Bullying & Harassment Policy template
A bullying and harassment policy defines the behaviour {{org.name}} will not tolerate at work, gives targets and witnesses clear routes to raise it, and sets out how complaints are investigated and resolved. It covers conduct between colleagues at every level — including managers — wherever work happens: on site, offsite, at work socials, and online.
The behaviours this policy addresses thrive on silence and ambiguity. Most people who experience bullying at work never formally report it. A policy that names the behaviour plainly, offers an informal route as well as a formal one, and visibly protects the people who speak up changes that calculation.
This template covers definitions and concrete examples, responsibilities, informal and formal routes, how investigations run, and how both parties are treated during and after a complaint.
Full text, ready to adapt.
Highlighted fields are placeholders — replace them with your organisation's specifics. A starting point, not legal advice.
Bullying & Harassment Policy
Policy · Company Policies
1. Purpose and scope
This policy applies to everyone working for {{org.name}} — employees, workers, agency staff, and contractors — and to behaviour towards colleagues in any setting connected to work: the workplace, client sites, travel, work socials, and online channels including group chats.
It also covers harassment of our staff by third parties such as customers and suppliers: report it under this policy and [name/role] will act, which may include warning or barring the third party.
2. Policy statement
{{org.name}} is committed to a workplace where everyone is treated with dignity and respect. Bullying and harassment are not tolerated in any form, from anyone, at any level — seniority protects nobody under this policy. Every complaint is taken seriously, handled as confidentially as a fair process allows, and nobody suffers a detriment for raising a genuine concern or supporting someone else's.
3. Definitions
- Bullying: offensive, intimidating, malicious, or insulting behaviour, or a misuse of power, that undermines, humiliates, or injures the person on the receiving end. It can be a pattern or a single serious incident.
- Harassment: unwanted conduct related to a protected characteristic that violates a person's dignity or creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating, or offensive environment — the definition used by the Equality Act 2010.
- Sexual harassment: unwanted conduct of a sexual nature with that same purpose or effect.
- Victimisation: treating someone badly because they made, supported, or gave evidence about a complaint.
- Not bullying: reasonable management action carried out fairly — honest performance feedback, reasonable instructions, and legitimate management of conduct or absence.
4. Examples of unacceptable behaviour
- Shouting at, ridiculing, or humiliating someone, especially in front of others.
- Spreading malicious rumours or deliberately excluding someone from meetings, communication, or social events.
- Offensive jokes or "banter" about age, disability, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, or any other protected characteristic.
- Unwanted physical contact, sexual comments, propositions, or the display or sharing of sexual material.
- Misusing seniority: setting someone up to fail, unreasonably removing responsibilities, or making threats connected to complaints.
- Pile-ons, mockery, or exclusion in group chats or on social media — online behaviour is covered exactly as offline behaviour.
5. Responsibilities
- [Name/role] owns this policy, ensures complaints are resourced and handled properly, and reports themes to [owner/board].
- Managers set the standard, act on what they see and hear without waiting for a formal complaint, and never dismiss concerns as personality clashes.
- Everyone treats colleagues with respect, and challenges or reports behaviour that falls short — bystanders who speak up are protected by this policy too.
6. Raising a concern
- 1If you feel safe and comfortable doing so, tell the person their behaviour is unwelcome and ask them to stop — sometimes this resolves it. This step is entirely optional.
- 2Otherwise, or if it continues, speak informally to your manager or to [named contact]; they can advise, speak to the person, or arrange mediation with your agreement.
- 3To raise the matter formally, put your complaint in writing to [name/role] — or, if it concerns them, to [alternative name/role] — describing what happened, when, and any witnesses.
- 4Formal complaints are handled under the grievance procedure, with the adaptations in this policy, including the right to be accompanied at any meeting.
- 5Support is available to you throughout from [named contact/EAP details], whether or not you raise a formal complaint.
7. Investigation and outcomes
Formal complaints are investigated promptly and confidentially by someone impartial — [name/role, or an external investigator for senior or complex cases]. Both parties are heard, witnesses are interviewed, and interim measures such as adjusting duties or separating the parties may be used; these are protective, not punitive, and are not applied in a way that disadvantages the complainant.
Where a complaint is upheld, action follows under the disciplinary policy — serious harassment is gross misconduct — alongside any wider fixes such as training or supervision changes. Where a complaint made in good faith is not upheld, no action is taken against the complainant and working arrangements are rebuilt with support for both parties. Deliberately false or malicious complaints are dealt with under the disciplinary policy.
8. Training, records, and review
This policy is covered at induction and in refresher training every [period]; managers receive additional training on spotting problems early and handling complaints. Complaint records are stored confidentially in [system/location], separate from general personnel files, in line with our data retention policy.
[Name/role] reviews anonymised complaint themes [frequency] and this policy is reviewed [frequency, e.g. annually] — including our preventive steps against sexual harassment. Next review due: [date].
How to adapt this template.
Name at least two people who can receive complaints, at different levels, so nobody has to complain to the person the complaint is about.
Rewrite the examples section with the behaviours most likely in your setting — a kitchen, a ward, and a site cabin have different failure modes.
Decide now who investigates complaints about the most senior person, even if that answer is an external HR adviser, and write it in.
Run the training as discussion of borderline scenarios, not a slide deck — the grey areas are where behaviour actually changes.
Record the preventive steps you take against sexual harassment — training dates, risk conversations, policy reviews — as evidence of the proactive duty.
Turn this template into trained, proven behaviour
A policy in a drawer proves nothing. In TrainedTeam this template becomes assigned training with knowledge checks, e-signature acknowledgments, version history, and an audit-ready record of who completed what, when.
Bullying & Harassment Policy template FAQs
Is a bullying and harassment policy a legal requirement in the UK?
No statute mandates the document, but the legal pressure is real: employers can be liable for harassment under the Equality Act 2010 unless they took reasonable steps to prevent it, and UK law now places a proactive duty on employers to prevent sexual harassment. A communicated policy with training is the practical baseline for both.
What is the difference between bullying and harassment?
Harassment is unwanted conduct related to a protected characteristic, or of a sexual nature, and is unlawful under the Equality Act 2010. Bullying is the broader category — intimidating or humiliating behaviour of any kind — with no standalone legal definition, but it still breaches this policy, the employer's duty of care, and often the employment contract.
Is "banter" harassment?
It can be. The legal test looks at the effect of the conduct on the person receiving it, viewed reasonably — not at whether the speaker meant it as a joke. Repeated jokes about someone's accent, age, or sex can create exactly the degrading environment the Equality Act 2010 describes, and "everyone laughs along" is what exclusion often looks like from the outside.
Is performance management by a manager bullying?
Fair, evidence-based performance management — honest feedback, reasonable targets, following the capability or disciplinary procedures — is not bullying, and this policy says so to protect managers doing their jobs. The manner can cross the line: shouting, humiliation in front of others, or singling one person out for treatment nobody else gets.
What if the complaint is about the owner or most senior manager?
The policy must answer this before it happens: name an alternative recipient and an independent investigator, such as an external HR consultant. A policy in which every route leads to the subject of the complaint will simply not be used — and the silence will look like the absence of a problem until it very suddenly is not.
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