May 14th, 2009
Why U.S. Employers Do So Little
Many of the facts below have been confirmed by the 2007 WBI-Zogby Survey.
- Targets under report it (40% of targets never tell). Employers simply may not know about it.
- Most (80%) bullying is legal, rendering laws and law-compliant policies inapplicable
- Thus, 62% of employers either do nothing or worsen the situation (retaliation) because they can do so with legal impunity.
- The majority of bullies (73%) are managers; senior managers and HR reflexively side with management when disputes arise.
- Bullies derive 73% of their support from executives, peer managers and HR
- Bullies (an unknown percentage) are following orders from above
- Executives have been bullied by the bullies. They are afraid to act. They have a disproportionate fear of lawsuits brought by the bully if they dare investigate or sanction the bully.
- Bullies invented their reputation as indispensable high-performers in case they were ever exposed. Target complainants are then not believed.
- Employers don’t actually know how to stop it. They forgot the lessons learned from having to correct and prevent illegal discrimination.
- Employers don’t recognize bullying as violence in the workplace. The problem is erroneously defined as “conflict,” and the wrong solutions are applied.
- Our society is highly aggressive and competitive. Bullies embody these two popular tactics. Hostility is more normative than the exception. So, bullying/abuse/psychological violence at work is positively embraced more often than despised.
WBI
Tags: conflict, employers, WBI-Zogby
This entry was posted on Thursday, May 14th, 2009 at 9:44 am and is filed under Bullying Tutorials, Employer Action/Inaction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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I was forced to retired due to the bullying of supervisors and the manager at Regions Mortgage in Gainesville, Ga. I worked there for almost 12 yrs. and was considered a valuable asset to the department an was being given small rewards for a job well done until a new employee began bullying me and took over my position, I was demoted and my best friend at work betrayed me in fear that if she didn’t she would also be subjected to the bullying. This employee seemed to turn everyone against me, supervisors and the manager all began bullying me, by piling several duties on me that would take all day to complete just one of them and setting deadlines for each of them that was impossible to meet. Every few minutes a supervisor (4 of them) would take turns coming to me and demanding results and publically belittled me. I could no longer trust my co-workers. It got to where I couldn’t say anything, because they used everything against me, even accused me of making threats which I didn’t. I had to get out before I was fired. I put in for retirement, but that is only $385.00 a month and that don’t pay the bills. I have depleted all my saving and still have not found another job. I will take anything that I can do, cashier, cleaning, anything.