The Cabinet Office is funding a one-year extension to a project which is helping departments to be more “ready” to tackle bullying, harassment and discrimination (BHD) at work.
Loughborough University researchers have created more than 300 action plans for the civil service as part of the project to help departments prevent bullying at work .
Dr Chloë Gough, Dr Iain Coyne and Professor Fehmidah Munir, of Loughborough Business School, began working with the Cabinet Office on the project in January 2023.
Gough is working in the Cabinet Office on secondment from the University of Loughborough as head of organisational readiness. Using a tool she created during her PhD, she has worked with 16 government departments to improve their “readiness” to prevent and address BHD.
“Readiness” refers to how capable and authentically motivated civil servants believe their departments are to effectively address and prevent BHD.
The tool enables organisations to identify factors within the work environment that threaten the success of prospective interventions focused on preventing and addressing BHD. Each assessment is tailored to the organisation involved and includes recommendations to tackle inefficiencies identified within each specific work context that would otherwise derail an intervention.
Gough said: “The best way to think of readiness for change is like a flower. When it struggles to grow, we typically change the environment and not the flower.
“But what we see in BHD intervention practice is the repetitive process of planting flowers (interventions), watching them die, pulling them out and planting more, without considering how the soil (work context) is stifling growth.
“So, this work is very much focused on shifting this narrative and educating organisations on how to prepare that soil before planting anything.”
So far, the tool has been used by 10,000 civil servants.
Jason Ghaboos, deputy director of employee experience and people performance in the Cabinet Office’s Government People Group, said: “The civil service is committed to tackling bullying, harassment and discrimination where it arises. Dr Gough's work has provided a refreshing, innovative, insightful and impactful lens to approaching BHD in organisations by providing an ability to understand how to better prepare and plan BHD interventions.”
He added that researchers have also provided “the necessary framing to ensure efforts are significant, successful and sustained”.