Public Sector Commissioner Erma Ranieri outlines plan to stamp out bullying in workforce

A new action plan has been released to deal with widespread bullying and harassment in the South Australian public sector. Here’s what it includes.

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Public sector leaders are being put on notice to deal with widespread bullying as a new “action plan” looks at mental first aid training and artificial intelligence to address the widespread issue.

Commissioner for Public Sector Employment Erma Ranieri has released a blueprint aimed at addressing concerns from a damning staff survey that found more than one in three South Australian public servants had witnessed bullying or harassment in their workplace.

At the centre of the plan is a bid to ensure public sector leaders better deal with their staff.

About 3000 public servants have also been trained in mental health first aid, and pilot programs are being developed whereby a “toolkit” will guide them on how to treat vulnerable staff and manage bullying at the earliest stages possible.

Commissioner for Public Sector Employment, Erma Ranieri.

Commissioner Ranieri said the new action plan had a strong focus on “lean methodology”, or working smarter, to ensure leaders had the time to maintain a healthy workforce.

“Part of the plan is about process improvements where we might want to use artificial intelligence to help do things more efficiently,” she said.

One of the proposals still under consideration is a contact officer in each agency.

“The key is to get people who lead other people to get all the necessary skills to manage people effectively,” she said.

“In the public sector we should manage performance — but we have to consider that person as a whole with other responsibilities (in life).

“If you can talk to people early on in the piece you can solve issues, or understand why they are not performing very well, and get them back on track.

“There is a lot of preventive stuff (in the plan) that helps productivity in the long run.”

South Australia’s first ever Your Voice Survey, undertaken last October, took feedback from 22 per cent of the state’s public sector workers — including doctors, nurses, police and administration workers.

Verbal abuse, derogatory remarks, shouting, screaming, withholding needed information, undermining and sabotage were all listed as the main problems in the survey undertaken by 24,341 public servants.

Originally published as Public Sector Commissioner Erma Ranieri outlines plan to stamp out bullying in workforce