September 3rd, 2010
HR stops Workplace Bullying, if 3% = Success
I want to love HR. I know good HR people. One shining example was a 2009 WBI University graduate. She was accustomed to serving at the executive level, as Senior Vice President, in several hospitals. When we met, she had lost two previous jobs simply because she dared to stand up to senior manager bullies. Each time, the CEOs terminated her and kept their buddies. We withhold her name so she can work again.
Another good person is a New York City-based HR professional who blogs and has written a book called the HR Toolkit and works with our NY State group to pass the anti-bullying Healthy Workplace Bill, despite SHRM’s official opposition to the legislation.
I write this love letter at the request of HR folks who hate reading the negative news about how HR does too little to stop bullying within their organizations. Believe me, I hate the fact that HR doesn’t help enough, too.
Really, I want to tout the value HR brings to organizations, but I need proof. I do not demonize HR. They are not wicked, ok maybe threatening, but not demonic. But I report the experiences bullied targets tell us. It’s that simple.
Clearly individuals are separate from the institutional role that dictates that they serve their executive masters and allow bullies to operate with impunity. The caveat is that whatever personal conflict over doing the right thing or the commanded or expected thing should compel more HR folks to be ethical, right and just.
That’s why I rely on empirical and anecdotal data to shape the story. HR folks, here is what 462 people who probably had been bullied told us on our summer 2010 online Instant Poll.
The percentage of cases in which HR took action and stopped the bullying: 3.4. There it is — the good news. Headline: HR Effectively Stops Bullying (3% of the time). HR you earned it. Celebrate. The 3%-ers are the good people. But what about the rest of you?
In 60% of cases HR did nothing after bullying was reported to them. Doing nothing was followed by an increase in bullying, for 26.6% of respondents.
Worse still, HR botched matters by taking action that helped the alleged bully and hurt the complainant in 32.5% of cases.
This is the reality confirmed by WBI coaches who have listened to over 6,000 detailed tales. And you might want to view the contributions to the WBI HR Forum.
Don’t get defensive. Don’t attack WBI. Just do the right thing for the person hurt by the ones typically more powerful. Stop siding with the powerful just to keep your job or to curry favor from them. Grow a conscience. Be moral leaders. Teach executives about bullying and show them how destructive it is, for people and for leaders.
Now the Good News …
Here’s some great news for HR staffers. Though you have not fooled those who turned to you for help inside your organizations, the general public believes that HR is serving aggrieved employees. This statistic is derived from the latest 2010 WBI scientific national poll.
14.3% of adult Americans credited HR with taking appropriate actions that stopped the bullying with positive outcomes for the target (compared to the 3.4% from the non-scientific online poll of people with actual experience as customers or HR).
Botched efforts occurred in only 5.3% of cases.
HR doing nothing was estimated at 24.9%, allowing the bullying to continue but in only 6.2% of situations was the target harmed by increased bullying.
In the majority of cases, 51% of adult Americans , survey respondents were not sure if HR was told about the workplace bullying situation.
So, HR, please do not demonize WBI. Do better and we will gladly report it.
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Call us to volunteer, 360-656-6630.
Tags: HR, human resources, WBI-Zogby, workplace bullying
This entry was posted on Friday, September 3rd, 2010 at 12:33 pm and is filed under Bullying Tutorials, Employer Action/Inaction, Science. 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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Hey all you out there! Human Resources will act like your friend, matter-of-fact the greatest folks in the world! Ask yourself the simple question? Always, follow trhe dollars…Who pays the H.R. employees, you or the company? This is where the rubber hits trhe road. Make no mistake, they truly want to hear everything your boss, co-workers, etc., have done to you, because their job is to protect their company from liability or a law suit. They will then take the information that is concerning to your boss, to make certain he/she is following the policy guidelines, and if your boss has not loaded your file up with warnings, etc., then H.R. will advise them to cover the companies behind by leaving a paper trail to properly bury you. H.R., regardless of how wonderful they are become liable themselves once they know your horrific story. They too, have to cover themselves by providing direction to your boss in how to properly fire you. It really stinks, but what you need to do is leave a paper trail yourself and document all conversations, you have with everyone at your company, dates, details to the conversations. Never get upset, or become revengeful, just do your job and follow company policy. As that ole adage goes, “Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer”.
Abigail is correct and I have to disagree with article. To state that HR has successfully stopped bullying even 3% of the time is an outrageous over estimate and at completely misleading statement.
What is the definition of “stopped the bullying” and “HR took action”? With 30 years experience dealing with bullies I found the most consistent result of HR taking action and stopping the bullying is leaving the bully no choice but to conduct covert operations against the target. Now the target’s catching flack he does not see coming. In most cases he does not even know the bully is still sticking it to him. This bully is mounting a secret campaign of revenge. The target may think he’s done with the bully but the bully is not done with him. Sabotage, rumors, undermining work, lies, and discrediting are now happening and this guy does not even know it. And if the target is dealing with an agenda driven covert bully there is nothing in a million years management and HR combined could ever do to protect that target.
All the while the bully will be pretending to be the target’s buddy. If the guy ever gets wind of it and goes back to HR, what proof does he have? HR going to be wonder, what now? In a month the target will be gone and wondering what happened. I’ve seen guys run off and they had no clue somebody was behind it. Just recently I saw an HR director sic another director on a top performing market manager because he inadvertently embarrassed her over something trivial.
I challenge any one to show me proof of just one instance when HR took action and resolved the problem to the satisfaction of the target in regards to that particular bully with absolutely no retaliatory actions on the part of the bully?
On the playground if you get some other kid to beat up your bully you are fine as long as that other kid is around. When he’s gone, you have a worse bully problem now. The only way you successfully deal with a playground bully is doing it yourself with no help, same way with an office bully. I have successfully dealt with office bullies many, many times. I have taught people how to deal with bullies and my method works.
Rick, As you said, you don’t know of one instance of HR helping. See the WBI hrfailedme.com to see that others feel the same. What is surprising is how positively HR is perceived by the general public according to our national survey. They benefit greatly from not having the majority of people have to be their “customers.”
I just saw that you replied.
Who benefits from not have the majority of people be their customers. I’m sorry I do not understand.
Who are they? The public. In what context to you mean “the public”. The guy losing his job? Or the organization that is protected from litigation by claiming they did all their anti-bullying policy required them to do? Today I was interviewed by a major New England Area News Paper. They asked me what I thought of anti bullying policies? Do some just protect the companies? I said all of them do. Not a single one is capable of protecting the individual. I can and I’ve explained to this paper how. They are very interested. I would like to meet with you and go over my business model.