Workplace bullying must stop

This behavior must stop.

The issue needs to be addressed for a variety of reasons. Workplace bullying is something that
truly impacts the bottom line in business, with studies suggesting the
cost to business nationally ranges from $10 billion to more than $100
billion annually .

And of course it can simply destroy individuals in the workplace. (Here is an interesting report from
Pepperdine University - "Are workplace bullies sabotaging your ability
to compete?" http://gbr.pepperdine.edu/014/print_bullies.htm .) In it
the authors write:

Because bullies are cowards and are driven by deep-seated insecurities and

fears of inadequacy, they intentionally wage a covert war against an

organization's best employees - those who are highly-skilled,

intelligent, creative, ethical, able to work well with others, and

independent (who refuse to be subservient or controlled by others).

Bullies can act alone or in groups. Bullying behavior can exist at any

level of an organization. Bullies can be superiors, subordinates,

co-workers and colleagues.
You are not protected
There is a false sense of security in the US as most people don't realize
that EEO regulations (related to gender, disability, religion, etc) are
very narrowly defined. They will only protect one from harassment or
discrimination if one fits into those categories with specific related
infractions. So in a situation where a manager or coworker might
dislike people with brown eyes, the manager or co-worker could make a
brown eyed person's life miserable at work with complete impunity.
There are no hostile workplace laws.

Workplace bullying defined
The Workplace Bully and Trauma Institute defines workplace bullying as:
"...repeated, health-harming mistreatment of one or more persons (the
targets) by one or more perpetrators that takes one or more of the
following forms:
- verbal abuse
- offensive conduct/behaviors (including nonverbal) which are threatening, humiliating or intimidating
- work interference -- sabotage -- which prevents work from getting done."

And it continues: "Workplace Bullying: (a) is driven by perpetrators' need
to control the targeted individual's) , (b) is initiated by bullies who
choose targets, timing, place and methods, (c) escalates to involve
others who side with the bully, either voluntarily through coercion,
and it (d) undermines legitimate business interests when bullies'
personal agendas take precedence over work itself."

The keys are 'repeated' and 'health-harming' actions against a single target. This
does not mean a simple bad boss who makes everyone's life miserable,
nor a couple individual bad interactions. Herein is the key to a
quantifiable definition or complaint. One or several different kinds of
unpleasant experiences based on perception of tone of voice or choice
of words does not a workplace bully make.

A snake by any other name
It is presumed that a bully has to be a loud tyrant out in the open. In
fact there are as many who work to remain undetected just as a school
age bully wishes to go undetected. Several reports show workplace
bullies are so covert that it simply adds to the stressful turmoil
where even the target is unaware of or disoriented by what is happening
- equally unaware of the source. ("The Bully at WorK" Gary and Ruth
Namie, PhDx2 - Sourcebooks, Inc. )

Examples:
- if a boss or co-worker repeatedly pulls someone from a distribution list or
misinforms a target of meeting dates so they don't make meetings to
make them look incompetent
-if the target provides top performance
and is repeatedly passed over for recognition to the point where
co-workers notice and question it,
-if the individual is moved to a work area to separate the person from colleagues,
-if the bully regularly plagiarizes materials created by the target taking
credit for the good work yet blaming the target publicly as his or hers
if the work is questioned
-if the bully publicly rebukes the target
for efforts inaccurate due to purposed misinformation provided by or at
the direction of the bully
-if the target is blamed for unfinished work actually assigned  to others on a regular basis.
- and myriad of other potential insidious behaviors…
...it falls into the realm of behavior and treatment that can be documented and measured.
 

There are also findings that many of these bullies fit the profile of or are
indeed psychopaths (per the book: "Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths go
to Work" - Babiak and Hare - Harper) 

US behind the curve 

Bullying is legal in the US workplace, yet most of the other western
industrialized countries around the world have some form of legal
recourse for what has been termed 'status-blind'
harassment/discrimination. Currently there are 13 states at various
stages in the process of writing, deliberating or enacting
anti-workplace bullying legislation. There is speculation on how new
laws would be manifest and it is only speculation. Many are saying that
there would be a deluge of frivolous lawsuits - of course that can't be
determined until a law is in place. It seems that a law wouldn't be
required if organizations wrote and adhered to solid policies against
this behavior.

Another false safety net
Often the first response or advice for the individual is to approach a
business' HR department. Unfortunately, one study found that in more
than 50 percent of workplace bullying cases HR did nothing on the bully
target's behalf, and in more than 30 percent of the cases HR helped or
supported the bully. Consequently the majority of workplace bully
targets are pushed out of their position (per
http://bullyinginstitute.org/research/research.html ) Similar studies
indicate that those pushed out tend to be the top performers.
A 2007 Zogby study illustrates the loss to employers: "Because
40% of bullied respondents left their jobs, it is estimated that the
skills of 21+ million workers are lost to employers due to bullying."

Health-harming
Dr. Noreen Tehrani, a researcher dealing with soldiers returning from combat as well as victims of workplace bullying said:

The symptoms displayed by people who have been in (military) conflict

situations and workplaces where bullying happens are strikingly

similar. Both groups suffer nightmares, are jumpy and seem fueled by

too much adrenaline.
Tehrani explained that the three primary signs of PTSD are hyper-arousal, a
feeling of constant anxiety and over-vigilance; avoidance of anything
to do with the traumatizing event(s); and re-experiencing, in which
subjects suffer flashbacks or obsessive thoughts concerning the trauma.
She added that this can be the result of exposure to both environments
of conflict and those where workplace bullies are allowed exist and
operate.

 
An additional article referred to early research on 'mobbing,' a term then used and still interchanged with 'bullying:'

Dr. Heinz Leymann, German industrial psychologist, is credited for

identifying the syndrome in Europe, Japan and Australia where he

studied it for nearly 20 years. He lived in Sweden and estimated that

15% of the suicides in Sweden were the result of mobbing in the

workplace. It is cruelty in the extreme, a group bullying process that

can go or weeks, months, even years, until the job is done...

Current studies indicate that work-related suicides now may be an even larger
percentage of the totals established in Leymann's original inquiries. 

In a case very close to home a person was severely bullied out of a
position after more 24 years of success working over the years from an
entry level position up to a management position in a Fortune top 10
corporation.

Often the advice given is to simply leave and seek
a position elsewhere. But if it is a person with one or two decades of
success contributing to a business' success (or any period of time) it
is wrong and against all principle. Secondly, it is easy to say one
should quit IF one doesn't have children in college, IF one has no
house payment along with the other day-to-day/month-to-month expenses.
IF one can afford to lose accumulated benefits including retirement
contributions and others that would require someone to start over. And
one could do it IF there really weren't age discrimination or IF one
really had the resources to pursue complaints. And that is also IF one
hasn't been injured by the bullying so severely that they are barely
able to contribute without some accommodation.

Bullying is behavior that should not be tolerated and - barring a faster easier
solution in the form of a solid commitment by employers framing
policies which will be monitored, reviewed and enforced - the
government must step in and fulfill one of its functions, protecting
the citizenry.

Bullies should no more be allowed in the
workplace than an known active rapist, someone who assaults others,
someone who threatens others with weapons or otherwise has tendencies
to terrorize individuals.

Best to all,

Lloyd