By encouraging teams to adopt practices such as team-based Codes of Conduct, embracing ‘gentle corrections’ and updating organisational operating rhythms, HR practitioners can help to set the foundations for strong bystander cultures.

In many organisations, bystander training is treated as a “one-and-done” risk and compliance exercise – a checkbox that sits gathering digital dust until the next annual review. 

However, true bystander intervention is not just about a single heroic moment of standing up to a transgressor; it is a complex, multi-layered cultural muscle.

According to Dr Laura Jennings, a Research Fellow at the Australian Centre for Gender Equality and Inclusion at the University of Sydney, effective bystanding is about more than just responding in the moment to an altercation. 

“I think we often think it’s just standing up to that transgressor immediately and in the moment. Potentially, it’s not. There’s a whole range of activities that bystanders can do.”

For example, checking in on a target’s emotional welfare after the event is just as vital as intervening in the moment, she says. 

Intervention can also be as subtle as physically standing beside a colleague to offer silent solidarity or using a distraction to de-escalate a transgressor’s behaviour, says Jennings, who is speaking at AHRI’s webinar, Women, Wellbeing & Workload: Thriving Women, Thriving Workplaces on Wednesday 4 March.

This nuanced approach is essential because a primary barrier to action is often a lack of psychological safety; knowing there are private or non-confrontational ways to help allow employees to support their peers without the fear of an overt altercation, says Jennings.

Having robust frameworks in place is critical, she adds, as, according to her research, up to 80 per cent of instances where bystanders intervene result in negative outcomes. Whereas for the targets of the behaviour,  90 per cent of the repercussions are positive. 

“It’s a very positive thing for targets, but for bystanders, it’s a real risk.”

What can HR practitioners do to lessen this risk? Jennings shares some tips below.

Policy and practice decoupling

The biggest barrier to bystander intervention is often what Jennings calls “policy and practice decoupling”.

This occurs when an organisation’s formal policies promise one thing, but daily practices deliver another.

“When we’ve got a policy that’s saying something and then we’ve got practices that are doing something else… we can’t trust we’re supported because people aren’t walking the talk,” she says. 

If the culture does not support intervention, individual moral codes or personality traits are often “vetoed” by the environment.

There are also wellbeing and talent risks involved, she adds. 

“When people don’t intervene or don’t feel safe enough to intervene, the regret they feel about that and the impact that has on their wellbeing is very, very strong. They feel ashamed that they didn’t step in.”

Employees, in some cases, ended up leaving their organisations due to what felt like a “personal failing”, she adds. While Jennings frames this as an observation from her studies, rather than a formal finding, she says retention and attrition risks associated with poor bystander cultures should raise a red flag for organisations.

“[These employees] didn’t feel they had the strength to live with that incongruence within themselves. We found that many of them reported that they then went on to leave the organisation, I believe, for two factors. One is they didn’t want to be in an organisation where that [behaviour] was allowed, but it also made them realise that they weren’t operating in a safe environment where they could be themselves.”

“When we’ve got a policy that’s saying something and then we’ve got practices that are doing something else… we can’t trust we’re supported because people aren’t walking the talk.” – Dr Laura Jennings

Practical steps for HR to create effective bystander cultures

To design more effective bystander cultures, HR can help organisations to move from “outsourcing” the responsibility of intervention to the individual and instead embed it into the organisational fabric.

Jennings says this could look like:

1. Baking intervention into organisational operating rhythms

• Conduct regular check-ins: One organisation Jennings studied required every team to go through a “checkbox list” every six months to discuss how they would stand up for one another
  
  “It wasn’t necessarily about workplace mistreatment, but by its very nature, it ends up encapsulating that exactly. We can have an issue where bystanding can be viewed strictly as a DEI activity, and as we know, there can be backlash to DEI initiatives. So baking it into a much larger agenda focused on respectful workplace behaviours is a far stronger way to lead.” 
• Align with risk and compliance: Framing intervention within “strong risk and compliance cultures” – such as in an investment bank or a construction site – that already encourages speaking up about investments, physical safety or whistleblowing makes the behaviour feel natural.
  
  Being an effective bystander then essentially just becomes another component of an organisation’s well-established safety culture.

2. Co-create team-based rituals ‘codes of conduct’

Universal policies can often feel too broad. Jennings recalls one organisation that she interviewed for her research where the teams created their own Code of Conduct.

“They got together and talked about things like: ‘When this happened, how do we show up for each other? What should we do if mistreatment happens?’

Workplace mistreatment often happens in physically demanding sites, she adds.

“When we talked to one group of FIFO workers, they told us that [following a conflict], they just needed time to decompress. So, in their Code of Conduct, they designed a process where if you went to sit in one of the utes and put up a sign with a smiley face on the window, that meant ‘Do not approach’. It was an [agreed upon] way to give people a ten-minute breather.”

3. The power of ‘gentle correction’

Culture is set by how leaders handle mistakes. Jennings highlights an example where a non-Indigenous leader used the wrong terminology and called their speech a ‘Welcome to Country’ and was “gently corrected” by another leader, in the moment, that they meant an ‘Acknowledgement of Country’.

“It was an example of someone standing up for something in a gentle way that modelled exactly how to intervene, while proving it was safe to do so. 

“This highlights a critical component of a healthy culture: the psychological safety for a leader to make a mistake and be gently corrected without ramifications. When that accountability is modelled at the top, it cascades throughout the organisation, reinforcing that everyone has the permission to speak up.”

Supporting the transgressors

Another key finding from Jenning’s research found that for bystander intervention to lead to lasting behavioural change, the process must be rooted in perceived fairness, even for the person being corrected.

Her research suggests that when a transgressor feels a “pull up” is fair, they are far more likely to take accountability and alter their conduct. Conversely, if an intervention feels like an unfair “call out” – particularly if others are committing the same acts without consequence – the individual may become defiant and actually increase the problematic behaviour. 

“One great example comes from the employees I was speaking to [for my research]. She swore 

a lot on site, and her supervisor was like, ‘You swear too much, you’re going to get sacked.’ But the [transgressor] was witnessing everyone else around her swear the same, if not more than her, but she was called out for it. She sat there and said, ‘Well, stuff you’ and she doubled down and became really defiant in her swearing.” 

A sense of fairness serves as the essential “window to accountability”. By ensuring that corrections are brief, consistent and supportive, organisations can prevent transgressors from feeling unsafe or targeted.

Ultimately, a culture that balances accountability with fairness ensures the transgressor feels supported by their supervisor and safe in the organisation, fostering an environment where they can learn from mistakes rather than exiting the business in a state of resentment.

Finally, a bystander culture fails if a transgressor immediately becomes defensive. Jennings advocates for “curiosity” as the best doorway to building empathy.

“It’s a conversation that doesn’t immediately go to ‘what you did was wrong,'” she says. Instead, HR and managers should ask:

• “Can you explain to me why you said that?”
• “Did you see the response of that person?”
• “How do you think it made them feel?”

By being curious rather than accusatory, you assist the transgressor in being curious about their own impact, says Jennings. This creates empathy and lasting behavioural change.

If you suspect an employee has engaged in misconduct, what should you do next? AHRI’s Investigating Workplace Misconduct course can provide some answers.