More than just a few bad apples: The need for a risk management approach to the problem of workplace bullying in the UK’s television industry.

Abstract

Workplace bullying is an endemic problem in the UK television industry, with a number of high-profile cases making recent headlines. According to State of Play survey, conducted by the authors in 2021, a staggering 93% of professionals in unscripted television have experienced or witnessed bullying or harassment at work. When analysing the contributions of the 1184 television professionals who responded to the survey, it became apparent that bullying in TV is not just a matter of ‘a few bad apples’: it is systemic. The nature of television work, the organisational structures that underpin it and the culture of the industry create a set of conditions that make bullying particularly likely, and particularly difficult to combat. And unsurprisingly, members of those groups most likely to experience bullying are precisely those groups that are already under-represented in the industry. Current management practices in television production, which were the focus of our report, are not helping. In fact they are making the situation worse. Researchers in the field of organisational behaviour have identified specific job characteristics and organisational factors that create a higher risk of workplace bullying - as well as management approaches that exacerbate that risk. In this paper we will demonstrate the extent to which work in the television industry is typically characterised by a high incidence of such risk factors. We will argue for a proactive approach to reducing these risk factors, and, in particular, for the development of professional management training and transformative management practices across the industry. The result, we suggest, would be far fewer ‘bad apples’.