Your Mind Matters With Maria Kempinska – Bernadette Bruckner & Steve Jackson, Bullying In Business

Bullying is a disruptive aspect of our human nature. My question is, why do people bully and how do we protect ourselves? I am Dr. Maria Kempinska and this is yous Mind Matters. Our discussion today is about bullying in the workplace and its effect on the individual and the company. The company's culture, the company's production and the employee's life. Their life at work and their life at home. My guests who add to this important topic are Bernadette Bruechner and Steve Jackson, who are founders of a very new and exciting website called Counsellors now. It's a 24 hour counselling website that will help people anytime, day or night. They will begin individually by talking about their own experiences and observations the workplace. Firstly, though, let me ask you, Bernadette, can you tell me your story? If you've had any stories of bullying for yourself, personally, or any stories that you've observed. Hi, Maria. Good morning, Marie. I'd like to start off by kind of saying that, you know, bullying is a form of aggression and the actions can be very obvious or very subtle. Sometimes the bulliers don't even know that they're bullying. And the people that are being bullied may not recognize that they're being bullied for quite a long time. It is often only when their own character begins to change and somebody says, you're not quite yourself that the signs of the bullying starts to materialize. Yeah. And I think that's really important for people to remember now in the workplace, and I'm sure Steve will agree with me on this, we know the bullying goes on, but we have to balance our conversation about bullying to not cross over the line between positive criticism from a boss. Because you do get people who think if a boss says anything at all negative to them that they're being bullied. Okay, so if I can go back, way, way back in time to about 25, 30 years ago, I myself had a very, very brief episode of bullying in the workplace. And it was very brief. It only lasted a week, but it was sustained and escalating. And although it only lasted the week, the memories of that week have stayed with me for a lifetime. And that's often something that does happen to people that have been bullied. So very, very briefly. All that happened there was I was working for a recruitment agency, arrived on day one and was greeted by my new manager who gave me her name. Now her name was Marie. She said to me her name was Marie. So I thought I heard the name Marie or Mary. I wasn't quite sure, but either Way, trust me, I got it wrong. And I said, how do you do, Mari? Well, that seemed to have set the tone. I'm really upset her for the day because there and then she made me repeat in front of the whole room, the six other staff members, the correct pronunciation of her name. I tried and I got it wrong a second time. And on the third time I just said to her, just leave me alone and I will get it right later. It's probably my Irish accent. Throughout the rest of that day, she asked me several times to practice saying her name and I was quite embarrassed about that. So let it go. Day two dawned and again I came into the office and on day two, what I forgot to say was I had recently come back from having lived in Greece for quite some time and I was darkly tanned. So on day two, this boss of mine comes over around lunchtime, sits on my desk, puts her bum on my desk, she put her thumb in her mouth and grabbed my forearm. She tried to then say, this is not a real tan, I'm going to see if it's real. And she went to rub it off my arm. Obviously it didn't move, but I felt instantly very, very angry and excused myself and went into the ladies. Now, I actually was shaking because I felt, oh, this is not nice behavior. I let it go. And on day three, I didn't want to go into work. I was feeling quite anxious to have to deal with this lady again on day three. Day three, she picked on me the moment I went into the office over the clothes I was wearing. I had a long black dress and a white blouse on me, quite standard, but she was having none of it. She told me that there was a dress uniform and I said, well, I've been through three rounds of interviews, nobody's mentioned a uniform to me. By that afternoon, my tummy had kind of got a bit upset, so I went in to use the loo and I was actually sick with just nerves. She came in after a few minutes and she could smell, smell that I've been sick. Sorry for the graphic description, but again, she had a go at me about leaving the bathroom with a smell on it. I let it go, got through the afternoon. It came to Thursday and I just didn't want to be there. So I put a call into hq, explained what was going on. They put a call into her and that was probably the worst thing that could have happened because she then had a real good reason to have a go at me, accused me of lying, etc. But the other girls in the office, stood up for me and said, no, you have been picking on her. Let it go. On the Friday, I didn't go back in again. I just phoned up and said, that's it, I'm out of here. Life is too short for this kind of stuff. So that was like a very short period, but I never forgot it for the rest of my life. And is that something you've seen more in offices in your experience, Bernadette? No, not anymore. These days, I feel that the kind of bullying that goes on is more complicated. So in today's day and age, believe it or not, bullying is not covered under the law. Harassment is covered, but bullying in the uk, there isn't a law against it in the workplace. So really good examples of bullying these days tend to be more about spreading malicious rumours, gossip or innuendo. Things like excluding or isolating somebody, socially intimidating a person, undermining or deliberately impeding a person's work. Sometimes physical abuse comes into it, but not too often because that's very obvious. Subtle ways are like constantly changing work guidelines, establishing possible deadlines for people to live up to, making jokes that are obviously not funny, but a bit offensive. You can also get. You get more examples today of assigning unreasonable duties or workloads which are unfavourable to one person, or not letting people have holidays, criticizing people and things like that. So I think the nature of bullying has become more. That's a really good breakdown of the type of bullying that can happen. Can we, before we get into the discussion, move on and talk to you, Steve, what is your observation and experiencing? Is it the type of thing that men experience? There's always this sort of misnomer. I think that because men have this sort of boys club or men have this alpha male sort of competition, that men are not bullied. What's your experience of that? Yeah, I mean, men are bullied and it's been going on for centuries. Where does it start from? Before you go to the workplace, you've got to start where bullying starts from when you're born. It goes through your childhood, it carries on through your school days. So before you get into the workplace practice, you're already a bully. You don't go into a bully as soon as you've got a job. You're already a bully before you go into the workplace. Now that is to do with our educational system. So the government are going to start taking some on us that they're doing the wrong things. You can't hold employees responsible for a bully when he'll be a bully before he leaves school. You can't just say, at 20, I become a bully. You'll be a bully at school and you'll be a bully throughout your life and you'll have those traits that can be picked up what aren't picked up because they don't want to pick them up at the early stages. You've been given the employer another problem within his business that society has already created. So somewhere along the line, society has to take blame for it, not just the employers, because the bullies have been created through the mismanagement of education and the mismanagement of government. The way they treat people within this country. And this is a case how you stop it. You have to stop it at the very beginning, because if you don't start it at the beginning, you've got a bigger problem when they get into adulthood. What's your observation about that? Have you had an experience or observed that at school or in your early childhood that you've seen or experienced? Yeah, I've seen. I got bullied slightly when I was at school, but I just got on with it, you know, that was part of it. Shrugged the shoulders. The other thing is it also teaches you not to do, you know, you've got to be able to reverse it. Well, I didn't like it, so why should I say that to somebody or why should I bully? It made me feel uncomfortable, so why should I do it? So you've got it then goes on to parental and as I say, educational. No, if it's done in the early days. Right. Then it'll follow naturally through the rest of his life or her life. And that's where we misguided because we get it in work and we've then got to try and treat a person that's setting his ways. He or she set in a way. So then it becomes very difficult because they're setting their ways. And nine times out of 10 people who don't even realize they're being a bully, it's just the way they are, the way they've been brought up, all the way they've gone through life, there's a lot of people think, I'm not being a bullet. Oh, yes, you are. Well, I didn't. What I said was nasty. Well, I said I thought they were nasty. It's a different, you know, it's what one person thinks and what the other person thinks on the other side. We've got now, especially on the business side with bullying is. Are they quite trying wolves sometimes are they making a mountain out of a mole where there's a claim. It's all this stuff that's bringing more problems within the business area with everything else going on to try and run a business and all the government is constantly doing is passing it back onto directors, chairmans, business owners to sort out the problems that we have got within this country, that the government and their policies, all the different governments have added, have created over the many years. So how we solve these issues, I wouldn't know as an employer, because you then have to start getting specialists in each field to know what they're talking about or what the problems are and identifying it. So what do you. Do you spend all your time trying to solve all the problems or do you run your business? It's a very difficult area to run because your time's so restricted. You've got so many other duties. Running a business not only look after your staff, you've got to make sure you get paid. You've got to make sure they get paid. You've got to pay the tax ban, you've got vat, you've tax returns, corporate stuff. You've got just loads of constantly was never a person dead. So when you say, Certainly for the SMEs, it's a lot more difficult because they haven't got the physical manpower or the money to have specific people to look at specific areas. Bully being one of them. Yeah, sorry just to interrupt there, Steve. SMEs for people are the small to medium businesses. Yeah, yeah. They tend to employ less than 250 people, but they account for something like 90. I think it's 91% of all business in the UK. Yeah, majority. So, you know, it's to help those as well. The big boys are all right, they've got the money. It's. When you get to the smaller businesses, it's how you try and implement something to help people. Do you throw more money at it? Okay, fine. That comes out to your profits, therefore you can't have a pay rise. So it's a, It's a catch 22 situation. Get the people in. Fine properties come at the end of the year, we haven't made that much, but you've got, you've. We've got all the bullying down, we've got everything else down, but you can't have no pay rises. So it's a very, very controversial subject and very difficult for employers, basically, because the government, every single thing that they can on an employer's head and it is not right. They've Got to take on us themselves. Bullying starts from when the baby's born. It starts with the parents, it starts with the education system and it continues to go through. So the problem is once it's gone through the education system, because it's so soft and ridiculous, it Molly coddles kids, it doesn't treat them discipline at all. It's ridiculous. People are expected to start controlling their children or teachers how to control children. It's just beyond me these days. I just don't know how teachers put up with the tantrums, the screaming, the ranting, the railing, you know, you can't touch me. I'll report you to the Childline. That was off a four year old. I got once a four year old. You can't touch me. I'll report you to Childline. That was a full year old. If that's the type of mentality at 4. You know, I think, if I can just interrupt because I think this is a good place to open up the discussion because I think you've come, you know, it starts at home, potentially there's not enough discipline. Then into the school, as you say, if the school can't do anything, then the child gets more and more power and feels they have got the right to do whatever they want to do and they turn on each other. If a teacher can't, I think it's the right. But what I think it is, it becomes a norm to them. Yeah. So they don't think. Some people, some of them, the majority of them I would say, don't realize they're bullying. They just think they're being funny or they're being humorous. These are the odd ones that know they're a bullies. They're the minority. But the majority of bullies, I would say a lot of it is to do with words and what they're saying. And most of them say it not in a bullying sight but in a pure laughing and joking situation as they've offended somebody in the workplace by saying what they've said. So, Bernadette, how would you see changes to be made? Let's just talk about the early days. You know, you're both developing this amazing site and if there's a learning, how can parents learn to look after their children? Particularly we have got a number of single parents that find it difficult to both look after the children and to discipline them. But what do you see, Benedict? Gosh, Marie, that's a really, really hard question because, you know, some of the things Stephen said there are correct. Bullying can start at home, between Siblings, and it can continue through school. But as adults, we have the choice to make. And sometimes we know we're bullies and we play on that. But how single parents, or any kind of parents actually, not just single parents, can manage bullying? I think Steve would agree with me. In this day and age, Maria, it's become very difficult. You know, parents are not allowed to chastise children in the way that was done in the olden days. And children are tutored in school as to what they can do if they don't like what a parent is saying to them. I honestly think the best way to deal with children and bullying is to point it out to them and do it back to them at a young age. When my girls were little, one of them went through a phase of biting and all I did was I gave her a little bite back until she realized her that's not nice. And it was the same with name calling back to them and teach them from a young age. It's not nice. It's not nice to do. It's not nice to receive. How society can put it right. Gosh, that is a $6 million question. Now I think it's almost gone too, for parents to be able to get control again. You take it to the business situation, Bea. You've just said how society gonna put it right? So how on earth is a person in business that's got a lot of responsibilities as well gonna put it right in the business workplace? It's a chicken egg situation. You know, do you prevent it before it gets to the workplace, or did you get people out that workplace to try and put them right once they've gone through a system of doing it as treating it as being norm? This is the problem, Stephen, in the workplace. As you know, workplaces these days are supposed to have an anti bullying policy in place. More work for the employer. But even with that in place, that's just a policy that's in place. It doesn't stop bullying. It just gives people a systematic approach in how to deal with the bullying if it goes on. But sometimes, let's just briefly come back to children. There was an article last year about parents being afraid to say what somebody titled the N word. And the N word, as you know, has many connotations. But this was many parents are afraid to say no to a child. And so if they grow and they go to a school where the child teachers are afraid to say no because of all the privileges that children are given and the power they're given, and then you get into Work, the workplace has no option but to install some means of eradicating the bullying. You have no choice, Steve. As a business owner, you've got to deal with it in one form or another. Well, who's got. Who should bear the cost of that? No, I agree, but why should the employer bear the cost of that? So they can work at the job. Work at that place. They should say, well, if you're a sign of a bullying for six months, you're sacked. Don't get a job now, then you get. Then you could get done for discrimination. Yeah, but within a certain time frame, you can and you still have the ability. But what happens when bullying actually stems from the top? In my experience at work, and you may notice this, that people often mimic the person at the top. The alpha person, male or female, is often mimicked. And if you do telephone sales, you'll notice the people on the telephone all sound like their boss. Oh, yes. Yeah. They will always choose, employ the person that sounds like them or represents them closest. And in the entertainment industry, which I'm in also, it's endemic, the bullying that happens in certain elements of the industry. People who are agents are bullied and they in turn, not all of them, but it happens that there is bullying that takes place and it becomes an acceptable trait. When I was talking to somebody about business recently, he said, well, that's what happens in business. What's the matter with you? And I said, but we're not trained like that in schools. For example, if you go to Cambridge or Oxford University to talk about training people to go into entrepreneurship, they're not taught about this type of psychological abuse. They're not talk about how to negotiate or how to deal on this level with bullies. So how, if we were to have a holy grail, Steve and Bernadette, of changing the workplace to prevent. I know this is early days to talk about this in this discussion, but that's what we're aiming for. What can we do and what can we recognise in the workplace that can encourage bullying? Can I just take you one step back there? And you've just mentioned people at the top. The MD, the chairman's, the MDs, the directors. Yeah, yeah. They're bullied far more than any person in that workplace. They're bullied by the banks, they're bullied by the tax, they're bullied by the vat, they're bullied by the pressure and peer pressure those three companies put on a company. You don't pay your tax. It's a different form of bullying. So they're actually being bullied because they can't listen to reason, that they can't afford to pay them because somebody's gone bust on them. The tax and the VAT pay eye banks still want money or you sign more money over to them, you sign your assets. So that is a very big form of bullying. But people don't see it that way. The banks bully businesses massively and so does the government bullies. The biggest bullies are the government, the banks, the tax, the vat. So when you say the top people, they're bullied far more than the people below. They have bullied in a different way. We've identified it. What changes would you. I agree with you, by the way. I know that in, you know, the 2008 Royal bank of Scotland. Yeah. How they. They are. They've now been made to repay people. But they bullied people terribly with their business. Yeah, yeah. They put the interest rate up to. Was doing fine. It went up 16%. Not for mortgages, but those businesses that they felt they could take the businesses away and sell them, they did exactly that. So what changes would you make? I agree that you've got all these areas because as a business owner you have to understand HMRC tax, banks, et cetera. What changes would you make in those areas? Well, look, certainly over the last, I would say 18 months, the government has started to realise they can't be. I have noticed they're not as tough certainly as they was 10 years ago. They are. They tend to be a bit more flexible now because they started to realise, well, they'll just go bust and we're not. Not only that, the number of people they employ, we're going to have to pay them dull. So they go on the door or benefits or whatever. So they are starting a little bit. So it's difficult because I would imagine, especially people that run their own businesses have this all the time. So sometimes they will get aggressive and angry and probably not realize it. But it's very difficult, I would imagine. Well, I don't. I know it's very difficult. You know, you've just had a company go bust on you for £50,000 and the next thing somebody comes, well, I want it, and you just feel like telling them to bugger off. I've got more, more important things at the moment to worry about because I've had a big knock or else if I don't get this one sorted out, you won't be working the next few weeks. So do you think employees should be taught about the stresses of the business owner as well. Yeah, I think we should, I think, yeah, I think it's a good idea. Because the trouble is a lot of people think it's dead easy to run a business. There's no, you know, they see all the business people making money and they think, oh, look at them having a jolly. I think they've got to have a two way street. Well, hang on, have they got there? Is my house signed up to the bank? No. Well, is it? Are you signing up to me? 90% of the MDs have got their houses or directors signed up to the bank just to run that business. And if that business calls, so does the house. There's a lot of things that the employers don't realise go on in business. So it's a case of educating both parties, but it's also a case of if you want people to be more sympathetic, you have to relieve some sort of responsibilities so that person can partake in that activity. Steve is very right there, Maria, in what he's saying. In fact, I have got a few stats for you and I don't much like quoting stats because they change all the time and where on earth they get these stats from I'll never know. But 6% of employers in this country are bullied by their own staff and the reasons behind that could be they could have something personal on the employer or their relatives, husbands and partners could work for a competitor and they want to not have their boss do well in order to bring them down with the hope that they themselves can rise up the power chain. It's interesting that about 70% of bullies are male and 30% are female. Female. Both male and female bullies are more likely to target women and protective groups are more frequently bullied. By that we mean the minority groups and only 19% of people bullied in the UK are white. That's a whole other discussion there on race discrimination and what have you. But these are just some of the facts from acas. So to start putting things right, there are some simple things that all companies can do and create a very anti bullying culture that are cost effective. For example, they can put posters up describing what is bullying, what is acceptable and what is not. They can also put posters up simply saying if you feel you're being bullied, here is the email. Email this person or phone this person within the organization so that people know that this is dealt with. All employees have to be given what you call it is. When you start working for a company and you get a handbook and that handbook should contain a policy on bullying and every person should ask for that handbook. If it isn't there, that's when they need to reach out to people like Steve and I or our companies and ask, or even phone ACAS and ask, what are anti bullying policies? Can we download a template? So it needs to begin there. And that's the simplest way to start with. Bring it out in the open, educate people as to what is not acceptable and from there you can start to move forward. That is such a minor way because as Steve said, the employers are so overwhelmed with everything that's happening around them, they are being bullied too. Trouble with that, when you're talking then about every business being generic, every business, it's not the same big, oh, no, the men will be effing and jeffing, spitting on the floor, doing all sorts, because that's what builders do. We're in the car having a pee. Building site, say they don't do it if they're honest. Yes, they do it all the time. And they'll be swearing on that site. Now, what happens if a lady comes on an object? And here's a, you know, the swearing on the site and it does go on. Now, they then come into an environment that is basically male dominated and then want to change the way the whole site works. So it's difficult to generate, say, bullying. What is bullying is bullying when somebody comes into the workplace and says to you, well, I don't want you to do this because it offends me and I feel uncomfortable. So the rest of the workflow stops while one person thinks is offensive or that is actually it. Steve, if somebody, male or female, verbalises to anybody else in that work situation that they're uncomfortable, if that person then reports that to acas, everything has to change because of that one person, is it fair? No, that's the problem. Get back to the old situation we were talking about before. How are you going to stop it? How are you going to stop it? Okay, can I just come in here? When I was in my late teens, I worked in print works. I was the tea girl and this was in Watford. So I was just leaving school and going into working before I went into, you know, trained to teach and so on. So. And when I took the tea round the factory floor, the foreman used to say, oi, oi, boys, language lady present. And they all stopped swearing when I was serving tea, which I thought actually was lovely. I was brought up on a councilor's date, so, you know, I was used to people Swearing and things. I didn't swear myself. That's not my game. But, you know, I was aware that that's what men do. I wouldn't complain about it, but there were certain social ethics, if you like, that everybody adhered to. So even in the East End, when you've got the East End mob, they would have certain rules towards women. Now those seem to have disappeared. All that social, you know, sort of the way we speak to each other, the bullying on the street, what is expected. So for me, if people adhere to that, so if I'm. If I go onto a building site, if I have to do any work there, of course, or some. If you employ builders and they're swearing, they should stop swearing when you're around, you shouldn't, though. If I become a builder, I don't expect them to stop swearing. It's the same in my comedy clubs. Men, comedians, if they swore on stage, that's what they did. They would rarely, you know, if they swore in the dressing room, that's what they did. If I walked into the dressing room, they would consider their language. And I think we've got to take some responsibility. This is what I'm after more than anything is how do you take personal responsibility for the fact that you are a bully or that you encounter somebody bullying. So I know there is this talk about ACAs and what they can do. I think that gets too far because it implicates. As soon as somebody writes something in a business, you've got to act on it and becomes very onerous, as you're saying, Steve. You know, it makes it so incredibly difficult. But there are things that happen at work that encourage bullying, you know, where people. Who's the first to sell so many, you know, sort of so many products or something, but it's done in a competitive attitude, as opposed to competitive, friendly attitude. It's a game you've got to win at all costs, as opposed to a game that we all join in on and we all benefit from. And in my experience in the boardroom as well, it's a lot of people vying against one another to be the best, as opposed to making the company the best. So it's a very selfish attitude and I think that can lead to bullying even further. So this is the type of experiences I've had at work. Would you agree with that? Well, it's a case of survival, of pisses, dog eat dog. And that's the trouble. That's the. That the culture is that what is. Well, is that's what our Culture is dog eat dog, end of story. Especially in business. Especially in business. They have no real friends in business. It's dog eat dog. You're only as good at your last job and you're only as good if you get paid from the last job. So how we could change that is very, very difficult. And the only way I could see it ever being changed is we'd have to start right from the very beginning. And that's where we need to start to stop the bullies coming through into society. You're never going to stop them all, ever. It's like people say, like pedophiles, you'll never ever stop them, ever. And all this, all the no smacking a kid, no taking a photograph stuff, there's more pedophiles than ever there's ever been. So all these law, the laws are brought in to so called protect kids has totally done the opposite. So I don't know what to suggest, how much a lot doesn't. This dog eat dog attitude, if you're all working for a business and you consider the business as opposed to a dog eat dog attitude within the business, you're all looking to make the business better, to grow something together is better than one person standing out. Because you can't really make a business work if you're all having infighting. Do you agree with that, Bernadette? Very true. That's true. You're far better, as I say, working together. The economics of this country at the moment and what's going to happen in the next six months will be absolutely disastrous in six months time. Absolutely. So the economic viability and the stuff that you're going to try and put in place, people aren't going to even be bothered. They'll be so worried about trying to survive the next 12 to 18 months. From a business point of view, the most smit small to medium businesses will be looking a way to survive, just a way to survive to get through the next 12 to 18 months. So do you think bullying is going to increase? Well, I'll say one thing, this lockdown that the government brought in has certainly increased it. Yes, because it brought us a lot of frustration, a lot of anger. And yeah, when people go back into work, they'll be very frustrated, very angry. A lot of people have been getting laid off. So they'll be frustrated, angry. They might go into bullying or be more aggressive towards people because they've just lost their jobs. So it's a massive, massive. Niall said it's a massive can of worms. There's so many different factors going on within the UK that's going to affect massively bullying. It's going to go up massively. So do you think bullying is an external expression of aggression? Depression is an internal expression of aggression to some people say. So do you think that's what happens inside somebody if you don't express it externally or go internally? Bernadette yes. What can often happen with short term, medium term and long term bullying is that it can cause depression, but it also causes a whole array of other physical and mental illnesses. Now, a clinical diagnosis of long term mental health from bullying can include some of these and these probably might be quite shocking, but if you have depression, it will make it worse. It can cause postnatal depression. Stress, anxiety, phobias that you've never had before can suddenly come up. Personality disorders can be caused by bullying. Schizophrenia can show its head, it can expostulate, speed up dementia, which might not have been obvious before eating disorders. Post traumatic stress disorders can also start to weird our head long time after the bullying is stopping. So while people might think that bullying is like this thing that's so private to one person, it really isn't. It can start to manifest very physically as well. That's where the employers start to get into big trouble. If that employee then goes to the doctor and gets diagnosed with any one of those, and that wasn't even an exhaustive list, and then that employee goes to acas, that's when the company gets into big, big trouble. This can all start to happen when the employer isn't aware of the Equality act and what the law says on protecting people against harassment and bullying in the workplace. So the poor employer is going to get it from all ends. And sometimes even if that employer reaches out to try and help somebody that he thinks is suffering or might even be bullying, the employer then puts himself at risk of from everybody else in the office who either want to jump on the bandwagon or they might point towards favoritism. It's a very delicate subject and it has to be dealt with so carefully to protect both the employee and the employer. So you should I hear what you're saying, Steve, and that's your analysis. Bernadette is so helpful to give the details, especially with ACAS and the Equality Act. But Steve, somebody was telling me just recently that they had a company and the reason he folded or sold the company was because he couldn't handle, it was too heavy a burden to handle the problems of the staff. Is there something that could be put, let's Take it from where we are today. We know what should be done. What can be done today. What advice can we give to small and medium businesses or people in business that they should recognise about bullying and the part they play in it, or the part that they may notice that it's going on? What can happen, Steve, today? That's a very good question. Bring in legislation to help employers, because it's all about the employees at the minute and not much out there to educate employers. I think that'd be a bloody good start, which would be a good start to educate employers. Definitely. It's always good. But they've got to make time to do it. Fair enough, let's make time. But again, you get back to the old cost scenario. Let's put all these people in place, right? So the one for bullying, the one for this, we'll have all that in place. We'll have to put our prices up now or we'll have to increase this, or we'll have to, you know, manufacturing costs have gone up and we're not competitive, so we don't get the orders. So where is the happy medium? You know, every boss, I'd like to do it, trust me. Right, first of all, you haven't got the finances to do it. No one needs the finances to pay these people to come in small to medium have no way of employing these type of people to come in and help or advise. And it's very wrong to expect employers to know how to deal with mental health issues, how to spot mental health issues, how to do this, which is. All right, let's get somebody else into the company to do it as well. Fine, we'll get them trained up to do it. Oh, hang on. What about now? We've got bullying. All right, okay, right, okay, that's another one we're going to have to sort out. And then. Oh, we're going to have now sexual harassment. Oh, right, that's another one we'll have to try and sort out. Where does the employer's responsibility stop and the employees start taking a little bit of ownership rather than squealing because somebody swore in front of them or touched the bum in a laugh and a joke. Years ago that was acceptable. Now you can't do it. It's fine. I mean, when I used to work factories full of women, I'll tell you what, there was nothing worse nor embarrassing walking through a factory full of women. Trust me, I'll tell you, I've worked in a factory. I was really embarrassed. What's your feeling about mental Health charities, do you think they give enough attention to business and what's happening in business? Because there are so many mental health charities and they're not aware of what needs to happen within business and yet people need businesses to keep going. I mean, we've only got about, as you say, a small number of businesses that have to drive the whole country with new income and yet they're not really given the support. Can we turn to mental health charities and put more pressure on them? No, no, I would agree with Steve. Not, you know, they're just, if you want to go on to mental health charity websites, solution. To another website and don't give you a solution to the problem, solution, should they? Well, the end of the day, the people that are asking for the help need to know where to go and where to get it. Then they get the problem is, well, why is the NHS not paying for counselling? They don't want to, can't afford it. So let's make the responsibility to the employees for their counselling, see how they like it. I'll put the onus on the employers to make sure that they have their mental health right. Not only governments, the employers. So from an employer point of view, it's the government that's got to change its policies and be more saying, right, okay, we'll provide you with these people because we've created the problem and we'll provide you with the people to put in your workplace. Fine. Why can't the government come up with something like that? Well, that's a good idea. Do you agree with that, Bernadette? Oh, I very much think so. Yes, I do. I agree charities do great work, but when it comes to fine tuning and isolating a particular problem like bullying, all they can do is give general advice and it is so vague and it can be found anywhere on the Internet. Steve is right. This needs to be tackled from a governmental level and filtered down in a very understandable way to employers and employees so they understand exactly where the borders are. All this grey zone area needs to stop. There needs to be very, very clear guidelines as to what is bullying and what are the remedies for it. And should employees also, within their handbook, be given an idea of how they themselves can stop bullying, for example? It's much easier sometimes to, in your case, Bernadette, had you not had the other staff members standing up for you, you would perhaps be in a different situation about what happened at that moment, because if other people don't recognize it on your behalf, you may be isolated and feel that it's just happening to you and there's something wrong with you. Yeah. I was reading a paper last week from a well known psychiatrist and, and he said that the easiest way for you to ask yourself if you are the bullier or being bullied is to pretend you're a fly on the wall, listen in on the conversation and look at the action. And if it causes you to raise your eyebrow, then check in with yourself because you are either being bullied or being a bullier. And that's probably quite good advice for people if they can see. I've had clients in my therapy room and sometimes, you know, if you see it in couples, whether it's male, male, you know, female, female, or you know, sort of male, female. And do I wonder whether therapists actually recognize that in the therapy room to stop people bullying each other in the therapy room, to give guidelines. So should we bring back what was in effect social. Much better social norms and better education and etiquette and behavior. Because I think that's what's missing in my therapy room. If somebody's bullying somebody else, I'll raise attention to that person or that couple to make them see what's actually happening. And so that doesn't happen in the therapy room. We don't have those social boundaries anymore. It's almost as if anything goes that there aren't the restrictions I think we should have back where you don't bully people in the street that people can step in. I had a guest, Scott Wright, who did step in to somebody who was actually punching a woman on the street and he actually stepped in. We're not allowed to step in and do that. That comes through the law or that was the case, if you recall. Do you think we need to change social etiquette? I think to a certain extent, yes. But what has happened now is this country has got absolutely non common sense and that's created massive problems that creates bullying because there's no common sense anymore. Everything is so hyper covered with rules and regulations that actual common sense. If a person falls off a ladder or a building site or whatever and he's done something wrong going up that ladder at one point, common sense is, well, he should have known that. Why has he done that? But no, he's gone up and fallen. What's happened to common sense in this country? Where is it? I do think that I've seen this with again parents in the playground and I've seen it with my children growing up that we, a lot of parents are afraid to identify their own Children being wrong, it comes back to the N word, the no word. You know, all children have to learn from home. If they, if a parent can't identify or, or if a parent overcompensates for their own lives and wants to make their child's life perfect, they will never say no to a child. And I've seen bullying happen. And it doesn't matter where they come from, it doesn't matter how much money they've got. The discipline can happen anywhere. When I was brought up on my council estate, parents discipline their children and it wasn't heavy handed. And if slapping happened, it happened and it was just taken as a part of the discipline. But it wasn't, as I say, heavy handed. But discipline is very hard, as you say. The government stopped that, they prohibited that aspect. And again, it comes into the workplace where a woman, particularly if they start disciplining somebody in the office, it can be seen that worse because you should be the one that should be gentle, you should be kinder, you should be more maternal and people turn on you more. As a woman disciplining people in the office, you can be too blunt, too brusque, and you can be the bully. As you said earlier, Bernadette, if a woman is saying something, she can be seen as a bully just because she says no to somebody. Is that your experience? I think generally in the workplace today, employers have to walk a very fine line between positive criticism and negative criticism. And it's so difficult for them because they might be genuinely trying to, you know, give somebody constructive criticism, but it will be taken the wrong way because people won't deal with any form of criticism these days without kind of looking to their handbook to say, okay, can I sue this employer? He's bullying me or she's bullying me. I mean, when you look at it, it starts at the top in this country, look at the Ace of Commons with all those MPs shouting and ranting and raving at each other. That is a false bullying. They're trying to raise the voices above each other. That's bullying. That is bullying. No two ways about it. They're trying to drown somebody else's opinion down. Now, that to me is a form of bullying. Do you agree with that, Marie? Absolutely. I think that there's a lot of bullying that in my experience, the higher you go up on the business ladder, as you've said, Steve, there is a certain dog eat dog attitude in terms of one company in relation to another, but when it happens within a company, I think that's incredibly that is when it becomes an injury. It's a mental injury that can take place within a company, where a company has to take some sort of responsibility for actually creating a psychological injury for their staff. And yet it's also a staff member having enough about them to do the work themselves so that they don't create the injury themselves. It's the responsibility, stroke, injury line that I think we have to balance far too much because there aren't enough social rules that happen here. I think the other problem you've got, and this is, let's just say example, somebody's going through a divorce at home. Most traumatic experience of anybody's life, apparently. Going through divorce obviously impacts in work. No two ways about it. Something you could have said to that person six months ago might not have taken offense. Well, six months later, because they're going through a rough time and you don't know about it, you say the exact same thing and they've taken offence at it. So where does that actually stand? Because six months ago you said exactly the same thing that person, and they laughed and joked off it with you down the line. They're going through a real tough time and decided that's not a correct way to speak to me. So they go for a rough time at home and then brought it into the workplace. And then the employer of the workplace has to sort all that out. And it turns out it all boils down to they're going through a divorce. If somebody understands that aspect of somebody's life, if you have a closeness that the. The company becomes a bit of a community as well, where you can support each other, I think that a business can work better if it doesn't support each other. We then have problems. So businesses, instead of imploding one on top of another, or one person against another person, that support can become inherent. So both employees and employers need to be taught, and perhaps more employees need to be taught to be vigilant amongst each other, that if they see something that is seen as a helpful, positive thing as opposed to a critical aspect, the criticism can be so detrimental. And if you criticize somebody at work, it's the difference between or ask for help. It's how will this business use that against you? So can you have an external body that you can turn to? ACAS is one of them, but they always turn legal. But there should be external bodies that can give you advice of going back and handling the business situation and reporting it without you having to take the brunt end of that as well, because you could lose Your job by reporting somebody. If they find this is what this. I'll throw one open to you. This, Marie, this will get you thinking. Why shouldn't it be made compulsory for all employees to tell employers if anything is going on at home that might affect their work quality? So they have to. If they're going through a divorce, they have to tell the employer. Then the employer can put certain things in place, not guess. Especially, you know, if you've got 200 people, the employee should go in and say, my dad's just died, my mum's just died, I'm going to be a bit of a mess for you a few months. And so the employer then knows everything at the moment is. But the employer should know. Well, I'm sorry, I didn't know he was going through a divorce. I didn't know his mum had died. So why isn't it made the law that the employee, on any major stuff that will affect their work ethics, they notify the employer? It's a really interesting point that you met there, Steve, because it is actually what, probably not enforceable, but it would be a great thing if it could happen. The Equality Act 2010 at the minute stops employers from asking any form of personal questions. It is up to the employee to come out and talk to somebody about it, because the employer is not allowed to ask those questions correct. So he just has to guess. And then it gets everybody even more frustrated. So bullying and the other problems we have within the industry for the whole bullying country gets worse. So that is just an idea if. Why don't we think about something along those lines? So the employer does actually know that. Yes, I'm going through a tough time because my going through a divorce. I agree, Steve. Somebody was telling me they're on the build, you know, on the building side. And a recommended builder who was amazing with everybody else starts behaving in a dreadful way where his work is incomplete, it's measured incorrectly, everything's going wrong. And when they asked, is everything okay, do you need, you know, any help? No, no, no. And then they found out that they. The man was going through a divorce. Yeah. And absolutely right. I think there are absolutely certain areas of your life that totally will impact on all of your life. Divorce, you know, bereavement, everything like that. And it should be compulsory if to tell the, you know, your boss and the workplace that this is going on in a supportive manner, then you can turn on the support. But as you say, there's no way you can guess that all this is happening. No Quite strange, Marie and Steve, that the Equality act, sorry to keep bringing it up, but it actually illegal, basically, Steve, it protects the people. There's nine protected areas in the Equality act and they are age, employer can never ask about it and mustn't discriminate disabilities. Again, the employer is not allowed to ask on an applicant form about a disability. Gender reassignment area that you're just not allowed to ask. Questions about marriage and civil partnerships are a no go area. Pregnancy and maternity can be discussed if you need to have time off, but the ins and outs of the pregnancy, you can't in any way go against the person, race, religion, sex or sexual orientation. All the important things that we need to be talking to our employers about, if we're infected by any of those things we're not allowed to discuss. Sorry, am I hearing a time countdown happening here? We've got two minutes left. So from my point of view, because the government has brought the guidelines in, they're not working. They should look at changing them. They're not allowing employers to find out the problems with their employees, they're expecting them to be a superstar and working it out, mind reavers. So it puts on too much pressure on the employer, which is top down. If the person at the top does permeate down the company list, if you like the hierarchy, then it's inevitable. You're saying that if something happens at the top and the pressure is on at the top, it will inevitably permeate down to the bottom. So equally, we must hope, and we should ask the government to put something in place so that the employees also own up to what's happening in their lives, especially if they expect the company to support them. I must say, this conversation could go on for a long, long, long time because it's so fascinating and we have raised so many areas, I must say, Steve and Bernadette, and there is too much here to just deal with in an hour. But I just want to say thank you both, Bernadette Bruckner and Steve Jackson, and welcome to your new site, Counsellors Now. And also I want to thank you in advance for your offer of £100,000 worth of mental health courses which you can find on men's radio station and women's radio station. And thank you to all the listeners to youo Mind Matters. And remember, in truth, there is healing. Thank you. Thank you, Marie, it's been our pleasure.