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Listener discretion advised - this story has references to suicide.
After more than two decades raking in awards as a community journalist and sports editor, most recently with Hawkes Bay Today, Anendra Singh's journalism career came to an end last year with redundancies across the media industry being announced.
Starting out his career with the Fiji times in Suva, Anendra came to New Zealand in the 1980s. Over the years Anendra gathered insights into several incidences of harassment and bullying in workplaces in provincial New Zealand, and writing a book was the obvious next step. This year he wrote his debut novel Workplace Bullying: The Beat Up.
The book follows the stories of a few magazine reporters as they go through experiences of harassment and bullying by colleagues and managers.
"I based all my interviews on on real cases," said Singh, "I've spoken to journalists and people in the media industry who have encountered these experiences. I've changed the identities, I've changed the location. I've changed to a certain degree the industry, but stayed in the media field."
"All the cases in my book have happened. Immigrants become vulnerable because one of the biggest issues is that you are coming into an environment from overseas where you have no support or network. (For some) your immigrant status depends on the report of your employees."
And Singh said it is worse in the provinces.
According to 2019 Stats NZ figures, one in five workers are affected by workplace bullying and harassment each year. That's about 11% of Kiwi workers or 300,000 people.
Asians and Maori report a 13% rate of discrimination or bullying, while Pacific and European ethnic groups both had rates of 11%. Across all ethnic groups, women reported higher rates than men. The rate for Maori women was twice that of Maori men (8%)
"One of the one of the most revealing things for me was when I went out on my book launch earlier this year," said Singh, "I saw people who were just a wreck. I mean, it's written all over their faces. They are consulting doctors and psychologists and such to get their lives back on track because they don't know how to deal with it."
Allan Halse, two-time nominee for New Zealander of the year, runs Culture Safe NZ, an organisation advocating for anti-bullying in workplaces.
"We know that there's a direct link from bullying to mental health and suicide. Our big issue has been we have to stop the bullying to prevent mental health harm," said Halse.
The majority of people engaging his company's services are services suffer from depression, anxiety or PTSD.
"A staggering 89% of our clients are already in the mental health system when they come to us. The fact that they're coming to us, reflects the fact that there's nowhere else for them to go" said Halse.
New Zealand has some of the highest rates of bullying in the developed world.
What people like Allan Halse and and Anendra Singh are calling for is an independent institution for intervention, not just a union or HR departments, but something like the UK's ACAS that intervenes on behalf of employees.
"If you were serious about addressing mental health, you would prevent people being pushed into mental health systems. To me it's a no brainer" said Halse.
In a written response to the question of what mechanisms are in place to combat high rates of bullying in New Zealand, Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Michael Wood, said: "MBIE has released an issues paper focused on better understanding the issues contributing to New Zealand's high rate of bullying and harassment at work. The consultation will be used to shape improvements to the services and information provided by WorkSafe and MBI. Ease employment services."
He says officials are analysing the feedback received from the public and will provide advice to next steps.
