What to do if you feel you are Being Bullied

Workplace bullying refers to repeated, unreasonable actions of individuals (or a group) directed towards an employee (or a group of employees), which are intended to intimidate, degrade, humiliate, or undermine, or which create a risk to the health or safety of the employee(s) including physical and emotional stress. Workplace bullying often involves an abuse or misuse of power. Bullying behavior creates feelings of defenselessness and injustice in the target and undermines an individual’s right to dignity at work. Bullying is different from aggression. Whereas aggression may involve a single act, bullying involves repeated attacks against the target, creating an on-going pattern of behavior. “Tough” or “demanding” bosses are not necessarily bullies as long as they are respectful and fair and their primary motivation is to obtain the best performance by setting high yet reasonable expectations for working safely.

Examples of workplace bullying include:

• Unwarranted or invalid criticism
• Blame without factual justification
• Being treated differently than the rest of your work group
• Being sworn at/shouted at/ or humiliated
• Exclusion or social isolation
• Excessive monitoring or micro-managing
• Being given work unrealistic deadlines

A real-life example reported to “Bully-free Workplace” tells the story of an employee who said she had become a target shortly after a co-worker made a false allegation against her.  Her manager began a campaign to drive her out of the workplace by replacing her duties with menial tasks, denying time off, refusing to speak to her except to reprimand, writing her up for minor and contrived infractions, sabotaging her work, enlisting others to monitor and criticize her work, and physically intimidating her. 

These are classic signs of bullying. The manager did everything he could to make the work environment so uncomfortable for the worker that (he hoped) she would quite on her own accord. Sometimes it works; sometimes it does not. In this case the employee stood her ground and is trying to cope with the workplace pressure caused by the bullying manager and co-workers.

Workplace buying taken to its extreme filters throughout the organization and infects its culture. Signs of corporate and institutional bullying include:

• Failure to meet organizational goals;
• Increased frequencies of grievances, resignations, and requests for transfers;
• Increased absence due to sickness; and
• Increased disciplinary actions.

Of course, workplace bullying is always wrong. It violates an employee’s right to work in an environment that is supportive and not a hostile work environment. Beyond that, employers that sanction workplace bullying and managers who engage in it fail to realize the costs of the abusive practice including:

• Replacing staff members that leave as a result of being bullied, cost of training new employees.
• Work effort being displaced as staff cope with bullying incidents (i.e., effort being directed away from work productivity and towards coping)
• Costs associated with investigations of ill treatment and potential legal action

Bullying is different from harassment which is one type of illegal discrimination and is defined as offensive and unwelcome conduct, serious enough to adversely affect the terms and conditions of a person’s employment, which occurs because of the person’s protected class, and can be imputed to the employer. An example of harassment could be when an employee tells racist jokes and refers to a particular co-worker or group of co-workers by using racial slurs, and after a complaint, the employer does nothing to stop the behavior. Another example is when a male (or female) manager makes unwelcome sexual suggestions and/or touches another employee inappropriately. This, of course, is an example of sexual harassment.

Bullying in general is not illegal in the U.S. unless it involves harassment based on race/color, religion, national origin, sex, age (40+), disability, HIV/AIDS, or Hepatitis status. Some states go further and include marital status, sexual orientation/gender identity, honorably discharged veteran and military status or retaliation for filing a whistleblower compliant. Know your state laws on this matter by contacting your state's human rights commission.

Here are some suggestions if you believe you are being bullied:

• First and most important, realize you are not the source of the problem
• Recognize that bullying is about control, and therefore has nothing to do with your performance
• Keep a diary detailing the nature of the bullying (e.g., dates, times, places, what was said or done and who was present)
• Obtain copies of harassing/bullying paper trails; hold onto copies of documents that contradict the bully's accusations against you (e.g., time sheets, audit reports, etc.)
• Expect the bully to deny and perhaps misconstrue your accusations; have a witness with you during any meetings with the bully; report the behavior to an appropriate person

For conscientious employers I offer up the following advice:

• Create a zero tolerance anti-bullying policy that is part of your efforts to create a safe and healthful working environment that should have the support of top management
• When witnessed or reported, the bullying should be addressed immediately
• If bullying is entrenched in the organization, complaints need to be taken seriously and investigated promptly (reassignment of the bully may be necessary)
• Develop training programs to sensitize employees to the signs and dangers of bullying in the workplace, and explain how bullies will be dealt with

Workplace bullying is a disgraceful practice that attacks the very dignity of the bullied. It needs to be taken seriously by employers not only because it is an offensive practice, but also if bullying is allowed to persist unchecked, it may lay the seeds for other inappropriate workplace behavior including sexual harassment and even fudging on one's expense reports once employees realize the culture of the organization is such that abusive practices are tolerated.

Blog posted by Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage, on December 5, 2012