Anyone who works in HR please

[Nettleford]

Question from a friend who's in a situation that HR is looking at:

Short version is my friend works in a small company with 6 full time employees. About 18 months, out of the blue, one of the colleagues took against her and spent the time doing lots of little things to make things awkward (eg throwing away messages left for her), and now won't talk to her to a point that if she walks into a room will walk out, or will greet everyone in the room by name except her.
But if senior management are around this colleague will suddenly be ultra friendly.

The issue she has is that her line manager has just told her that they're talking to a single (external) HR chap about the situation. Unfortunately she happens to know that this colleague does things socially with this chap.
She also knows that this HR chap has given advice to their company in the past which may be true for his company, but not true universally. It's been presented as law and the company has taken it as law though.

Apparently the HR person has said that there are several things that they can do in this situation. He says it's quite a common situation. However she hasn't been told what these things might be.
She's said that she doesn't think sitting down and talking about it together will be anything but unhelpful. She feels that as the colleague is perfectly aware what she's doing, as shown by the fact she doesn't do it when there's someone around who would call her out on it, then all it does is leave her vulnerable.

She's a very quiet person who backs away from confrontation and is generally good at smoothing things over and letting the past lie. Most people think she's great (and I'm not just saying that because she's my friend) and is the sort of person people go to when they're wanting a bit of a shoulder to cry on.

Can any HR person suggest what might be suggested in this situation?

(the colleague has bullied two of the part time people into leaving, but they didn't say anything when they left, so it's not just her)

@Nettleford your friend needs to contact ACAS.

Before that she needs a time line of incidents and if possible evidence e.g. which messages lost. Then she needs to raise this in writing as bullying (grievance). In the grievance she needs to ask that the person investigating is independent. Verbally advise them the HR professional knows the other party and is there not independent, no matter how professional they are.

If the employer decides mediation is the right route, they can bring in a professional mediator who can mediate in this situation. Tell your friend it doesn’t have to be face to face, although it probably would be in this case.

Are there witnesses? The other people in the team?

T

Thank you. Sorry-I meant to come back and answer the questions but I was hoping to have good news.

She tried telling them that the HR person wasn't independent and got the response that the HR person had mentioned that he knew the other parties so was only giving "formal advice" that he'd give to anyone, and her concern was dismissed, because that was "very professional of the HR person to acknowledge that".

There are witnesses, two of the other people have seen it directly, others aren't often around in the same place so don't see it as much, and tend to have the attitude when something happens of "I'm sure it wasn't meant like that". Tbf, the incidents are along the lines of if it was a one off you would think it was an accident, but they're regular as clockwork and often iyswim in response to something she's done.
eg she's emailed everyone to remind people to put their mugs in the dishwasher when they'd finished and the next day the person left dirty mugs in various places-which they'd never done before. They then continued leaving mugs every day until someone else commented. That's one example-there's a lot of very similar petty things. So she feels it's really hard to say anything because if she does she looks like she's being petty, and that she gets the attitude of "I'm sure it's just an accident".

Of the other two employees, one keeps out of it, and always has kept out of any office politics, although she does say that she's seen it and knows it's bad. The other has said various things, but the attitude seems to be along the lines that he's exaggerating.

She says the meeting was a bit odd. They asked her about an incident which had occurred six months ago, and said she'd done the right thing. Then asked her what she suggested they did, which she found really awkward. She said what she has no idea, plus if it's found to be her idea she knows that will be taken worse.
They said they were going to tell both of them to send a daily email to each other (cc-ing in the person whose meant to be dealing with it so they can see that the emails "are nice").
Apparently then colleague will realise my friend is nice after receiving these emails and stop behaving like that.

That was a month ago and nothing has changed in attitude from the problem pair. However she's now got the issue that they're saying "it can't be too bad because you're getting a friendly email". 🙄