abuse of power. You will also find on this page how to develop your skills to contribute to a positive workplace culture.
What you can do yourself
Roadmap for employees
You may experience or observe unsafe behaviour. You may also be called to account for your behaviour. Know that you are not alone. We help you on your way with a concise “Roadmap for employees: what can you do in case of undesirable and transgressive behaviour”.
Engage in conversation and give feedback
If you feel free to speak out, engage with the person exhibiting the behaviour. By giving feedback, you make your boundaries clear and give the person addressed the chance to improve the behaviour. We understand that these can be challenging conversations. In the Roadmap you will find examples of how to respond appropriately in difficult situations. If necessary, seek support from a helpline such as confidential advisor.
Strengthen your knowledge and skills
Radboud University has a wide range of e-learnings and training courses. These help you recognise socially unsafe situations and respond appropriately to undesirable behaviour.
- Core offer for all employees
- E-learning Social Safety for employees: the 1.5-hour module developed in-house contains information, videos and reflection exercises that will help you become more confident in your skills to contribute to a socially safe working environment.
- Physical training in constructive dialogue: this course will teach you how to have open and effective conversations, even when there’s friction. You will be given practical tools and will practise with situations taken from your own work environment. This way, you will contribute to a pleasant working atmosphere where there is room for openness, feedback and differences of opinion.
- Recommended offer
- Active Bystander Training: almost everyone has witnessed it at some point: an inappropriate comment, a hurtful joke, or other undesirable behaviour in the workplace. But how do you react as a bystander? During the Active Bystander Training, you will learn 4 techniques and 4 tactics in 1.5 hours to respond to undesirable behaviour in a way that suits you.
Get help
It is important to discuss undesirable and transgressive behaviour. If you cannot work it out yourself, there are helplines for support and advice.
- In case of a problem, your supervisor is your first point of contact. Your supervisor is responsible for social safety in the team, and co-responsible for a safe and sound organisation. If your supervisor is part of the problem or there is another reason that you cannot go to your supervisor, you choose another helpline.
- For a confidential conversation, you can contact the confidential advisor. They are there to provide first support and guidance in the event of undesirable and transgressive behaviour. A confidential advisor stands beside you, listens, thinks with you and helps you determine what the best steps are to improve the situation.
- You can discuss your questions or concerns about undesirable behaviour or (potential) labour conflicts with your HR adviser. They offer a listening ear, can explain codes and regulations, refer, and advise both you and your supervisor on improving the situation. Where necessary, an HR adviser from another organizational unit can play a role.
- If there is a pattern of problematic behaviour, you can contact the ombudsofficer. The independent and impartial ombuds officer is there for issues that transcend an individual report. The ombuds officer can advise, refer, mediate, investigate (of their own accord) and adjudicate and about improper behaviour.
- If you have experienced undesirable behaviour, you have the right to file a formal complaint (if required with support from the confidential advisor) with the Complaints Committee.
Undesirable and transgressive behaviour
Where people work together, difficult situations occur. In social unsafety, we distinguish two forms.
1. Undesirable behaviour is behaviour that hinders a person’s work or studies. What is undesirable for one person may not be so for another. Therefore, the person exhibiting undesirable behaviour may not be aware of its effect.
Examples are: not greeting, constantly interrupting a colleague, unnecessarily cc-ing lots of people into critical emails.
2. Transgressive behaviour is all behaviour that affects someone’s dignity. This is behaviour that you can and should know is unacceptable, regardless of how it is perceived. Radboud University considers the following behaviours to be transgressive:
- behaviour that is discriminatory in nature;
- behaviour involving gossiping, bullying or threatening;
- behaviour that has a sexual component;
- behaviour that is intimidating, aggressive or violent;
- behaviour involving the abuse of a hierarchical or dependency relationship;
- behaviour that is repeated and does not change after someone has declared that it is undesirable.
Examples are: shouting, grabbing someone, and disadvantaging or excluding someone because of personal characteristics, such as origin, beliefs, gender, sexual orientation, disability, role or position.
Contribute to a positive workplace culture
In a socially safe working and learning environment, cooperation, equality, openness and consideration for each other are important. Students and staff can be themselves. Important values are:
- Integrity: you are reliable, honest, sincere and respectful in your behaviour.
- Constructive: you contribute to a positive workplace culture and actively consider your colleagues.
- Open: you are open to ideas, perspectives and feedback from each other
- Professional: you are responsible for your behaviour and treat colleagues equally and without prejudice.
Want to know more? Check out the infographic on workplace culture.
Managers
As a manager, you are jointly responsible for a sound and healthy organisation. Would you like to gain more confidence in your skills to achieve a socially safe working environment as a manager? Radboud University offers a wide range of training courses, e-learnings and tools, such as:
- HR toolkit social safety: you will find all information for managers in one place.
- E-learning Social Safety for managers: become more skilled in creating and ensuring social safety in your team in 60 minutes.
- Guideline in 10 phases: managing transgressive behaviour: this plan helps you as a manager to go through a careful procedure with those involved when you receive a signal of repeated undesirable behaviour or transgressive behaviour
- Discussion card 'Should be OK?’: What can be done and what goes too far? This discussion card helps your team to have an open dialogue. The clear steps make it easy to discuss together where you draw the line.
As a bystander, you are important in cases of undesirable behaviour: you can step forward.
Almost everyone witnesses it from time to time: inappropriate comments or behaviour in the workplace, leading to tensions or a lack of social safety. How can you, as a bystander, best deal with that? You will learn this and more in the active bystander group training session, held by trainer Roel Petter. “As a bystander, you are important: you can step forward.”
Those who follow the news will surely have noticed the increased number of reports of undesirable behaviour. Often, these reports revolve around the perpetrator, and occasionally around the victim. “But it's never actually about the people who witness it: the majority”, Petter notes. “It is precisely this group that holds the most potential: they can tackle undesirable behaviour. You cannot usually expect that from the person who has to endure the behaviour: they are vulnerable at that moment, regardless of whether there is an unequal balance of power in the working relationship with the perpetrator. And there may also be feelings of shame. Moreover, in all likelihood, you cannot immediately count on an empathetic response from the perpetrator either. Hence, in this training session, we focus on bystanders: they can change the situation because they are not one of those two parties.”
Getting stronger
However, the threshold for a bystander to address someone about their undesirable behaviour can still be quite high. “The aim of the training session is therefore to make you stronger and more skilled at responding to undesirable behaviour”, Petter explains. “We will give tools so you know what you can do from now on, and how to do that. The guiding principle here is: doing nothing is not an option. As a bystander, you are important in cases of undesirable behaviour: you can step forward.”
The training session therefore covers concrete examples: from bullying and scolding to ignoring, and from sexual harassment to implicit and explicit discrimination. “Undesirable behaviour is quite broad. Think of people who are treated differently because they have a different skin colour or sexual orientation, for example. Or colleagues who are never invited to the drinks after work. But also humour: often, when making jokes, people don't think about what impact it could have on others. The training session focuses not only on raising awareness about undesirable behaviour, but also on how to respond to it appropriately.”
Four techniques
Responding, according to Petter, can be done using four techniques that you can choose from as a bystander. “The first technique is direct action: you act immediately when undesirable behaviour occurs. Second, you can opt for distraction: you take the sting out of the situation and allow some air into the room, so to speak. The third thing you can do is delegate: for example, you discuss the undesirable behaviour with a confidential advisor or someone in a higher position. And the fourth option is delay: you don't act right now, but come back to the undesirable behaviour at a later time. These techniques and the tactics associated with them are all covered in the training session. And you can also use these if you yourself are unexpectedly the target of undesirable behaviour one day.”
Radboud University sees social safety as a crucial prerequisite for well-being, close collaboration, research quality and integrity, academic and otherwise. Petter: “Social safety is important. Because when you feel safe as an employee, not only does your productivity increase, but also your creativity and loyalty. If you are comfortable and happy, you are more likely to be your best self and stay loyal to your employer for longer.”
What makes active bystander training special is that it stems from the educational field: the concept was developed in 2017 and the first training session was held at Imperial College in London. A year later, in 2018, the training concept won the renowned British award ‘Universities HR Award for Organisational Development & Culture Change’. Due to the positive response and increased attention to social safety, the training concept also came to the Netherlands fairly quickly, where it is now taught in many organisations – including outside the educational field. Petter: “Before we proceed with the session, we always agree that everything discussed in the session stays within the group. And although social safety may seem like a heavy topic, we strive to cover it in a relaxed atmosphere during the session. And you may participate in the way you feel most comfortable. So, if you just come to listen, that's fine too.” According to Petter, feedback from participants has been mostly positive. “Although the training session is only an hour and a half long, many report afterwards that they learnt a lot and have subsequently used the interventions they learnt not only at work, but also privately. This is based on the understanding that by responding to undesirable behaviour with proven interventions, you can make a difference: to yourself, to your colleagues and to those close to you.”
Want to know more about the active bystander training, on which days it will be held at Radboud University and how you can participate in it individually or with your team?
* Roel Petter hosts the training session in Dutch on behalf of the Active Bystander Company. The English-language version is given by his colleague Marloes Siccama. Would you like to know more about participants’ experiences? Then visit www.activebystander.com