Flashbacks From the Schoolyard: How to Handle Bullies at Work

For every harassment complaint I’ve helped resolve, I've dealt with ten incidences involving the equal opportunity jerk. The boss who constantly criticizes, demeans, and undermines his employees. The supervisor who takes delight overworking and exploiting subordinates. The employee who taunts and intimidates his coworkers. In short, the workplace bully.

Unfortunately, you can’t send your workplace bully to the headmaster or make him stay in for recess. The good news is that, as a human resource professional, you have the power to implement the necessary strategies to prevent and/or alleviate bullying in your workplace. In this article, we’ll look at how you can use policies, hiring, and top management support to create a bully-free workplace.

Beating Up the Bottom Line

It’s easy to think that rudeness or incivility is an inevitable part of people working together; after all, who hasn’t been snapped at by a stressed-out boss or coworker?

But bullying is not occasional rudeness or incivility, nor is it a misguided attempt to get things done through tough management. Bullying is an ongoing and systematic campaign of interpersonal destruction. It tends to be an accumulation of many incidences over a long period of time which, taken together, these instances add up to persistent, abusive behavior designed to make the target feel upset, humiliated and threatened.

According to the U.S. Hostile Workforce Survey 2000, the most popular bullying tactics include:

• blaming others for errors
• raising false concerns about or criticizing the work of others
• making unreasonable demands
• yelling and screaming
• threats of job loss, insult, or put-downs
• inconsistent enforcement of arbitrary rules
• social exclusion
• stealing credit for another’s work

Bullying/general hostility is 4 times more prevalent than illegal discrimination and harassment. In fact, a February 2000 study funded by the British Occupational Health Research Foundation revealed that out of 5300 employees in 70 organizations, 47% reported witnessing bullying in the past five years, 1 in 10 said they’d been bullied in the last six months, and 1 in 4 said they’d been bullied in the past five years.

Bullying Versus Harassment

Unlike illegal forms of harassment and discrimination, bullying isn’t directed at a person because of his or her religion, gender, age, race or other demographic variable. S/he isn’t interested in obtaining sexual favors or dominating a vulnerable group. In fact, the target of bullying is most likely to be selected because of her popularity and competence, which is perceived as a direct threat to the bully.

Unlike a sexual harasser’s need to take advantage of someone in a vulnerable position, bullying is an effort to control a threat (and prevent exposure of inadequacy). Unlike the power motive behind harassment and discrimination, envy and jealousy are the primary drivers of bullying behavior. And, unlike the racial slurs or sexual comments found in illegal forms of harassment, workplace bullying tends to appear as petty criticism, the withholding of critical information, and/or false allegations of underperformance.

Another difference between generic bullying versus hostility directed at a protected class are the available legal remedies. Discrimination law does not cover bullying. If the behavior does not have a sexual, racial or physical component, U.S. laws aren’t set up to deal with an incompetent or cruel supervisor bullying a subordinate.

However, bullies may not completely escape the long arm of the law. More and more stress-related workman’s comp claims and intentional infliction of emotional distress lawsuits because of workplace bullying. A few years ago, two employees in Texas were awarded $250,000 in damages after a supervisor continually yelled at them, put his head down and “charged at them like a bull,” and made at least one employee wear a sign that said “I quit.”

Spotting The Bully at Work

Given the statistics of workplace bullying, chances are that there is at least one bully poisoning your organization. Here are three ways you can begin to assess how bully-tolerant your work environment currently is:

1. Conduct an anonymous employee satisfaction survey, asking questions specifically about employee experiences of common bullying tactics.

2. Conduct regular exit interviews and ask specifically about interpersonal problems that might have led to their resignation.

3. Keep track of turnover statistics by department, by manager, and by unit. As the old saying goes, numbers don’t lie. In this situation, they might be telling the truth about a bully in your midst.

Is the Finger Pointing Back at You?

“You’ve got to sit on people to get the job done.” “If you don’t boss people around, they don’t respect you.” “We run a tough ship around here.” How many times have these kinds of arguments been used to justify inappropriate management conduct? Worse yet, how many times has it been rewarded?

A study that looked at predictors of job satisfaction across cultures found that the quality of the employee/supervisor relationship was one of two consistent factors across twenty countries. Employees who feel supported, encouraged, and treated fairly by their direct supervisors develop a sense of organizational commitment. Yet, while at least fifty percent of all turnovers are due to poor management practices, the mythical link between inappropriate behavior and productivity still lingers. If your corporate environment seems to be stuck in survival-of-the-fittest mode, it may be time to work with senior management on assessing your corporate values and realigning them with the realities of today’s workplace.

There’s another way your corporate environment can unintentionally foster bullying – through job strain. One of the most common problems I encounter is the situational bully, i.e., the valuable manner who, because of an excessive workload or unrealistic deadline, becomes a domineering tyrant. If you observe an increase in inappropriate workplace behavior, do a little investigating to see what’s underneath and what you can do about it.

If your business is cyclical for example, consider partnering with an EAP program before your busy season and offer self-development seminars on coping with stress, time management, and other helpful topics. If the behavior seems to occur primarily in new managers, reevaluate your management development program to see where communication skills are lacking. Supervisors are often promoted because of their technical expertise and, if they lack the management skills to be effective leaders, can resort to bullying in an attempt to establish authority. And, while there are likely to be a few bad apples in every bunch, some inappropriate workplace behavior is a symptom of a deeper corporate problem – one worth finding and fixing.

Don’t Forget to Put It in Writing

Workplace policies rarely work unless the behaviors they request are supported and modeled by senior management. When they are, they become a powerful communicator of your company’s values and priorities. Not only do they set clear expectations of what behavior is expected, they communicate a certain tone that tells employees how senior management views them.

A workplace conduct policy, when consistently enforced, can communicate the message that employees are as valuable as customers – and should be treated with the same respect. Given that there is a direct link between customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction, perhaps this message is consistent with reality. While an extensive discussion on policy development is beyond the scope of this article, here are six guidelines to help you get started crafting your workplace conduct policy:

• Outlines clear examples of what workplace conduct violates the policy
• Details the disciplinary procedures for policy violation.
• Provide a procedure for reporting and investigating concerns about workplace behavior.
• Outlines guidelines for multiple channels of reporting to individuals who feel the policy has been violated.
• Assures complainants that the matters will be treated as confidentially as possible and that no one will be punished for reporting a workplace conduct violation.
•Begins with a message from your CEO, who expresses employees’ rights to be treated with dignity and respect, and who links the policy to the bottom line and to company values.

Taking a Stand

Like it or not, it’s impossible for corporations to take a neutral position regarding workplace bullying. To your employees, ignoring it is condoning it. And a policy is no substitute for people; the best antibullying policy will be viewed with skepticism if your corporate culture rewards bullying managers.

The good news is that you’re in a valuable position to beef up the company’s bottom line. Eliminating inappropriate workplace behavior will reduce turnover, increase job satisfaction, and help your organization get back some of the 18 million work days lost each year because of it. At a time when human resources are increasingly being asked to justify their existence, the opportunity to show the bottom line impact of your efforts is something worth shouting about. Just don’t do it at work.