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THERE ARE SOME serious problems with the work culture at the National Museum of Ireland, according to an employee wellbeing report and a psychotherapist who worked with the institution.
One in five National Museum employees said they are “often” or “always” subjected to bullying. Another 20% are “sometimes” the victims of bullying, while one employee complained of having to deal with “bullies and perverts”.
The findings are contained in a Work Positive Profile Management Report obtained by RTÉ.
Stephanie Regan, a psychologist who worked with the institution between 2008 and 2012, told RTÉ Drivetime the atmosphere remains “toxic” at the museum.
“Over time I heard a number of stories that were very disturbing, and they were that people had made complaints and those complaints were taken off the file,” she claimed.
I am over 25 years doing this work. I never heard the story being so consistent and coming from individuals not in the same room.
The toxic nature of what was presented; that is what is so awful… relentless and systematic.
Regan claims her concerns around workplace bullying were ignored by museum management and the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht Affairs.
96 staff completed the survey. Four in five had been working for the institution for five years or more. There are between 140 and 150 staff at the institution.
The National Museum of Ireland operates four sites – The Archaeology museum on Kildare Street, (where the Seanad is to move), the Natural History Museum on Merrion Street; the Museum of Decorative Arts and History in Collins Barracks; and the Museum of Country Life in Castlebar.
Response
The Chair of the Oireachtas Arts and Heritage Committee Peadar Tóibín is demanding representatives from the National Museum, the Department of the Arts and the Minister Heather Humphreys urgently come before his committee to address what he claims is a “HR crisis”.
In a statement, the museum said it had taken a range of actions since the health and well-being report.
“These include the setting up of a museum council, a staff consultation forum and improvements in communications between staff and management”.
The Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht said Minister Humphreys has no involvement in the day-to-day running of the National Museum of Ireland.
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As a general principle a fish rots from the head. This does not necessarily apply to the National Museum of Ireland.
Good leadership creates a positive environment in which bullying and harassment does not thrive.
Bad leadership facilitates bullying and harassment.
Wild assumptions.
In my experience academic bullying is the most insidious form as the perpetrators are equipped with the intellectual skills to engage in devious and damaging psychological mind games over a prolonged period of time and then the ability to navigate their way out of incriminating situations when the spotlight is focussed on their role in manipulating events.
@Alex Falcone: A young apprentice was being physically assaulted on a site in Shannon at Pfizer in “I think 2008 or 2009″ The young lad never reported a single complaint, least he be seen as trouble, but it came to a head and blew over for everyone to withness when the mercury worker beat the living crap out of the young fella in front of about a 100 people. Even at that, the young lad, to my knowladge, never made any official report of bullying. In my expirience, the worst kind of bullying happens in enviornements of fear, and where rather immoral individuals in positions of power are aware of such information and no how far they can push their abuses. The large building sites around this country would terrify many people if they saw what goes on in them.
@James Guinan:
I’ve worked on plenty of sites here, London and New York, agree with you things can be rough, but with so many lethal weapons lying around bullying can often backfire badly. In my experience things escalate more quickly often in the pub and problems can be resolved quicker.
@Alex Falcone: Totally, Pubs can be very volatile enviornments, luckily most large ones in towns and cities have security. High pressure job for the employees and the managers having to deal with potential customers some times at the absolute worst they can be, certainly can blow over in fallout amoung colleagues.
Lol Alex.Try working in a meat factory where you have Irish, Eastern Europeans and Brazilians all jockeying for position, all using knives and cleaver’s.Academic bullying my bollix!
@Billy Larkin:
There’s a meat plant here in Waterford, Dawn Meats, agree with you, awful place, I couldn’t work there.
I’d rather dig drains.
Used to work on sites and I would say bullying was a problem. But what you have described is absolutely terrible. A nice lawsuit would put manners on them. As for the bullying in the article. Unfortunately when there is no leadership from the top bullying flourishes. Management needs to tighten things up.
Agreed , witnessed a bully getting a shovel across the side of the head , the result of taking advantage of a very quiet individual by eating his lunch most days , he was warned to stop by many of us but he thought he was the dogs b***ocks until he met the shovel at speed .
@Keith Flood: https://tinyurl.com/sambowich
This is quite surprising. I would have thought that working in The National Museum was akin to being a librarian in a quiet town. No deadlines or targets, no ultra competitive environment, no risk to health and safety, very sedate and untaxing. Some detail of the harassment in the article would be useful.
@David Mac Shite: the most intense bullying happens when the issues are trivial.
Perhaps the lack of any real work leads to idleness and frustration which then manifests itself in their interaction with colleagues. Btw…. The whole fish rots from the head idea is so true.
@David Mac Shite: Could also be a case of othering among clans or groups in the workplace. There is plenty of factories around, which would be considered “handy numbers” and the old gaurd are not to keen of new “outsider” employment, rather prefering the immediate circles of the “old gaurd employees” to be granted jobs and oppertunities in place of the new outsiders, leading to ostrocizing of the new employees and many instances of bullying including, exclusion, ignoring and basically not part taking in work activities with the others. This is me just making a wild guess tbh though. Mainly because I have the impression, such a job would be a handy number.
Bullying by management is rampant in the public service as they can’t fire as easily as in the private sector. The bullies try to get their own way and put in their own stooges. RTE has known its share of bullies too by all accounts.
@David Mac Shite: agree David – any time I’ve visited the national museums I’ve found the staff relaxed and pleasant. If it wasn’t a busy day they were very friendly and happy to chat about exhibits and share their knowledge. I find it hard to match my experience of many visits over several years with the alleged widespread bullying
@Tony Daly…… possibly. And maybe slights are more often perceived than actual too….
@Pat Redmond. … ..you’ve just described Trumps cabinet!
I wonder what constitutes bullying in the report.
When it comes to bullying it’s a case of the complainant deciding what constitutes bullying. I get what you mean though in that a report must set a bar of what constitutes bullying. I’ve heard of someone before making false accusations of bullying – in that case it seemed the complainant was weak at their job and being called put on it. Then again I was once in a situation where I was reluctant to use the term, aware of the stain it can put on people and it only protected the bully and damaged me.
@Tony Canning: Just in my expirience, “and this by no means indacitive of any standard of what bullying is” working on building sites for about 12 years before injuries, as an electrician with a large firm, some of the stuff I know that had happened among colleages and others on sites were beyond bullying to be honest, yet reports were never made, as your job security as a contractor is not really safe when the work is finished, being seen as someone prone to getting involved in trouble would be a massive implication against you “despite not doing anything wrong” in trying to get employed for the next job with that contracting firm. What I am getting at here is, I would honestly be interested at what extent of bullying was being carried out, as these are long term work colleagues one would have to imagine and are these occurances things akin to exclusion and isolation sort of bullying or physical abuse or actions of abhorent mental abuse? It would have been nice if the journalist had given even examples of what was in the report, to shed some light on what we are talking about here, because bullying itself is a very broad and encompassing term. I am going to imagine it is nothing extreme ir surely would have heard of cases of individuals gaining settlements and what not, granting that these bullyings are officially reported.
I remember when I was working for a construction firm one of the apprentices (who was a quiet lad) was being addressed by one of his “colleagues” as gayboy. Of course the other lads on the site didn’t do a thing to stop him. The apprentice complained to the boss. The boss gave him a few days off for stress. He met the bully in his office and told him he was fired if he is with them for not standing up for the apprentice. The apprentice came back to work and he called him in every week for a few minutes to see if all was ok. It was thankfully. No one should have to ever put up with a bully.
@Sinead Hanely: I am glad to hear such action happened, but I would just interject, that the young fella was an apprentice, a company makes a contractual agreement with apprentices to garuntee them work throughout their apprenticeship, in large firms, young lads can be on trial periods varying from 6 months up to over a year, although it did happen to apprentices, the young lads on these trials, were certainly the most suspectible to bullying as no cause needed to be given for termination of employment. This is where most of the younger lads in bigger companies were certainly put through hell. In smaller companies, there is a righter knit group and everyone is very inclusive, the sites I am talking about are akin to the likes of intel where 1000s of contractors are employed, huge sites tbh. Many of my mateswho worked for smaller crowds, never to rarely saw the extent of non sense that happens on the major sites.
Don’t have enough work to do. Sitting around gossiping and b1tching
Abuse is so much part of our history and culture indeed unsurprising we should have it in a museum. Find out who these deckers are Journal and let’s be having their names. Whoops they’ll all go on “sick leave’ and be pensioned off. Lack of accountability of course is another intrinsic part of our history and culture too.
There is always a few tossers in every organisation and a few of them will chose to act like bullys just to amuse themselves to get through the day. In a situation like this where it sounds like it is not just random, but by design, my cynical mind wonders is the bullying a means to protect the golden circle. I won’t be surprised to hear that junkets, expense accounts or generous bonus packages have some sort of part in this story.
The HSE should conduct an employee wellbeing survey of frontline staff!! Unlikely.
Wait for all the compensation claims to roll in and we will foot the bill……..
It seems that esteemed academics are pretty bored in their “work”. This usually happens when people work in nice cozy high paid gubernemnt jobs with not much to do than horsing around.
I thought for a minute the Senators had already moved in.
The minister new about it and didn’t do anything, shame on her
@Thomas Linehan: as Michael Davitt observed 150 odd years ago the twin curses of Ireland are strong drink and moral cowardice. Plus ca change…
@sean Higgins ! Too right ! I smell money !
Oh
Thank god somebody finally found the courage to stand up and say what we’ve all been thinking.
Don’t buy from Amazon, they also have a reputation for treating their workers poorly.
It is a National past time?
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