Bullying and harassment
The 2025 Public Service Census asked about personal experiences with bullying as well as racial and sexual harassment. Overall, 12.1% of the public servants who participated in the survey said they had experienced bullying or harassment in the last 12 months in their current workplace. This compares to 11% in the 2024 Australian Public Service Census and 8% in the 2024 UK Civil Service People Survey.
People who had experienced bullying or harassment were asked who was responsible for the behaviour. The most common sources of inappropriate behaviour were current or previous managers (6.3% of public servants), and colleagues or direct reports within the same agency (5.7%). Public servants also experienced bullying or harassment from clients/people in the care of their agency and members of the public who they interact with in the course of their work (1.6%).
Experienced bullying or harassment
Type of bullying or harassment
Source of bullying or harassment
Bullying
People who said they had experienced harassment or bullying in the last 12 months were asked what type of harassment or bullying they experienced. They could select one or more responses from a list of behaviours.
In the survey, 9.2% of public servants said they experienced some form of bullying in the last 12 months in their current workplace.
The most common bullying behaviours were interference with work tasks (withholding information, undermining or sabotage), verbal abuse (offensive language directed at the participant, derogatory remarks, shouting) and deliberate exclusion from work-related activities. The full list of bullying behaviours measured and prevalence are listed in the table below.
Of those people who had experienced some form of bullying, 48% said it occurred a few times over the last 12 months, 15% monthly, 17% weekly, and 8% said it happened on a daily basis.[1]
Read more about how bullying is defined by Worksafe below.
|
Types of bullying experienced |
Proportion of Public Service |
|---|---|
|
Interference with work tasks (e.g. withholding needed information, undermining or sabotage) |
5.7% |
|
Verbal abuse (e.g. offensive language directed toward me, derogatory remarks, shouting) |
5.5% |
|
Deliberate exclusion from work-related activities |
4.0% |
|
Inappropriate and unfair application of work policies or rules (e.g. access to leave, access to learning and development) |
3.1% |
|
Given tasks with unreasonable or impossible targets or deadlines |
2.8% |
|
Interference with my personal property or work equipment |
0.5% |
|
Physical assault, or threats of violence/physical abuse |
0.4% |
|
Other type of bullying |
0.9% |
|
Bullying overall |
9.2% |
Note on the table above, participants could select as many types of bullying or harassment behaviour as applied to them, therefore the percentages will not add to the total bullying figure because some people experienced multiple behaviours.
Harassment
Sexual harassment[2] was reported by 0.8% of public servants, including 1.1% of women, 0.4% of men, and 1.4% of people who had another/multiple genders. Of the people who had experienced sexual harassment, 18% said it had happened once, 52% said it occurred a few times over the last 12 months, 10% monthly, 13% weekly, and 7% said it happened on a daily basis.
Racial harassment[3] was reported by 1.6% of people who responded to the survey, including 2.4% Asian, 2.2% Māori, 2.1% Pacific, 5% of MELAA[4], 3% Other, and 1% of New Zealand European participants. Of those people who had experienced racial harassment, 14% said it had happened once, 56% said it occurred a few times over the last 12 months, 11% monthly, 10% weekly, and 8% said it happened on a daily basis.
As shown in the table below, some groups within the Public Service were more likely to report experiencing bullying and harassment.
Bullying and discrimination by grouping
Learn more about Mentally Healthy Work on the Government Health & Safety Lead website.
Mentally healthy work – HealthandSafety.govt.nz
Learn more about Positive and safe workplaces model standards on our website.
Reporting bullying and harassment
About half (52%) of the people who had experienced bullying or harassment in the last 12 months said that they reported it to their agency, 37% decided not to report, and 11% were considering whether or not to report.
The most common reasons given for not reporting were that people thought no action would be taken (52%), fear of retaliation (48%), concern that it could affect their career (44%), and that they didn’t want to upset relationships in the workplace (42%). The other reasons given are shown in the table below. Note that these add to more than 100% as people could select multiple reasons.
The 2025 Public Service Census also asked whether people were satisfied with how matters relating to bullying or harassment were resolved. As shown in the table below, people who had personally experienced bullying or harassment in the last 12 months were less likely to be satisfied with how their organisation resolved this type of issue.
Bullying or harassment – reporting
Bullying or harassment – reporting reasons
Resolution of bullying or harassment
Learn more about Speaking up in the public sector model standards on our website.
Discrimination
In the 2025 Public Service Census, we asked about experiencing unfair treatment in the workplace over the last 12 months, with particular focus on any of the prohibited grounds for discrimination outlined in The Employment Relations Act 2000 and Human Rights Act 1993. We gave examples of the kind of unfair treatment that someone might have experienced, including in hiring, access to career development and training, reasonable accommodation for disability, and being denied the right to carry out a religious or cultural practice.
Overall 14.4% of public servants who responded to the survey said they had been treated unfairly due to a personal characteristic. This compares to 10% in the 2024 Australian Public Service Census and 7% in the 2024 UK Civil Service People survey.
Each person completing the survey could select all the grounds for discrimination that they believed applied. See the table below for each of the different grounds for discrimination.
Ethnicity, national origin, race or colour were the most common grounds for perceived discrimination with 5.4% of all who responded to the survey. This was highest among Middle Eastern (18.2%), Fijian (15.8%), Indian (11.9%), African (11.2%), and Tongan (11.1%) public servants. Tokelauan (9.9%), Latin American (9%), Chinese (8.6%), Samoan (8.6%), Māori (8.1%), Cook Island Māori (7.4%), and Niuean public servants (7%) were also higher than European public servants (3.0%). The rate was 10.7% for people who listed ‘Other’ as their ethnicity, of whom 93% described their ethnicity as ‘New Zealander’.
Younger workers (under age 25, 8.7%) and older workers (65 years or over, 8.1%) were the most likely to believe they had been treated unfairly due to their age. Public servants aged 35 to 44 were the least likely to say that they had been treated unfairly due to their age (2.3%).
In the survey, 4.3% of women, 3.1% of men, and 16.8% of people of another or multiple genders felt they had been treated unfairly due to their gender.
Of the public servants who self-identified as having a disability, 21.7% said they had been treated unfairly due to their disability.
Jewish public servants were the most likely to say they had been treated unfairly due to their religion (10.2%), followed by Muslim public servants (5.1%). This compares to 1.5% of Hindus, 1.1% of Christians, 1.1% of public servants with Spiritualism and New Age beliefs, and 0.1% of people with no religion.[5]
Of public servants who self-identified as part of the rainbow communities, 3.4% said they had been treated unfairly due to their sexual orientation and 7.8% due to their gender.
The chart below shows the proportion of people in each group that felt they had experienced unfair treatment regardless of the grounds. For example, this shows that 32.5% of public servants who identify as a disabled person felt that they had experienced discrimination. When disabled public servants were asked what grounds they felt discriminated by 21.7% said they were treated unfairly due to their disability, 8.2% due to their age, 7.8% due to their gender, 5.8% due to their ethnicity and 3.4% due to their employment status. These add to more than 32.5% as people could select multiple grounds for discrimination.
[1] The definition of bullying is that the behaviour is repeated, but the most serious form of bullying, ‘physical assault, or threats of violence physical abuse’ was counted as an experience of bullying even if it occurred just once. Of the people who experienced that form of bullying, 13% said they experienced it once.
[2] Sexual harassment was measured with a question asking if the participant had experienced “sexual harassment (e.g. unwanted sexual remarks/jokes, unwanted sexually explicit material shared online, pressure for sex)” in the last 12 months in their current workplace.
[3] Racial harassment was measured with a question about experiencing hostility/ridicule because of race, colour, ethnic group or national origin in the last 12 months in their current workplace. It is likely that some experiences of casual racism/microagressions were not captured.
[4] MELAA refers to Middle Eastern, Latin American, and African.
[5] All other religions had either too few people experiencing discrimination based on religious grounds to be reported (based on privacy rules), or no members who said they were discriminated against based on their religion.