TOKYO (Kyodo) — A government panel studying measures to combat bullying at work recommended Monday that harassment by peers and subordinates be included in definitions of power harassment in the workplace.

In the government’s first proposal to define power harassment, often associated with abuse of power by bosses, the panel said in its report that power harassment could occur not only between people in different hierarchical positions but when there are gaps in expertise in specialized fields such as information technology.

The report, compiled by a working group of the labor ministry’s round-table conference, which was launched last July amid increased reports of harassment in the workplace, said power harassment is an “act that goes beyond the appropriate scope of work and inflicts mental/physical suffering or deteriorates the work environment.”

The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry plans to reinforce measures against power harassment at work in fiscal 2012 starting April, including conducting a survey on the matter.

The number of consultations related to bullying or harassment at work brought to the attention of the ministry’s regional labor departments across the country has increased from about 6,600 cases in fiscal 2002 to around 40,000 in fiscal 2010.

The report said there are six types of power harassment — physical attacks such as assault, mental attacks such as threats, ignoring or leaving someone out of the loop, burdening someone with excessive work, deliberately giving someone very little work to do and prying into someone’s personal affairs.

The working group determined there is a need to expand the definition of power harassment as it found from interviews with companies and the examination of litigation that there are a growing number of cases in which workers are continually ignored by peers and where younger employees well-versed in IT harass people in more senior positions who are less knowledgeable.

But it also recommended that each workplace discuss problems because the definitions may not apply across the board.

Based on the working group’s report, the round-table conference, which also includes the participation of experts, is scheduled to compile a final report around the end of March.

via Panel says bullying by peers, subordinates also power harassment – The Mainichi Daily News.

Past marches have attracted a diverse crowd. “It’s black, it’s white, it’s Baptist, Jewish, Christian, Catholic and Muslim. We all come out and march in unity,” said Teresa Haley, president of the local NAACP branch. “We try to keep the dream alive.” After the march, there will a program at Pleasant Grove, “What would Dr. King Say About Bullying Today?”

Haley said bullying is a problem that elementary school students through high schoolers can face, and it is also seen in the workplace. If King were alive today and saw the bullying problem, Haley said he would probably ask, “How far have we really come?”"He would remind people of what he stood for, what he fought for and what he died for,” she said. “He would try to encourage people to get back on the right track. I think we’re getting lost.” There will also be a voter-registration drive at the church.

If you spend your workday avoiding an abusive boss, tiptoeing around co-workers who talk behind your back, or eating lunch alone because you’ve been ostracized from your cubicle mates, you may be the victim of workplace bullying. New research suggests that you’re not alone, especially if you’re struggling to cope.

Employees with abusive bosses often deal with the situation in ways that inadvertently make them feel worse, according to a new study published in the International Journal of Stress Management. That’s bad news, as research suggests that workplace abuse is linked to stress — and stress is linked to a laundry list of mental and physical ailments, including higher body weight and heart disease.

In at least one extreme case, workplace bullying has even been linked to suicide, much as schoolyard bullying has been linked to a rash of suicides among young people.

Bullying is “a form of abuse which carries tremendous health harm,” said Gary Namie, a social psychologist who directs the Workplace Bullying Institute. “That’s how you distinguish it from tough management or any of the other cutesy ways people use to diminish it.”

Struggle to cope

Namie was not involved in the new study, which surveyed nearly 500 employees about how they dealt with abusive supervision. Abusive supervisors are bosses who humiliate and insult their employees, never let them forget their mistakes, break promises and isolate employees from other co-workers, study author Dana Yagil of the University of Haifa in Israel told LiveScience.

About 13 to 14 percent of Americans work under an abusive supervisor, Yagil said. Her study on Israeli workers found that abused employees tend to cope by avoiding their bosses, seeking support from co-workers and trying to reassure themselves. As useful as those strategies might sound, however, they actually made employees feel worse. [7 Thoughts That Are Bad For You]

“It is understandable that employees wish to reduce the amount of their contact with an abusive boss to the minimum, but the strategies they use actually further increase their stress instead of reducing it,” Yagil said. “This may happen because these strategies are associated with a sense of weakness and perpetuate the employee’s fear of the supervisor.”

Tragic consequences

Avoiding a workplace bully might seem easier than avoiding a school bully, given that employees can quit their jobs. But workers get caught in a cycle of stress, Namie said. An online survey of targeted workers by the WBI found that they put up with the abuse for an average of 22 months.

The stress of the bullying may itself lead to bad decision-making, Namie said. A 2009 study in the journal Science found that stressed-out rats fail to adapt to changes in their environment. A portion of the stressed rats’ brains, the dorsomedial striatum, actually shrunk compared with that region in relaxed rats. The findings suggest that stress may actually re-wire the brain, creating a decision-making rut. The same may occur in bullied workers, Namie said.

“This is why a person can’t make quality decisions,” he said. “They can’t even consider alternatives. Just like a battered spouse, they don’t even perceive alternatives to their situations when they’re stressed and depressed and under attack.”

Sometimes this cycle ends with tragedy. Namie works as an expert legal witness on bullying. In one upcoming case, he said, a woman put up with daily barrages of screaming abuse from her boss for a year. By the end, she was working 18-hour days, trying to shield the employees under her from her boss’ tyranny, Namie said. Finally, she and several of her co-workers put together a 25-page complaint to human resources. Nothing happened, until she was called in for a meeting with senior management. The woman knew she would be fired for making the complaint, Namie said.

“Rather than allowing herself to be terminated, she bought a pistol, went to work, left three suicide notes, and she took her own life at work,” he said.

“She was like that rat stuck in a rut,” he added. “She didn’t see any alternative at that point.”

Why bullying happens

While all workplace-bullying cases are not so extreme, it does seem to be a common problem, said Sandy Herschcovis, a professor of business administration at the University of Manitoba who studies workplace aggression. Between 70 and 80 percent of Americans report rudeness and incivility at work, Herschcovis told LiveScience. Fewer are systematically bullied, she said, but the best estimate puts the number at about 41 percent of American workers having been psychologically harassed at work at some point.

Hierarchical organizations such as the military tend to have higher rates of bullying, Herschcovis said, as do places where the environment is highly competitive.

“Definitely the organizational context contributes,” Herschcovis said.

The personality of the bully is often key, with some research suggesting that childhood bullies become bullies as adults, she said. Targets of bullying are often socially anxious, have low self-esteem, or have personality traits such as narcissism, Herschcovis said. “We don’t want to blame the victim, but we recognize this more and more as a relationship” between the bully and the target, she said.

Little research has been done on how to deal with abusive bosses or bullying co-workers. In mild cases, where a boss may not realize how their behavior is coming across, direct confrontation might work, Yagil said. One research-based program that seems to have potential is called the Civility, Respect and Engagement at Work project, Herschcovis said. That program has been shown to improve workplace civility, reduce cynicism and improve job satisfaction and trust among employees, she said. The program has employees discuss rudeness and incivility in their workplace and make plans to improve. [8 Tactics to Bust the Office Bully]

For workers experiencing bullying, Herschcovis recommended reporting specific behavior to higher-ups, as well as examining one’s own behavior. Sometimes victims inadvertently contribute to the bullying relationship, she said. Namie cautioned that victims should proceed with care, however, as there are no anti-bullying workplace laws on the books in the U.S.

“HR [human resources] has no power or clout to make senior management stop,” Namie said. “Without the laws, they’re not mandated to make policies, and without the mandate, they don’t know what to do.”

Since 2003, 21 states have introduced some version of anti-bullying bills, but none have yet passed. Twelve states have legislation pending in 2012, according to healthyworkplacebill.org.

In the meantime, Herschcovis and her colleagues have found that bystanders in the workplace are usually sympathetic to the victim rather than the bully.

“Outside parties are most likely to want to intervene, and to be in a position to intervene,” Herschcovis said. The trick, she added, will be to find ways to encourage co-workers to stand up for one another.

View the original article at http://www.workplacebullying.org/?p=7569 By David Yamada, Worcester Business Journal, Jan. 9, 2012

Although workplace bullying falls into a gray area in terms of liability, I have drafted legislation that allows civil claims for those who can prove they were subjected to malicious, health-impairing bullying at work. In 2011, the New York Law Journal opined that it’s only a matter of time before such protections exist; some insurance companies are including workplace bullying in liability insurance policies.

In addition, labor unions are starting to raise concerns about it. In 2009, Massachusetts public sector unions representing some 21,000 state workers negotiated a “mutual respect” contract provision that covers bullying behaviors. The provision allows a worker to file a grievance over an alleged violation.

Too many employers dismiss concerns about workplace bullying. According to a 2007 national survey by the Workplace Bullying Institute and Zogby pollsters, 62 percent of employers either ignored complaints of bullying or worsened the situations.

Nevertheless, employers that want to minimize the likelihood of bullying can take these three concrete steps:

1. Send a message that bullying is unacceptable. The message must come from the top. Specific measures include drafting and implementing policies related to workplace bullying, offering in-house educational programs and presentations, and using effective “360-degree feedback” systems to evaluate supervisors.

2. Empower HR to handle bullying situations fairly and forthrightly. One of the most common remarks from targets of bullying is how the human resources department is “useless” in handling complaints about bullying and, in some cases, turned out to be complicit with the bullies. Effective preventive and responsive measures by HR are key components of any anti-bullying initiative.

3. Remove destructive bullies. Even if an incorrigibly abusive individual happens to be key in attracting business, increased productivity through better morale and less time lost to the gossip mill may make this a sound decision from a purely cost-benefit standpoint.

David Yamada is a professor of law and director of the New Workplace Institute at Suffolk University Law School.

Workplace bullying has become rampant because it is driven by a buyer’s market in jobs.

In my professional practice of supporting clients in planning their retirement, I am increasingly experiencing clients and prospects who talk about workplace bullying scenarios. When I ask whether they are referring to sexual harassment, age discrimination or cause-based performance issues, they more frequently refer to being abused by practical jokes, harassment, intimidation and threats of job loss and downsizing. I have clients who have lost their jobs or have been forced to quit due to a narcissistic manager who has enjoyed virtually unrestricted rein in threatening job loss or career damage.

Gary Namie, director of the Workplace Bullying Institute in Bellingham, Wash., contrasted the difference between tough, accountable management and bullying by defining it as “… bullying is a level of misery that falls on disproportionately few.” Certainly, none of us have to be sociologists and economists to understand the harm that workplace bullying can cause. Morale issues, organizational sabotage and productivity declines would be a good start for a list of rational reasons to support a call for legislation to curb this serious problem.

In Massachusetts, the issue of infringement on dignity by employers is coming to a head with legislation written by Suffolk University Law professor David Yamada. House Bill 2310 and Senate Bill 916 — The Healthy Workplace Bill — was the subject of a Statehouse hearing by members of the Committee on Labor and Workforce Development this past summer.

The basic premise of the bill is to create a legal claim for bullying victims who can establish that they were subjected to malicious, health-harming behavior. It also provides defenses for employers who act preventively and responsively with regard to bullying.

Considering that this nation endured hard fought conditions that ushered in one of the greatest surges in human dignity legislation starting with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, I think it is time for employers and business owners, empowered with the economic leverage of job rationing, to be held accountable for their transgressions.

Joe D’Amore

Groveland

A manager calls an important meeting with no time to prepare, making co-worker appear incompetent. She ridicules him in front of his peers and jumps at the chance to criticize his work. She’s a bully. And she’s setting up a co-worker to fail.

For all the publicity surrounding schoolyard bullying, and the impact it can have on a child’s emotional well being, there’s precious little discourse about the equally pervasive problem of bullies in the workplace. Often, it’s in the exit interview where employers get their first hint that something is wrong, since that’s the first time many feel emboldened enough to speak freely. At that point, it’s often too late to save that employee, but it does give employers a chance to turn things around for the rest of their workforce.

Managers who seek to sabotage or humiliate their underlings are a challenge to any organization, but their impact is disproportionate for small businesses, which can ill afford the costly turnover associated with a toxic culture — much less the loss of staff buy-in so critical to an upstart’s survival.

“In a larger corporation, the bully only reaches a small proportion of people, but the effect is magnified in a small company because they touch everyone,” says Gary Namie, president of The Work Doctor in Bellingham, Wash., a consulting firm that helps companies develop anti-bullying policies. “There’s no escape from them and when the target wants to asks for relief there’s no one to go to, so they are much more vulnerable.”

Workplace bullying is a bigger issue than most employers think.

A 2010 survey by Zogby International for the Workplace Bullying Institute found that 35 percent of U.S. workers (an estimated 54 million Americans) have been bullied at some point in their career.

The survey, which notes bullying can occur between co-workers or between a boss and a subordinate, found that 62 percent of bullies were men and 58 percent of targets were women.

The majority (68 percent) of bullying is same-gender harassment, the survey found, noting women bullies target women 80 percent of the time.

“Bullying at work is a widespread problem,” says Joel Neuman, professor of management and organizational behavior at the State University of New York at New Paltz. “It’s not just physical aggression. More often than not it’s psychological or verbal aggression.”

Indeed, workplace bullying takes many forms.

According to Neuman, it is generally defined as any persistent form of aggressive behavior, particularly verbal abuse, which seeks to humiliate, undermine or ostracize another.

Many bullies, for example, take credit for their target’s work, pepper them with trivial tasks, or criticize their performance in front of their peers, making the target appear incompetent.

The Workplace Bullying Institute notes that victims tend not to be the weakest member of the team, but the most veteran and competent person in the workgroup because they are viewed as a perceived threat.

“A very common bullying tactic is social isolation or marginalizing their target by withholding information they need, treating them as a social pariah, or excluding them from social events or work-related functions,” says Neuman.

Eventually, he notes, such behavior creates health problems.

According to the Zogby survey, 45 percent of those who have been bullied at work say they suffer stress-related health problems, including panic attacks, clinical depression, anxiety, and even post-traumatic stress. And they use paid time off frequently for “mental health breaks,” creating a heightened burden for smaller companies that need all hands on deck.

For small business owners, the first step to ferreting out a bully in your office is to recognize the signs. Don’t be fooled, says Namie. Bullies are masters at “managing their impression upwards” and making themselves appear indispensible.

If you notice that one or more of your employees has shifted from enthusiastic and confident to woeful and tentative, it’s time to intervene.

“In a small business, there is no excuse not watching your people closely and knowing their quirks and personalities; how they show loyalty and enthusiasm,” he says. “When a person is targeted by a bully, those things disappear. They start walking on eggshells. They hang their head. They look depressed and powerless.”

Call that employee into your office immediately, says Namie, and discuss candidly what you’ve observed. Ask what you can do to help.

“Targets often feel ashamed so they won’t come out with it right away, but if you make it safe for them to share they will,” says Namie. “You have to do some investigating.”

Indeed, some 40 percent of bullied individuals never tell their employers about the problem, the Zogby survey found.

Part of that reason could be that employees are afraid of their bosses. Paul Hellman, founder of Express Potential, writes that bosses should not underestimate the fear they can instill in employees who are afraid to say the wrong thing. Hellman suggests that bosses can lessen fear by being upfront about what they are asking, and what they expect. And being open to what employees have to say, says Hellman.

If you are certain that a co-worker or manager is bullying someone on your team, separate them from their target right away, either by giving the target (not the bully) some paid time off or moving the target to a different group, says Namie.

“Put the bully to the wall and ask why they did what they did,” said Namie. “Don’t ask ‘if’. Ask, too, how their conduct is related to the interest of the company and make them prove it’s connected to your mission of either profit or public service.”

If they can’t, follow through with disciplinary action — including a written warning, suspension or termination.

Whatever you do, don’t tell the bully and target to work it out on their own.

“If they could have confronted the bully or defended themselves they would have done it already, so telling them to work it out is dooming the person in the one-down position,” says Namie, noting a boss and a subordinate are not on equal footing.

To prevent bullying before it starts, it often helps to draft a code of professional conduct that spells out the kind of behavior you expect from your staff, as well as disciplinary procedures for failure to adhere, says Neuman.

“It’s essential to have some kind of policy in place that defines acceptable and unacceptable conduct,” he says.

For smaller businesses, with fewer resources, though, it can be just as effective to share your expectations with your troops verbally — and unequivocally.

“Declare that you’re not going to tolerate this behavior or put up with it for even a minute,” Namie says. “Tell them that if you see it they’re going to get fired. Whether codified in a policy for done more informally, there needs to be a line drawn in the sand.”

Though the body of research on workplace bullying in the U.S. remains small compared with that of Europe, which has studied the problem for decades, awareness is on the rise.

Over the last few years, in fact, 12 states have introduced legislation based on the anti-bullying Healthy Workplace Bill.

Business owners can put a stop to bullying in their own offices, and do their bottom line a favor, by learning what to look for and how to deal with it when they see it – up to and including sending the bully packing.

“The bully might even be your favorite employee but ultimately, they are just too expensive to keep,” says Namie.

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Read original article CNBC.com

[See post to watch Flash video]

Stress caused by an abusive manager has a major impact on an employee’s partner, a study has found. This in turn affects the marital relationship and then the worker’s entire family.

The report also showed that the longer a couple had been together, the less impact the abusive boss had on the family.

Some 280 employees and their partners were questioned for the study. Three-quarters had children living with them.

Bullying behaviour was classed as tantrums, rudeness and criticism in public.

Workers were asked how often they had been put down by their manager or had anger directed at them. Their partners were then asked how much tension there was at home and how often the couple argued.

Professor Merideth Ferguson, of Baylor University, in Texas, said: ‘It may be that as supervisor abuse heightens tension in a relationship, the employee is less motivated or able to engage in positive interactions with the partner and other family members.’

The report’s authors said the study highlighted the need for firms to send an unequivocal message to managers that bullying behaviour will not be tolerated.

Professor Dawn Carlson, of Baylor University, in Texas, said: ‘These findings have important implications for organisations and their managers.

‘The evidence highlights the need for organisations to send an unequivocal message to those in supervisory positions that these hostile and harmful behaviours will not be tolerated.

‘Employers must take steps to prevent or stop the abuse and also to provide opportunities for subordinates to effectively manage the fallout of abuse and keep it from affecting their families.

‘Abusive supervision is a workplace reality and this research expands our understanding of how this stress plays out in the employee’s life beyond the workplace.’

via How stress from a bullying boss ‘could harm your marriage’ | Mail Online.

Nasty bosses and mean co-workers can make work a living hell, and working moms are often targets. Here’s what employees and companies need to know about bullying-and how to fight it.

Stephanie Simpson thought she was pretty tough. She felt good about the way she coolly managed a number of hotheaded bosses, many of them elected officials. So when the now 33-year-old mom of two boys became executive assistant to the mayor of a small city north of Seattle, in 2006, she figured she’d handle this job as well as the others. At first it was just the occasional mean crack: In meetings, the mayor would sometimes shut her down with remarks like “Don’t worry about that, it’s above your pay grade” or “I don’t need your opinion.” And when she told him she was pregnant not long after being hired, he snipped, “You should’ve planned better.” When she returned from maternity leave the nasty pokes and pointed personal comments ratcheted up-to the point where co-workers started expressing concern. Her boss insidiously complimented her on her appearance, saying she “looked much better” now that she wasn’t pregnant, and made fun of her full-spectrum “happy light”-even after she explained that it had been prescribed by her doctor to help with postpartum depression. Yelling and swearing became part of his routine, as did calling her with ASAP demands on her lunch hour when she was breastfeeding her son.

The abuse escalated when Stephanie asked to be considered for a promotion, a move that seemed to enrage the mayor, who demanded to know why she wanted the job when she was “doing the mommy thing.” after she returned from her second maternity leave, he refused to acknowledge her presence, communicating with her only through other staffers. “He iced me out completely,” Stephanie says. “He stopped including me in meetings and told key people not to talk to me. He told them I had ‘baby brain.’ For the first time, I was afraid. I couldn’t do my job. I felt confused and crazy.”

Bullying isn’t only a schoolyard problem. It’s raging in the workplace as well: “Thirty-five percent of all adult American workers have directly experienced bullying-that’s 54 million people,” says Gary Namie, co-founder of the Workplace Bullying Institute WBI in Bellingham, WA. Women are bullied more than men, and when it comes to working moms, the stat leaps. in a new Working Mother survey, 55 percent of our readers say they’ve been bullied at work. A tight economy and tough job market only fuel this problem, as supervisors become frantic and stressed about making their numbers and workers shy away from speaking out against abuse for fear of job loss. Bullies can be bosses, yes, but so too can co-workers or even direct reports. What distinguishes them is their pattern of repeated personal attacks, from verbal abuse and yelling to work sabotage see “Bullying Defined”. For those who experience it, workplace bullying can be worse than sexual harassment-a kind of “stealth” abuse that’s just as damaging to its victims but rarely addressed in corporate policy. What’s more, except in extreme cases, workplace bullying is perfectly legal.

Horrible Bosses

When Nicole Richter took a job as an executive assistant to the head of a family-owned Fort Worth bank-holding company in 2008, the HR staffer told her she should run the other way; her new boss was notorious for going through aides like Kleenex. Nicole figured she could handle the challenge—until she was in the thick of it. When the boss was in a bad mood, he’d prowl around picking on people, turning the office into a scene from The Devil Wears Prada, with employees emailing back and forth, “Watch out, he’s coming your way!” but mom of two Nicole, 29, was his primary target. “He’d be nice for a while, then flip, like Jekyll and Hyde,” she says. And when her boss was bad, he was very, very bad: screaming, throwing her work on the floor, saying she was stupid, accusing her of mistakes he’d made himself, criticizing her relentlessly while refusing to tell her how to make things right.

The abuse got worse, to the point of extreme, after Nicole and her boss moved to a new office isolated from the rest of the staff. One day, he asked her to get a particular book for him. She looked everywhere but could only find one with a similar title. When she offered it to him, he took it from her and shoved it into her stomach so hard that she stumbled backward. “I was absolutely stunned,” Nicole recounts. “I went to the HR person, who said she’d seen this kind of thing happen over and over for years.”

Nicole’s experience is classic. while workplace bullying is multidirectional—a top-down, bottom-up and peer-to-peer phenomenon—bosses are the perpetrators as much as 80 percent of the time. “Research shows that when you give people more power, they become more focused on their own needs and may act as if the rules don’t apply to them,” says Stanford University professor Robert Sutton, PhD, author of Good Boss, Bad Boss. That cluelessness and lack of empathy can devolve into bullying. and it’s not just men: Women make up 38 percent of workplace bullies, according to the WBI study—and they target other women 80 percent of the time. In our Working Mother survey, more than half of respondents say women are more likely to be the bully at work—and that working moms are the most likely targets among all women.

Mean Girls

Jeannie Flynn* is a teacher, one who teaches kids at her suburban Iowa middle school not to bully. “But bullying is ongoing in my own department,” she says, describing a clique of teachers who, like the mean girls in the movie, have used gossip and exclusionary tactics to create an in-group that leaves those who aren’t like them out in the cold. “We’re supposed to function as a team, all working together and sharing materials. But it doesn’t work like that,” says Jeannie. The reason for the clique’s power, she believes, comes down to money and social status in their small community, as well as time. Jeannie, 32, has a 2-year-old daughter and a husband who often travels for work, so she finds it harder to stay late or come into school on the weekends, as the clique members do. “I tell my students they don’t have to be somebody they’re not just to have friends,” she says, sadly. “But that’s something I’m struggling with myself.”

Women are thought to be better team players than men—but not if they’re bullies, says Namie. “Women bullies tend to direct their energies toward splitting up the work team, using divide-and-conquer games or pitting worker against worker. and they tend to be hypercritical.”

Sick Workplaces

“It was like an abusive marriage,” says Traci Carter of her previous job as a child protective services investigator in Florida. “Everybody I worked with felt beat up.” the intensity and sheer volume of the agency’s work turned supervisors into ineffective allies at best, and screaming, vicious-email-shooting monsters at worst. But Traci, 33, a single mom of one now living in New York City, managed to handle the situation—until she got pregnant. “Our days started at 8 a.m. and often didn’t end till 10 p.m. or later,” she explains. “We were on call, and sometimes the call came in the middle of the night. Once I was pregnant, the job became unbelievably difficult.” She asked to be reassigned to office work, but her supervisor told her there was nothing she could do. at seven months into her pregnancy, she found herself responding to emergency calls in terrible neighborhoods in the dead of night—alone—and more than once she was threatened. “I told my boss, but she was pregnant, too, and as stressed out as the rest of us, because she was getting beat up by her boss. All she’d say was ‘Work it out!’ ”

Bullies aren’t just individuals with a behavior problem, says Namie. “The workplace culture is the most important precipitating factor in bullying. decades of research show an individual’s free will is easily trumped by circumstances engineered by others. We react and respond to situations—but we forget how much they elicit our behavior. The work environment, with its rewards or negative sanctions, informs the way people act more often than staff personalities do.”

Sadly, most organizations have yet to address bullying directly. Only 3 percent have an anti-bullying policy in place and faithfully enforce it, says namie. organizational cultures that don’t discourage bullying, or that even tacitly encourage it (using harshness as a “motivational” tool, for instance), pay a steep price. Even mild forms of negative behavior, if they become a pattern, can lead to major consequences, according to Christine Pearson, PhD, and Christine Porath, PhD, authors of The Cost of Bad Behavior: How Incivility Is Damaging Your Business and What to Do About It. In their nine years of research, they found that about half of affected employees will cut back on work effort or time, a third will decrease quality, two thirds will waste work time worrying about the offender, and one in eight will quit the job. If, say, 1 percent of the employees at one large computer company were to experience uncivil behavior, the cost would run about $12 million a year.

The effects of bullying on children have made headlines in recent months, but workplace bullying is an issue that doesn’t receive much attention. Yet, it’s a growing problem, partly because Internet cyber-bullying can reach beyond the workplace walls and into employee’ private lives.

Costs of bullying

According to surveys by the Work­­place Bullying Institute (www.workplacebullying.org) and the Employment Law Alliance (www.employmentlawalliance.com), between 33% and 44% of employees have experienced bullying at work.

Victims can suffer physical or emo­­tional harm that interferes with their professional and personal lives. Employers, in turn, may suffer the costs associated with decreased attendance, increased medical and insurance claims, legal claims and lost productivity and opportunity costs resulting from demoralized and distracted workers.

Studies also show that employees working in intimidating environments are less likely to speak out about po­­­­tentially dangerous or otherwise costly errors.

All of this can affect an employer’s bottom line and competitive edge.

Will legislation help?

A movement to legislate against workplace bullying is gaining mo­­men­­tum. In May 2011, Min­ne­sota became the 21st state to propose a workplace bullying law. While no state has yet passed legislation, New York came close last year.

Advocates of such legislation argue it is needed to address legal gaps. While the most extreme bullying and bullying based on protected class status may be unlawful under current laws, it is generally not against the law to be an equal opportunity jerk.

Opponents of anti-bullying legislation counter that it is impossible to adequately define illegal bullying and that the bar for claims will be set too low. Employers, mindful that it’s impossible to ensure universal workplace civility, worry that anti-bullying laws will generate a flood of frivolous litigation stemming from legitimate actions, such as efforts to discipline poor performers.

Despite the ongoing debate, the proposed legislation in New York drew bipartisan support. That proposed law, which was similar to legislation proposed in other states, required that bullying be severe, carried out with malice and unrelated to any legitimate business interest. It also modeled employer obligations after existing obligations under discrimination laws, providing employers with legal defenses for their efforts to prevent and promptly respond to bullying. It is not yet clear whether workplace bullying legislation will be en­­acted, but New York’s near-passage of a law has led some commentators to predict such legislation is in our future.

There appears to be public support for such legislation. In 2010, surveys by the Workplace Bullying Institute and the Sunday newspaper magazine Parade indicated that as many as 90% of respondents favor such legislation.

7 steps to stop bullies

Given these trends, employers should, if they have not already done so, start paying attention—both to get ahead of potential legal obligations and to mitigate the high business costs of bullying.

Some steps employers might consider taking include:

1. Adopt a “no jerks” rule. That’s the first step advocated by Robert Sutton, author of the colorfully titled book The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t. Sutton de­­fines a jerk as someone who oppresses, humiliates, de-energizes or belittles a subordinate or a colleague.

[WBI comment: Better and more practical still is the employer roadmap found in The Bully-Free Workplace: Stop Jerks, Weasels & Snakes from Killing Your Organization.]

2. Adopt and en­­force an anti-bullying policy. Such a policy should include reporting and response procedures akin to those used for har­assment. To avoid contract claims, however, policies should include contract disclaimers.

[WBI: Anderson is right about this. See our approach at Work Doctor, Inc.]

3. Avoid hiring bullies in the first place. Including potential peers and subordinates—not just potential managers—in the interview process may help prevent bullies from being hired. Studies indicate that bullies often target those with less power, so peers and subordinates may be better positioned to spot troubling behavior in interviews.

4. Treat bullying as a performance problem. Don’t reward or promote bullies. Doing so sends a message that bullying is accepted and not a bar to success. Instead, reform or get rid of bullies whenever possible. No matter how valuable an employee seems, the real and significant costs of bullying, if quantified, often outweigh a bully’s perceived value.

5. Train your employees on the company’s expectations regarding bullying. You might also train em­­ployees on how to engage in constructive, respectful confrontations and debates.

6. Use available counseling resources. Those might include anger-management counseling and employee assistance programs.

[WBI: This advice is much shakier.]

7. Take steps to prevent violence. Most bullying does not turn violent, but bullying can be a precursor to violence by the bully—or by the ­bully’s frustrated and angry target. Consider forming a threat-assessment team to address violence risks as they may arise.

###

Author: Megan Anderson, Esq., is a principal at Gray Plant Mooty in Minneapolis. She concentrates her practice in employment law counseling and litigation. Contact her at (612) 632-3004 or megan.anderson@gpmlaw.com.

Bullying isn’t just confined to teens; adults in the workplace are targeted, too.

I recently met a remarkable woman who has a lot to say about a kind of adult bullying that hits straights as well as LGBTS, that hurts men as well as women, that harms older and less connected workers the most, and that is so pervasive it’s called “The Silent Epidemic.”

Esque Walker, who lives in Corsicana and drove up to Dallas recently to give a Saturday morning presentation on workplace bullying, has an undergraduate degree in health information management, a masters in healthcare/health information management and a doctorate in public policy and administration.

She also has a score of certifications and areas of expertise.

She has been working diligently for the passage of the Texas Healthy Workplace Bill, authored by David Yamada on behalf of the Workplace Bullying Institute. It’s hard going, as you can imagine.

So far, Dr. Walker has been unable to even get a meeting with Gov. Rick Perry. Perhaps he is too busy campaigning. More likely, if his many aides have put her name and credentials before him, he has retreated into his good-hairyness.

Remember: He scraped through Texas A&M with Ds; she has a Ph.D.

But the governor is not the only impediment to getting this bill in place. So far, Dr. Walker and her associates have spoken with a great many Texas state senators and representatives. Not one has agreed to sponsor the bill.

Dr. Walker was herself the target of workplace bullying some years ago. But instead of simply taking the abuse — as most women and many men have done over the years — she aligned herself with others who understood the issues involved.

So, what are the issues?

To begin, Dr. Walker asserts that adult bullying is based on the bully’s need for power and control. It’s closely linked with competitiveness; the bully may resent the target’s appearance, education, personality or any number of facets of the other person’s being. He or she definitely does not want the target to advance.

So how do you know you are targeted, assuming the bully does not actually taunt or threaten you, as happens so often to children and teens?

You start with power disparity; the bully may have a higher status, longer tenure or perhaps corporate protectors to give him or her a sense of strength.

Then you look at four other criteria: repetition, duration, intensity and escalation.

Workplace bullying, says Dr. Walker, usually plays out in a predictable way. First, the bully criticizes you or gets someone above you in the pecking order to do so. Next, the bully involves others, usually four to six people who may see you as a threat or just want to curry favor with the boss.

Then, no matter what you do, it is not enough or not good enough, and coworkers are not allowed to “help” you. Eventually you are fired — after being told, “You are not a team player.”


Here’s how it looks by the numbers:

• 62 percent of bullies are men (who may bully other men, straight women or, of course, LGBTs).

• 58 percent of targets are women.

• 18 percent of adult suicides in the European Union are attributed to workplace bullying.

• An estimated 1 million Texans are bullied at work every year.

As the economy has worsened, pushing out older workers has become the norm; counselors report the escalation, although putting a number to the pain is virtually impossible.
So what to do if you are the target?

First, document everything, with specifics of person, time, place and comment or event. Second, do not go to your organization’s human resources person or department; HR works for the company and could care less about you.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission or your union representative — if applicable — can help; the latter may be especially important in education and medicine, where power disparities and bullying are common.

The Workplace Bullying Institute (WorkPlaceBullying.org) publishes a newsletter and other materials that can offer insight plus specifics. The Dallas Public Library has books by Gary Namie and Ruth Namie, Ph.D.’s known for their groundbreaking research and writing on workplace “jerks, weasels and snakes.”

And of course Out & Equal has done and continues doing great work on behalf of our community.

Final thoughts: The worst that can happen is that Texas will continue to allow vast amounts of cruelty in offices, factories, fields and stores. The best that could happen is that our next Legislature will pass the Healthy Workplace Bill, recognizing the problem, mandating anti-bullying education, and allowing victims to sue.

Meanwhile, if a workplace bully is making you frightened and depressed, find a counselor in whom you can confide. And don’t wait ’til tomorrow. Do it today.

###
Read another story about Esque Walker

About a third of the U.S. workforce has fallen victim to workplace bullying. Learning to mitigate the problem means creating a more open work environment and crafting a stern anti-bullying policy.

The image of the schoolyard bully is heavily ingrained in our culture. Name a television show centered on American youth within the last half century, and it’s more than likely that at least one episode will be dedicated to the smaller, scrawnier kid doing his very best to avoid — or in some instances, defeat — the intimidating figure.

While the notion of the big, bad bully has been spotlighted in a number of television shows and movies, the practice in real life is undeniably serious. At the school level, instances of bullying have been attributed with causing a range of societal harms: absenteeism, violence, youth suicide and the like.

Although constant attention is given to youth-related bullying at schools, the less-talked-about form of bullying is that which occurs in the workplace.

According to a 2010 survey from the Workplace Bullying Institute, a research firm and consultancy on the subject, 35 percent of U.S. workers — or an estimated 53.5 million Americans — have experienced some form of bullying in the workplace, while another 15 percent claimed to have witnessed it.

“[It’s] epidemic; however, it is still a primarily un-discussable topic in organizations, and that’s why so many people are driven out in silence and without acknowledgement,” said Gary Namie, the director of the Workplace Bullying Institute and a trained social psychologist and business consultant.

Different from workplace harassment, which is generally considered a form of illegal discrimination, bullying is “often directed at someone a bully feels threatened by,” according to an April 2011 report by the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries titled “Workplace Bullying and Disruptive Behavior: What Everyone Needs to Know.”

“The target often doesn’t even realize when they are being bullied because the behavior is covert, through trivial circumstances and isolating actions that occur behind closed doors … While harassment is illegal, bullying in the workplace is not,” the report states.

In fact, according to the Workplace Bullying Institute, bullying is four times more prevalent at work than harassment.

“We define it as abusive conduct — health-harming, abusive conduct that takes the form of repeated mistreatment [or] verbal abuse or threats, intimidation or humiliation,” Namie said.

Aside from the negative impact workplace bullying has on people — high stress, absence, reduced self-esteem, depression, sleep problems — bullying can cause turnover in an organization as well as a loss of productivity. High costs associated with investigations of potential ill treatment or, in some cases, legal action are also common.

The Workplace Bullying Institute breaks workplace bullying into different categories.

• The “screaming meanies.” These office bullies may be yelling or cursing at their target in public. Namie dubbed this the “Bobby Knight” approach in reference to the famously irate and emotional former head coach of Indiana University’s men’s basketball team.

• The constant critic. This individual tries behind closed doors to distort the appraisal or evaluation of a particular employee, claiming that the target is incompetent. “That starts to shatter the person’s sense of integrity and they’ll fall apart in a matter of a few months,” Namie said.

• The “control freak.” Oftentimes bullies deem themselves the “gatekeeper” to all resources; they in turn bully by refusing to allow access to these resources to certain employees, potentially hindering those employees’ work performance as a result.

This begs the question: Why hasn’t more attention been placed on the issue? For one, bullying isn’t technically illegal, and in many of the cases may be difficult to detect — the culprit will almost always deny any accusation. But another reason may be political: Those in management positions often end up taking on the role of the bully, so employees may be afraid to report instances they deem as bullying so as not to lose favor with their superiors.

This is something many employees may not want to do, given the frail economic environment. With the job market in disarray, employees may be staying in a poor job situation longer, leaving them subject to more abuse and harm on behalf of a workplace bully. Namie said in the past, it was more common for abused employees to quit and take their talents elsewhere.

Additionally, equally due to the scarcity of jobs, workers may be growing meaner at work, trying to blow down anyone in their path if it means greater job security and standing. “An otherwise very kind and gentle person [could become] a wholly terror at work if they believe that’s what it’s going to take to stay employed and get ahead,” he said.

Hampering Job Growth?

Others claim that a more acute form of workplace bullying takes place after an employee leaves. This may occur when a prospective employer conducts reference checks, and the former employer offers negative feedback.

Most companies have a policy where only titles and dates of employment of a former employee can be verified upon a reference check. The idea is that any other feedback — whether it is positive or negative — could create potential legal trouble for the company.

Still, many fail to abide by this, harming unemployed individuals’ chances of getting back into the workforce, said Jeff Shane, vice president of Allison & Taylor, a reference checking company.

Shane’s firm gets hired by clients, many of whom are unemployed, to conduct reference checks to make sure former supervisors are not giving negative feedback to potential employers. Those who do offer negative feedback — and whose corporate policy is strictly against the practice — are documented and might receive a “cease and desist” letter, threatening further legal action. Even if such unfavorable information is factual, if the company has a strict policy on the matter, legal action can be taken, Shane said.

“We have found, unfortunately, that about half of the thousands of checks we conduct do indeed come back with some form of negative information,” he said.

Being Proactive Pays Off

Preventing traditional workplace bullying, however, is more complex. According to the Washington State Department report, employees can regain control of the situation by first recognizing or acknowledging that the bullying is taking place. The report then recommends keeping detailed documentation on specific occurrences.

As for talent managers, encouraging office open-door policies and starting awareness campaigns on the subject is a starting point. Crafting detailed and compliant anti-bullying policies that differ from a firm’s anti-harassment policy is also one way to start to mitigate the problem, the report said.

Namie, through the Healthy Workforce Campaign, has been championing that a bill get passed to make bullying in the workforce unlawful. The bill, titled the “Healthy Workplace Bill,” has been introduced in 21 states since 2003. Some states have taken more kindly to the bill than others, but it has yet to pass. “We’re getting closer,” Namie said.

Despite efforts to get legal action taken on workplace bullying, prevention must go further than policy or law. The root of the problem is cultural. Organizations need to take a hard look and evaluate if the work environment they’ve laid out is enabling the behavior.

“Until the executive team is willing to say, ‘We don’t need to be abusive to be successful,’ [anti-bullying programs] will go nowhere,” Namie said.

Frank Kalman is an associate editor of Talent Management magazine. He can be reached at fkalman@talentmgt.com.

by Erika C. Collins, New York Law Journal, Oct. 24, 2011

The United States has had status-based harassment and discrimination laws in place for decades, well in advance of most other countries. Though the United States has taken several measures to protect those who are harassed in the workplace based on “protected categories,”(1) it has not introduced legislation to assist those who are “bullied” in the workplace, but do not have such a protected status on which to base a claim. Recent surveys indicate that a significant portion of U.S. workers may fall into this category; 35 percent of U.S. workers reported experiencing workplace bullying, the majority of which was same-gender harassment.(2)

Currently, there is no state or federal law to fill this gap in coverage. The first anti-bullying piece of legislation, the “Healthy Workplace Bill” (HWB), was introduced in California in 2003. Since then, 21 other states, including New York, have proposed bills based on the HWB, though none have yet been enacted. The New York State Legislature, however, is considering such a bill. A bill establishing “a civil cause of action for employees who are subjected to an abusive work environment” provides a remedy for victims of harassment that is not based on a protected category and holds employers civilly liable for maintaining abusive work environments.(3) If the bill is passed into law, New York will become the first state in the country to recognize a cause of action for workplace bullying, though several states have considered such legislation in the past.

Other countries have been more proactive in combating workplace bullying. In particular, Sweden, the United Kingdom, France and Japan have introduced new legislation or have interpreted existing legislation to address bullying in the workplace.(4) This article summarizes New York’s proposed bill. It also analyzes workplace bullying laws in place in Sweden, the UK and France as examples of treatment of workplace bullying outside the United States. Finally, this article provides recommendations to multinational employers that are faced with complying with developing bullying laws.

Healthy Workplace Bill

The New York State Legislature introduced an anti-bullying bill in 2010, which passed in the Senate,(5) but was put on hold in the Assembly. In early 2011, an identical bill was introduced in the New York State Assembly and Senate,(6) and is currently under consideration. Supporters of the proposed legislation are hopeful that New York will be the first state to pass it, prodding other states to follow its lead.(7)

The bill would amend the New York Labor Law by providing legal redress for employees who are subjected to an “abusive work environment,” which exists when an employee is “subjected to abusive conduct that is so severe that it causes physical or psychological harm.”(8) The bill defines “abusive conduct,” as “conduct, with malice, taken against an employee by an employer or another employee in the workplace, that a reasonable person would find to be hostile, offensive and unrelated to the employer’s legitimate business interests.”(9)

A single act will not constitute abusive conduct unless it is “especially severe or egregious,”(10) similar to the standard for hostile work environment claims under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.(11) Furthermore, the bill requires employees to notify their employers of the abusive conduct.(12) After receiving such notice, employers must eliminate the abusive conduct, and may not retaliate against individuals who participated in the complaint process.(13)

The bill does provide employers with two alternative affirmative defenses. First, an employer may have an affirmative defense against a claim if it can demonstrate that it exercised reasonable care to prevent and promptly correct the abusive conduct and the employee unreasonably failed to take advantage of the appropriate preventative or corrective opportunities that it provided.(14) This defense is not available if the abusive conduct culminated in an adverse employment decision with respect to the complaining employee (e.g., termination or demotion); however, the employer can assert an alternative defense that any such decision was consistent with the employer’s legitimate business interests.(15)

The remedies available under the bill include reinstatement, removal of the offending party from the complainant’s work environment, reimbursement for lost wages and medical expenses, compensation for emotional distress, punitive damages, and attorney’s fees.(16) However, in cases where there was no adverse employment decision, emotional distress damages are capped at $25,000 and punitive damages are not available.(17) As an additional safeguard against unjust enrichment, the bill precludes employees who have collected Workers’ Compensation benefits for conditions arising out of an abusive work environment from bringing a claim pursuant to the law for the same such conditions.(18)

Sweden’s Ordinance

In 1993, Sweden became the first country in the world to enact specific anti-bullying legislation. The Ordinance on Victimization at Work,(19) enacted as part of Sweden’s occupational safety and health laws, offers protection against “victimization,” which it defines as “recurrent reprehensible or distinctly negative actions which are directed against individual employees in an offensive manner and can result in those employees being placed outside the workplace community.”(20)

Unlike New York’s proposed law, the ordinance does not provide a private cause of action for aggrieved employees; instead, it imposes administrative obligations upon employers to prevent victimization, immediately intervene when such misconduct becomes apparent, and attempt to engage in a collaborative process to resolve conflicts.(21) Employers who fail to comply with these obligations may be fined and/or imprisoned for up to one year.(22)

United Kingdom Act

Like the United States, the United Kingdom has not enacted legislation specifically to combat workplace bullying. However, British courts have interpreted an existing anti-stalking law, the Protection from Harassment Act (23) (PHA), as providing redress for victims of workplace bullying.(24) The PHA prohibits individuals from pursuing a course of conduct that either amounts to harassment, or that they should know amounts to harassment.(25)

Courts have interpreted the statute’s vague definition of “harassment” as conduct: (i) occurring on at least two occasions, (ii) targeted at the claimant, (iii) calculated in an objective sense to cause distress, and (iv) that is objectively judged to be oppressive and unreasonable.(26) However, even if the complained of conduct constitutes harassment under this objective test, vicarious liability for the conduct is not automatic; employer liability must be “just and reasonable in the circumstances.”(27) Whether or not an employer has implemented a harassment policy and procedures is one factor courts may consider in determining whether the imposition of vicarious liability is reasonable.(28) This judicial consideration is similar to the first affirmative defense under New York’s proposed law, which is available to employers that take measures to prevent and promptly correct abusive conduct.

There also is a statutory affirmative defense similar to the “legitimate business interests” defense provided in the New York bill, which is available to defendants who can show that the complained of conduct was: (i) pursued to prevent or detect a crime; (ii) legally required; or (iii) reasonable under the circumstances.(29) The PHA provides for remedies similar to those available under the New York bill, including injunctive relief and compensatory and emotional distress damages.(30) Unlike the New York bill, however, there is no cap on the damages that courts may award aggrieved employees. Significantly, a court recently awarded a victim of workplace bullying a record-setting $1.6 million in damages under the PHA.(31)

France’s Law

In 2002, France enacted the Social Modernization Law, which introduced provisions to the French Labor Code that provide civil and criminal penalties for “moral” harassment.(32) The law sets a higher standard for actionable conduct than New York’s proposed legislation does by expressly providing that a single act, regardless of its severity, is not enough to constitute moral harassment.(33) Furthermore, the conduct must have the purpose or effect of degrading the employee’s right to dignity, affecting the employee’s mental or physical health, or compromising the employee’s career.(34) The law places an affirmative obligation on employers to take all necessary actions to prevent moral harassment,(35) and prohibits them from retaliating against employees who report moral harassment or who refuse to be victims of moral harassment.(36)

Labor tribunals have construed the Social Modernization Law as holding employers strictly liable for actionable conduct, even if they implemented measures to prevent moral harassment.(37) Thus, unlike New York’s proposed legislation, there are no affirmative defenses available to employers. The law also provides for the automatic nullification of any employment contract termination resulting from moral harassment.(38) Additionally, labor tribunals have ordered employers to pay damages for breach or “disloyal non-performance” of an employment contract based upon a failure to prevent moral harassment.(39)

Steps Employers Should Take

The practical implications of the global trend aimed at combating workplace bullying are very concerning for both U.S. and multinational employers. To safeguard against litigation and liability for potentially large damage awards, employers should consider taking the following steps:

• Broaden workplace policies to prohibit abusive conduct and retaliation against any employee raising a complaint.

• Include a requirement that employees report abusive conduct, and provide a specific and clear procedure that offers employees multiple avenues to complain about abuse.

• Train all managers on how to handle reports of abusive conduct, and the consequences of retaliation.

• Take immediate and effective action to rectify all retaliation complaints.

• Continually review and, if necessary, revise employment policies to ensure compliance with applicable workplace bullying laws and regulations.

###

Erika C. Collins is a partner at Paul Hastings in New York where she chairs the international employment law practice group. Mina Maisami, an associate with the firm, and Shaira Nanwani, a summer associate with the firm, assisted in writing and editing this article.

Endnotes:

1. Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, race, color, religion, sex, and national origin are protected categories. The Age Discrimination in Employment Act protects workers who are 40 and older from discrimination, and the American with Disabilities Act protects disabled workers. Under the Genetic Information Predisposition Act of 2008, employers are prohibited from using information regarding someone’s genetic predisposition to disease in making employment decisions. Veteran status is also a protected category under the Vietnam Era Veterans Readjustment Assistance Act. Finally, many states also include sexual orientation as a protected category.

2. Results of the 2010 WBI U.S. Workplace Bullying Survey, WORKPLACE BULLYING INSTITUTE, http://www.workplacebullying.org/wbiresearch/2010-wbi-national-survey/ (last visited July 25, 2011).

3. S. 4258, 2011-2012 Reg. Sess. (NY); A. 4258. 2011-2012 Reg. Sess. (NY) See “History of the Healthy Workplace Campaign, HEALTHY WORKPLACE BILL, http://www.healthyworkplacebill.org/states.php (Oct. 4, 2011).

4. See Katherine Lippel, “The Law of Workplace Bullying: An International Overview,” 32 COMP. LAB. L. & POL’Y J. 1, 1 (2010); Jessica A. Clarke, “Beyond Equality? Against the Universal Turn in Workplace Protections,” 89 IND. L.J. 1219, 1259 (2011).

5. Sen. 1823 B, 2010 Sess. (N.Y. 2010).

6. Assemb. 4258, 2011 Sess. (N.Y. 2011); Sen. 4289, 2011 Sess. (N.Y. 2011).

7. See Tina Susman, “State Bills Against Workplace Bullying Gain Traction,” L.A. Times, March 18, 2011.

8. Sen. 4289 §761, 2011 Sess. (N.Y. 2011).

9. Id. (providing the following examples of abusive conduct: “repeated infliction of verbal abuse, such as the use of derogatory remarks, insults and epithets; verbal or physical conduct that a reasonable person would find threatening, intimidating or humiliating; or the gratuitous sabotage or undermining of an employee’s work performance”).

10. Id.

11. See David C. Yamada, “Workplace Bullying and American Employment Law: A Ten-Year Progress Report and Assessment,” 32 COMP. LAB. L. & POL’Y J. 251, 262 (2010) (describing the domestic interdisciplinary coverage of and responses to workplace bullying and discussing decision of the HWB author to base the standard on that of hostile work environment claims).

12. Sen. 4289 §761, 2011 Sess. (N.Y. 2011).

13. Id.

14. Id. §764. This affirmative defense is similar to the Title VII affirmative defense created by the Supreme Court in Burlington Indus. Inc. v. Ellerth, 524 U.S. 742 (2008) and Faragher v. Boca Raton, 524 U.S. 775 (1998).

15. Id. (providing the following examples of legitimate business interests: “termination or demotion based on the plaintiff’s poor performance,” or a “reasonable investigation of potentially dangerous, illegal or unethical activity”).

16. Id. §766.

17. Id. See also Yamada, supra note 2, at 265 (stating that this safeguard “has the effect of discouraging extensive litigation and promoting quick resolution”).

18. Sen. 4289 §769, 2011 Sess. (N.Y. 2011).

19. SWEDISH NATIONAL BOARD OF OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH, VICTIMIZATION AT WORK, ORDINANCE (Arbetsmiljoverket [AFS] 1993-17) (Swed.).

20. Id. §1.

21. Id. §§4-6. The accompanying guidelines suggest that management set standards for good behavior by example and clearly communicate to employees that victimization in the workplace is unacceptable.

22. See Frank Lorho & Ulrich Hilp, Bullying at Work 15-23 (European Parliament Directorate-Gen. for Research, Working Paper SOCI 108 EN, 2001), available at http://www.europarl.europa.eu/workingpapers/soci/pdf/108 en.pdf; Helge Hoel & Stale Einarsen, “The Swedish Ordinance Against Victimization at Work: A Critical Assessment,” 32 COMP. LAB. L. & POL’Y J. 225, 240 (2011).

23. Protection from Harassment Act, 1997, c. 40, §1 (Eng.).

24. See Majrowski v. Guy’s & St. Thomas’s NHS Trust, [2005] EWCA (Civ) 251, ¶56 (Court of Appeal); Green v. DB Group Servs. (U.K.) Ltd., [2006] EWHC 1898 (Q.B.).

25. Protection from Harassment Act, 1997, c. 40, §1 (Eng.).

26. See Susan Harthill, “Bullying in the Workplace: Lessons From the United Kingdom,” 17 MINN. J. INTL L. 247, 285 (2008) (citing Green, [2006] EWHC 1898, ¶ 152).

27. Majrowski, [2005] EWCA (Civ) 251, ¶57.

28. Id. ¶59.

29. PHA §1(3).

30. Id. §3(2).

31. Green, [2006] EWHC 1898 (Q.B.).

32. C. TRAV. art. L. 122-49.

33. Id.

34. Id.

35. Id. art. L. 122-51. One measure that employers must take is preparing a written document displaying workplace rules, which includes a provision prohibiting moral harassment. Id. art. L. 122-34.

36. Id. art. L. 122-49.

37. See Loic Lerouge, “Moral Harassment in the Workplace: French Law and the European Perspectives,” 32 COMP. LAB. L. & POL’Y J. 109, 122-27 (2010) (analyzing moral harassment cases before French Labor Tribunals).

38. C. TRAV. art. L. 122-49.

39. Lerouge, supra note 31, at 123.

STEUBENVILLE – A Steubenville man is hoping to build grassroots support for an initiative that would curb workplace bullying.

John Smurda, state coordinator for the Ohio Healthy Workplace Bill, said the protections built into the proposed legislation are long overdue.

“We’re light years behind other countries,” he said. “Australia, the U.K. they’re way ahead.”

Workplace bullying is defined as “repeated, health-harming abusive conduct” by bosses, co-workers or both. It can take the form of verbal abuse, threatening conduct, intimidation and humiliation as well as deliberately stabling someone else’s job performance, all of which can lead to to stress-related health damage, emotional injuries and career harm.

According to the U.S. Workplace Bullying Institute, 35 percent of the American work force an estimated 53.3 million people have reported being bullied at work, while another 15 percent say they’ve witnessed a bullying incident. The institute says another 50 percent say they’ve never experienced or witnessed bullying.

Other sources put the percentage of bullied workers closer to 70 percent.

And while 21 states are considering bullying legislation West Virginia is on the list, Ohio and Pennsylvania are not none have adopted it. So far, Smurda said they haven’t found a lawmaker to sponsor the legislation in Ohio.

“They call it the ‘black plague’ of this century,” Smurda said. “It causes a lot of mental health issues a lot of suicides are attributed to bullying and a lot of unions are adopting preventive measures for workplace bullying. The big thing is employers, even though they have a policy in place for harassment, they don’t know quite how to deal with a person dealing with harassment. What we’re trying to promote is if you see bullying going on, speak up.”

Among other things, the proposed legislation would ensure employers understand what constitutes an abusive work environment as well as how they can correct it, and gives victims an avenue to sue their tormentors as an individual while holding employers accountable.

Smurda also said Freedom From Workplace Bullies Week, which is Sunday through Oct. 22, is a chance to get word out that victims don’t have to be silent, witnesses can speak up and employers can correct and prevent the problem.

“What bullying really is is psychological violence,” he said. “It’s health harming, and employers need to realize … how much the sick days and hospital cost.”

via Herald Star.

After Steve Jobs died last week, TNT aired the 1999 movie “Pirates of Silicon Valley.” While the made-for-TV drama highlights the late Apple co-founder’s many accomplishments, it also portrays him as a cruel, disparaging boss.

Various news media outlets have cast Jobs in a similar light. In July 2010, The Toronto Star ran a piece titled, “Jobs Is a Genius and a Jerk.” The year before, Broadway Books published “The Second Coming of Steve Jobs” in which author Alan Deutschman describes Jobs as “an abusive, egomaniacal boss fond of meting out public humiliations.”

There are also recent examples. An article on Gawker.com published after the tech guru’s death says Jobs bullied and manipulated employees. And Noah Wyle, who starred in “Pirates,” wrote a piece published last week on Forbes.com that tells of a meeting he had with Jobs and several Apple executives. “They all—I don’t want to say they live in fear of him—are certainly are subservient to his will and whim,” the actor wrote.

A spokesman for Apple declined to comment on Jobs and these accounts.

The accounts share a common theme: Even the most successful of entrepreneurs may be unable to avoid earning a reputation as a bad boss when such is the case.

Research suggests that bad bosses – the bullying kind, to be specific — are somewhat common. An estimated 53.5 million Americans – or 35% of the U.S. workforce — report being bullied at work, according to a 2010 study commissioned by the Workplace Bullying Institute, an employee-rights group in Bellingham, Wash., and conducted by polling firm Zogby International. The findings also show that 62% of bullies are men and 58% of targets are women.

The same Institute also reports that since 2003, 21 states have introduced healthy workplace bills aimed at curbing bullying. However, none has been passed into law.

via Bad Bosses Can’t Hide Behind Entrepreneurial Success – In Charge – WSJ.

This begs the question: do these kids grow up to be workplace bullies, or does the workplace make its own class of bullies? Tell us what you think in the comments section.

New York (CNN) — A new study commissioned by CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360°” found that the stereotype of the schoolyard bully preying on the weak doesn’t reflect reality in schools.

Instead, the research shows that many students are involved in “social combat” — a constant verbal, physical and cyber fight to the top of the school social hierarchy.

To read more visit: CNN study: Schoolyard bullies not just preying on the weak – CNN.com.

A Bettendorf businessman, branded as the “boss from hell” by some of his employees, offered prizes to workers who could predict which of them would next be fired.

A state judge has called that a “deplorable” act and sided with the company’s ex-employees.

William Ernst, 57, the owner of a Bettendorf-based chain of convenience stores called QC Mart, sent all of his employees a memo in March, outlining a contest in which the workers were encouraged to participate. The memo read:

“New Contest – Guess The Next Cashier Who Will Be Fired!!!

“To win our game, write on a piece of paper the name of the next cashier you believe will be fired. Write their name [the person who will be fired], today’s date, today’s time, and your name. Seal it in an envelope and give it to the manager to put in my envelope.

“Here’s how the game will work: We are doubling our secret-shopper efforts, and your store will be visited during the day and at night several times a week. Secret shoppers will be looking for cashiers wearing a hat, talking on a cell phone, not wearing a QC Mart shirt, having someone hanging around/behind the counter, and/or a personal car parked by the pumps after 7 p.m., among other things.

“If the name in your envelope has the right answer, you will win $10 CASH. Only one winner per firing unless there are multiple right answers with the exact same name, date, and time. Once we fire the person, we will open all the envelopes, award the prize, and start the contest again.

“And no fair picking Mike Miller from the Rockingham Road store. He was fired at around 11:30 a.m. today for wearing a hat and talking on his cell phone. Good luck!!!!!!!!!!”

QC Mart cashier Misty Shelsky of Davenport was shocked by the memo — although, she says, Ernst had a long history of unprofessional conduct with regard to lower-ranking workers.

“This guy was the boss from hell,” Shelsky told The Des Moines Register. “He treated pretty much all of us like dirt.”

Shelsky said she and her store manager, along with a few other employees, quit as soon as they saw the memo and realized it wasn’t a joke or a prank.

“It was very degrading,” she said. “We looked at that, then looked at each other, and said, ‘OK, we’re done.’ ”

When Shelsky applied for unemployment benefits, Ernst challenged the claim, saying she had resigned voluntarily. The dispute led to a recent hearing at which QC Mart Area Supervisor Anna DeFrieze testified that the contest was created by Ernst because his employees weren’t following company rules.

“None of them were doing their job,” she testified. “They’ve repeatedly been told not to use their phone while they’re working, that bad language is totally unacceptable and, you know, playing video games while you’re working is not acceptable. They just broke all those rules.”

Shelsky testified that she and her colleagues quit due to the hostile work environment created by the contest.

“My entire store was up in arms over it and that’s why we all left,” she testified.

State records show that at least two QC Mart employees sent letters to company managers objecting to the contest. One worker wrote that the contest was “bizarre and unprofessional.” Another worker wrote that it had “created an atmosphere of distrust, intimidation and paranoia.”

Administrative Law Judge Susan D. Ackerman sided with the workers, calling the contest “egregious and deplorable.” Shelsky was awarded unemployment benefits.

“The employer’s actions have clearly created a hostile work environment by suggesting its employees turn on each other for a minimal monetary prize,” Ackerman ruled. “This was an intolerable and detrimental work environment.”

Ernst could not be reached for comment. DeFrieze declined to comment on the case.

via Firing contest by boss leads employees to quit | The Des Moines Register.

Sticks and stones may break my bones…but words won’t break my spirit!

Research conducted by the U.S.-based Workplace Bullying Institute is interesting. According to WBI, “35 percent of U.S. workers report being bullied at work…15 percent have witnessed it…68 percent of bullying is same-gender harassment; 58 percent of targets are women; and 80 percent of the time, female bullies target other women…”

What is workplace bullying and why does it happen? Ray Williams calls bullying “North America’s silent epidemic,” and says “bullying involves the conscious repeated effort to wound and seriously harm another person—not with violence, but with words and actions.”

There are three components to the bullying triad: bullies, victims of bullying, and witnesses or bystanders.

Bullies

The vast majority of bullies are bosses—managers, supervisors, and executives.

Ray Williams suggests that bullies are Type A personalities: competitive and driven, and often lacking in emotional stability.

“Above all, bullies crave power and control” Williams says, and they “seem oblivious to the trail of damage they leave behind, as long as their appetites for power and control are fulfilled.”

My theory—I call it the been there, done that (BTDT) victim’s theory and it’s based on personal experience—is that bullies are insecure, unsure of their own abilities and threatened by a show of independence and confidence in the workers they bully. Unable to reveal their feelings of inferiority to same-level colleagues, and smart enough to not bully upward against their own bosses, bullies vent their insecurities upon their subordinates.

Bullies choose as targets those subordinates who display a confidence gained through experience on the job or through achievements in life outside the workplace, a confidence that threatens the insecure bullying superior.

Victims

The BTDT victim’s theory is supported by research at the Workplace Bullying Institute, which calls itself “the first and only U.S. organization dedicated to the eradication of workplace bullying.” According to WBI, “the targets of office bullies…are the highly competent, accomplished, experienced and popular employees…”

Gary Namie, director of the Workplace Bullying Institute, suggests a higher percentage of female bullies and targets is due to women’s “open jealousy and envy.” Women, Namie suggests, are “hypersensitive and hypercritical, focusing on tiny details. Those details are then used as a basis to “tear into each other.”

Independent workers pose the greatest threat to bullies. When targets refuse to be controlled and intimidated, the abusive behaviour escalates. When the typical victim of bullying has had enough, realizes that neither the bully’s superiors nor Human Resources will do anything to stop the abuse and quits the job, the workplace often loses the best, the brightest and the most experienced.

Bystanders (Witnesses)

Co-workers often know when one of their number is being bullied. Either they see or hear something, or a victim confides what is happening.

Why doesn’t somebody do something?

Ever notice an accident off to the side of the road as you are driving? Ever look over, curious to know what happened but glad it wasn’t you in that mess?

If emergency services are on the scene most drivers continue past the accident scene without stopping. Somebody else is looking after things.

If authorities are not on scene, and if it is safe for you to do so, you might stop to see if help has already been called and if there is some comfort you can give until professional helpers arrive to do their job. But if the situation poses a threat to your own safety, you are less likely to become directly involved.

Bystanders are often useful and compassionate at the scene of a workplace collision, too. They listen to the victim and blanket her with sympathy. But it is a rare worker who will put his or her own workplace well being in jeopardy by giving a detailed, objective, eyewitness account of bullying incidents to authorities. We live in perilous economic times. Many workers are afraid to draw a bully’s attention away from the usual targeted victim toward themselves.

This self-interest on the part of bystanders is understandable, but ultimately not helpful to a bully’s victim.

Albert Einstein said, “The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.”

Read more at Suite101: Workplace Bullying—The Triad: Bullies, Victims and Bystanders

A lawyer jokes that she “gets angry for a living.” In the midst of a particularly bad day at the office, a real estate agent vows to channel her anger into making that next sale.

Most of us would prefer a tenacious fighter on our side in a legal battle. And business owners probably wouldn’t mind a bit of passion in their sales force. But would we want that same “angry” lawyer or sales rep as a boss? Probably not. Yet plenty of people, particularly young men, view anger as an effective management tool.

“People care about their work so you’re going to have conflict and you’re going to have anger,” says Donald Gibson, a professor of management at Fairfield University.

Anger is positive about half the time, Gibson says. It can spur creativity and competitive zeal. Perhaps most importantly, it can expose unfair labor practices and flaws in products and procedures. At the same time, he warns, anger can undermine trust between coworkers or lead to overly cautious work practices.

“In many organizations there is an anger asymmetry,” Gibson says. “Supervisors can express anger, but workers can’t. Doctors can express anger, but nurses can’t. That’s a recipe for disaster.”

Anne Kreamer, author of “It’s Always Personal: Emotion in the New Workplace,” thinks the traditional view of anger as evidence of passion needs to change. “The culturally accepted notion that angry people are in control is false. Anger is a sign that someone has lost control,” Kreamer says. “Angry work environments don’t make people snap to and work well together. Persistently angry workplaces drive good people away.”

In my mid-20s I worked for a boss who was famous for his temper. He threw books across the room, and even chairs and staplers, when he got angry. If an employee gave him bad news, he was likely to explode — screaming and pounding his fist on her desk. At the time, his rage seemed like a humiliating secret his employees shared. But after leaving that job, I discovered many outside our office knew about the temper tantrums. My secret became my workplace war story and my ability to survive, a badge of honor.

The most effective way to avoid angry outbursts in the modern workplace, says Vicky Oliver, author of “Bad Bosses, Crazy Coworkers, and Other Office Idiots,” is to “up the etiquette quotient.”

“We work in a no-door, no-wall environment. We’re working longer hours than ever. We’re thrown together with people for eight, nine, 10 hours a day,” Oliver says. “So how do you respect people’s boundaries? How do you maintain a healthy emotional distance where there is no physical distance?”

Because conflicts are inevitable in the workplace, particularly in an economy where fewer employees are shouldering more work than ever, Oliver advocates the creation of buffer zones. Announce your presence when you approach someone else’s cubicle, and ask permission to enter. Such niceties can help create a more collegial, less angry atmosphere, especially if they are still observed during disagreements.

Another effective strategy to avoid office flare-ups is to create some emotional distance between you and your coworkers. Consider e-mail, an especially volatile source of workplace anger. If you receive a tersely worded e-mail and feel compelled to fire back a scathing reply, Oliver advises delaying your response as long as possible (without jeopardizing project deadlines, of course). Leave your desk, take a short walk, or go on an errand. If you simply cannot resist writing a biting e-mail retort, then write one, file it in your draft folder — and leave it there. Later, take a look at that angry draft and extract only the information that addresses the work issue, stripping out all the emotional language you possibly can.

“Reframe the conflict or issue as a problem to be solved,” Gibson says, “but that’s difficult when you’re in the throes of anger.”

n e-mail or in person, try to use the adrenaline rush that comes from angry exchanges as motivation to articulate your point of view in an assertive — never an aggressive — way. “If you lash out, no one will remember the source of the conflict, but everyone is going to remember your behavior,” Oliver says.

Keep in mind that people express work frustrations in a variety of ways — from tears, to cracking jokes you may feel are mean-spirited, to sudden expressions of rage. “When you think of the difference between effective and ineffective anger, a lot of it is in the intention,” Kreamer says. “Blaming and bullying anger are not effective.”

According to surveys conducted by the Workplace Bullying Institute (www.workplacebullying.org), one in six U.S. employees has been the target of bullying during his or her career. Bullying differs from other forms of workplace anger. “It’s repeated, it’s malicious, it’s intentional,” says Katherine Hermes of Connecticut Healthy Workplace Advocates. Often the target is isolated from other members of the team, does not receive information or resources needed to do their job, or is belittled in front of others.

Because bullies often target more than one person, you may find allies at work. But be careful, Oliver warns. Coworkers may see the opportunity to ally themselves with the bully by reporting what you’ve said against her. “It’s tempting to vent to your coworkers, but it’s always dangerous to play the gossip game. The gossip wheel tends to work against you,” Oliver says. “You have to remember that there are a variety of personalities in any given workplace, including opportunists.”

Instead, Oliver says, create a support network outside of work. If your workplace has an employee assistance program, consider taking advantage of its confidential services.

If these strategies fail, you’ll need to alert your HR department. Before you do, make sure you can demonstrate a documented pattern of abusive behavior. Emphasize how the bully’s behavior is affecting your productivity. Do not focus on how the behavior makes you feel uncomfortable or try to present an “It’s him or me!” scenario.

“HR may still look at you as a whistleblower, but sometimes the whistle has to be blown,” Oliver says. “The tide is turning on all bullying behavior. It’s easier to talk about it than it used to be.”

If all else fails, begin to work on an exit strategy, Kreamer says, because “chronic, caustic anger always has a price, and that price is almost always your well-being.”

The harming effects of workplace bullying can go further than mere embarrassment. A target may become psychologically injured after long-term abuse.

According to the Workplace Bullying Institute, "workplace bullying is repeated, health-harming mistreatment that takes one or more of the following forms: verbal abuse; offensive conduct/behaviors (including nonverbal) which are threatening, humiliating, or intimidating; and work interference (sabotage) which prevents work from getting done."

Workplace bullying has devastating effects on the targeted individual. Not only does one feel that their job is in jeopardy, they may also start to feel physically ill and emotionally harmed.

Bullying poses great liabilities to employers, including:

• Occupational health and safety violations;
• Actions for negligence or intentional infliction of mental suffering; or
• Defamatory actions.

Another concern that arises from workplace bullying is stress-related illness. These illnesses can range over many categories. It is not uncommon for people under extreme stress to develop symptoms of heart disease (i.e. high blood pressure), gastrointestinal disorders (i.e. irritable bowel syndrome, ulcers) and many other ailments. The stress that results from bullying can lead to long-term illnesses; some ailments by affect an individual for life.

Bullying and Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

As a result of the negative feelings associated with workplace bullying, targets are at a very high risk of developing mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety disorder. Their way of living is attacked for no apparent reason and often, the attacker is intent on harming the target for no apparent reason. Targets may endure abuse day in and day out for months or even years. This abuse harms their overall health. While depression and anxiety can be debilitating, targets may experience symptoms that are different. Yet finding a fitting diagnosis causes a bit of a controversy among some professionals.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) describes symptoms that result when a person is involved in a short-term or single traumatic event. Examples include accidents, natural disasters, assault, attempted murder and rape because these are considered to be of short duration. However, the trauma related to workplace bullying is not an isolated, short-term event.

Long term or chronic events that span a period of months or years tend to develop symptoms that vary from PTSD. There is usually more intense psychological harm when one experiences repeated trauma. There may be complete changes to one's concept of who they are and in their ability to cope with stressful situations.

During long-term traumas, people are held in physical and/or emotional captivity. They are under the influence of their abuser and unable to get out of the situation they are in. Examples include:

• Prisoner of War camps
• Long-term domestic violence
• Repeated, severe physical abuse
• Childhood sexual abuse

Some psychologists believe that a different term, Complex PTSD (C-PTSD), should be used to identify trauma that is repeated or long-term. Bullying targets may show symptoms that are similar to PTSD and/or C-PTSD. For this reason, researchers of workplace bullying believe that bullying should be considered an example of captivity.

C-PTSD is not a recognized diagnosis in the current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. It should be noted, however, that the main difference between the two types of PTSD is the cause of the disorder in the patient. Symptoms of the two types are much the same. For this reason, therapists may diagnose bullying targets with PTSD, allowing patients receive treatment.

The Symptoms of Complex PTSD

Above all, to be considered for a diagnosis of C-PTSD, the target must experience an extended period under the control of another person. After this has been established, other symptoms must be taken into account.

According to Julia M. Whealin, Ph.D. and Laurie Slone, Ph.D., in the May 22, 2007 version of the US Department of Veterans Affairs site, Complex PTSD, there are symptoms that would occur if someone has been chronically victimized, including:

• Persistent sadness, explosive anger; inhibited anger; suicidal thoughts;
• Forgetting traumatic events or reliving them. Feeling detached from one's mind or body;
• Feelings of helplessness, shame, guilt and stigma. One may feel that they are different than other people;
• Attributing total power to the abuser. Preoccupation with the perpetrator, possibly becoming obsessed with revenge;
• Social isolation, distrust in others or repeatedly searching for a rescuer; and
• A loss of faith or a sense of hopelessness and despair.

Other difficulties that may be experienced by people with C-PTSD include:

• Avoiding topics related to the trauma due to feelings that are too overwhelming;
• Abusing alcohol/other substances to avoid and/or numb feelings/thoughts associated with trauma;
• Self-mutilating and/or other types of self-injurious behaviors.

Workplace bullying is a serious issue due to the harmful health issues it causes. People have committed suicide and/or harmed others while in the throes of PTSD episodes. One should consult their doctor and/or a mental health professional if experiencing symptoms, especially feelings that cause one to be a danger to self or others.

Originally posted at Suite101

Four months after a grand jury report said workplace bullying was a problem within county government, a recent survey of about 500 employees said much the same.

Sixty percent of the county employees surveyed said they had been bullied at work, while 69 percent said they had witnessed bullying. Forty-four percent said they were yelled at while working and 43 percent said they were retaliated against for speaking up.

“I have been a victim of a long-term bullying and I’m here on behalf of those who are afraid to step forward,” said Gary Lowery, a biomedical equipment technician with the Ventura County Health Care Agency who spoke Tuesday before the Ventura County Board of Supervisors.

Lowery was one of about 30 members of the SEIU Local 721 union who presented the report card on bullying to the supervisors, asking that they take action to stop what some described as a pervasive problem. They wore purple union shirts and held up signs reading, “It’s not OK” and “Bullies are expensive.”

“The system does not work right now,” Perry Morefield told the board as he gave a list of things that should be changed to combat bullying. “It will make the county a more acceptable and more effective place to work.”

Much as the grand jury recommended, the SEIU — which represents about 4,200 of the county’s 8,000 employees — wanted the board to come up with a concrete policy on how to deal with bullying. Morefield also demanded mandatory training for managers, third-party oversight of grievances, a centralized human resources department and meetings between the union and department heads.

Ventura County CEO Michael Powers said the county was going create a policy addressing the problem over the next 12 months, as well as start a new hotline to report misconduct. The county also will try to educate people on what resources are available for those who feel they are being bullied.

“We share your belief that you deserve an open and positive workplace,” Powers said, adding that with 8,000 employees, problems are bound to happen. “I don’t think this is a pervasive problem, but one instance is too many.”

Emmett Faulconer, a supervisor in the biomedical department at Ventura County Medical Center, said he’s hopeful, but after 20 years with the county, he is dubious. The union will continue to put pressure on the board for change and to make managers more accountable for bullying, he said.

Faulconer said when he had a problem with a manager who was doing offensive things, he complained a number of times and nothing was done. It was only after he and other employees went to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which told them they had a right to sue, that any action was taken, he said. Faulconer said that manager still works for the county.

Morefield said when he complained that his supervisors were doing things in violation of health privacy laws, he was told he was going to be transferred to a different department. He said he had 15 minutes to move nine years of files and work.

He argued that the human resources managers are part of the “old boys and old girls network,” who just protect the other managers.

After the seven SEIU employees spoke before the board, many of the representatives who were in the audience marched around the normally staid government center, waving signs and chanting: “What do we want? Respect! When do we want it? Now!”

via Bullying a problem within county government, union says » Ventura County Star.

Everyone has experienced a bad day at the office when people are yelling and screaming at each other in frustration. But, if one person is the target of constant verbal and emotional abuse, it can escalate into a troubling case of ‘workplace bullying.’

Many small business owners refuse to acknowledge workplace bullying, preferring to hope the antagonist will eventually stop picking on a targeted co-worker. But, if you do nothing, the situation usually worsens, creating serious health and emotional problems for the bullied worker—and financial stress for employers, according to experts in the field.

If business owners don’t deal with bullying at work, it could result in a violent act. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, about two million violent crimes occur at American workplaces every year.

“There’s a real bottom line reason for business owners to take this problem seriously,” said David Yamada, professor of law and director of the New Workplace Institute at Suffolk University Law School in Boston. “If you are working in close quarters and things are tense and combative, it’s likely to affect everyone’s morale.”

An expert on workplace issues, Yamada authored the ‘Healthy Workplace’ bill, which has been introduced by legislators in 21 states. Currently, 16 versions of the bill—which aims to protect bullied workers from abusers, extending legal protections currently not available to them—are under review in 11 states. Most people think federal employment and discrimination laws protect workers from bullying, but they don’t, according to Yamada.

Being bullied at work makes life miserable. Experts say bullied workers suffer from anxiety, hypertension, depression and other stress-related illnesses. A 2010 Zogby study revealed that about 35 percent of all adult Americans have been bullied and 15 percent of the population has witnessed workplace bullying. The survey was authored by Dr. Gary Namie, Ph.D., and his wife Ruth.

Considered experts on workplace bullying, they have written extensively on the topic and consult with companies dealing with bullying issues. Their newest book, The Bully-free Workplace: Stop Jerks, Weasels and Snakes from Killing Your Organization, provides readers with an in-depth look at the problem and several strategies for dealing with workplace bullying.

“Bullying runs rampant in small businesses,” said Namie. “The owner wants to avoid conflict and doesn’t know what to do. They prefer to tell the abuser and the target, ‘you guys work this out.’”

Namie said he became interested in workplace bullying issues after his wife, Ruth, who is a psychologist, was bullied at work. “Our research shows 66 percent of women who are bullied at work lose their jobs,” said Gary Namie. “Forty-one percent quit, and 25 percent are fired.”

People bullied at work feel trapped—similar to someone suffering from domestic violence. It’s often worse for a bullied worker who feels he or she has to take the abuse because they really need the job, especially during this lingering economic slump.

How do you know if you have a bully in your midst?

“Bullying is a hostile, repeated behavior meant to make people feel badly,” said Carolyn Fedigan, a Boston-area human resources consultant who helps clients deal with bullying problems.

“I’ve dealt with a CEO who would regularly say to his secretary, ‘What, are you stupid?’”

Fedigan said some bullies take a more subtle approach. “They leave people out of communication loops, they spread gossip or single people out for the silent treatment,” she said.

No matter how distasteful it is, business owners can’t turn their backs on the problem. “There is a real financial cost to companies that let this toxic behavior continue, “ said Fedigan. “Bullied people take sick leaves, go out on disability and lose productivity.”

She said many business owners tolerate a bully if the person is a great salesperson or clients love them. “Sometimes the boss is scared of the bully,” she said. “They worry about the cost of turnover, of recruiting and training a new person.”

Business owners have to put their foot down and say, ‘We don’t accept this kind of behavior.” She said it’s important to have a written policy prohibiting workplace bullying. It’s also important to encourage your employees to report any inappropriate or bad behavior. “You have to have the kind of environment where employees can tell the boss what’s happening to them.”

Companies often hire Fedigan to counsel bullies. She works one on one with them, delving into why they are acting inappropriately towards a colleague. “Often, they have no idea they are a bully,” she said. “They think it’s an okay way to behave.”

Consider drafting an anti-bullying policy for your business that defines the problem and then:

Provides a procedure to report incidents.
Includes a ‘no retaliation’ provision.
Encourages employees to report incidents.
Informs employees that violations may result in discipline.

When push comes to shove, workplace bullies are costing the company money. And that’s a good focus when dealing with them.

As a species, it seems we’re doomed to interact with jerks.

It happens in high school, and we think, “Once I get to college, things will be different.”

Then it happens in college, and we think, “Once I get a job, people there will be more mature.”

Not so much. Jerks abound, and, as fate would have it, the workplace is as much a breeding ground for bullies as the playground.

While much has been done in recent years to address bullies in the schoolyard, the issue of bullying at work remains largely under the radar. In fact, because of a work culture that often rewards aggressiveness, bullies have a nasty tendency of succeeding at work.

“This is one of the great undiscussables in the American workplace because it seems if you haven’t experienced it, you’re likely to believe it doesn’t happen,” said Gary Namie, a social psychologist and co-founder of the Workplace Bullying Institute. “What we’re seeing is a lot of abusive conduct, but it’s accepted as routine in the American workplace.”

Last year, Namie commissioned the polling group Zogby International to survey U.S. workers. The research found that 35 percent of the country’s workforce has experienced bullying on the job, and another 15 percent has seen it happen.

The remaining 50 percent of respondents had neither seen nor experienced bullying, a statistic that Namie said makes it hard for some to relate to the problem. He calls it a “silent epidemic.”

“So often in the workplace the feeling is, ‘Hey, you’re an adult, handle it yourself,’” Namie said. “They sometimes even blame the victim. But you know what? We said that for domestic violence for a long, long time until they criminalized it. So people need to stop the silly rationalizations.”

To be clear, “workplace bullying” doesn’t apply to acts of violence.

“What separates bullying from workplace violence or harassment is the fact that the bullying is something that’s done on a continuous basis,” said Timothy Dimoff, founder of SACS Consulting & Investigative Services, an Ohio-based company that specializes in high-risk workplace and human resource issues. “It’s constant and repetitive; someone who’s using different means of harassment, whether it’s complaining about the person, spreading rumors, blaming them, encouraging others not to talk to the person. It’s more psychological and emotional abuse.”

Think about your workplace, and there’s a good chance you’ve seen this or dealt with it. In the most severe cases, a manager tries to sabotage an employee by taking credit for work or writing a negative performance review. More routinely, a co-worker or manager picks away at an employee, making cracks about them in front of other people, demeaning them even in subtle ways.

This behavior may seem routine in a world of snarkiness, but when it happens day in and day out, and when the targeted person feels unable to fix the situation, it can lead to serious physical and mental health problems. Consider how difficult it might be, particularly in this job market, for a victim to protest the way a manager is treating them.

“Many people nowadays feel really locked in,” Namie said. “Like there’s no escape route, and that just makes the situation worse.”

The fact is, some folks will find themselves in situations where the only way out is to quit. That’s obviously a worst-case scenario, but if a bully is making your life so miserable it’s affecting you physically and mentally, you’ve got to cut ties and take care of yourself.

Before that, however, there are steps you can take to try to put the bully in his or her place.

“They need to take it to their human resources person or their immediate supervisor,” Dimoff said. “If they don’t get any results, then they need to go to somebody higher. In the meantime, they need to document when these things happen, where they happen and what was said and done. If they don’t write it down, it’s hard to remember details, and things get distorted. When management sees an employee come in with this in writing, they react much more quickly and thoroughly to it.”

Namie suggests that the target look for ways to quantify the harm a bully is causing a company. How many people has the person driven away? How much work time is eaten up contending with problems relating to the bully?

“You want to be able to tell the executives that the bully is too expensive to keep; actually present the business argument that the bully is too expensive,” Namie said. “What can discredit the person who is the target is emotionality. The emotionality is scary to management. So you make a dispassionate argument.”

Of course, management is, or should be, responsible for creating an environment that repels bullies.

“The company needs to have policies and procedures against bullying and workplace violence, and they need to let those procedures be very well known to their management and employees,” Dimoff said. “Companies need to work on creating a more positive culture. In positive cultures, we don’t see the bullying. People work together and don’t resort to negative tools.”

Namie’s Workplace Bullying Institute is pushing a Healthy Workplace Bill, which is being considered in 11 states, that would crack down on office bullies and clearly define what it means to have an “abusive work environment.” You can learn more about the bill at healthyworkplacebIll.org.

A final point: If you think a bullying co-worker is trying to make you a target, be proactive.

Bullies, at the end of the day, are cowards. They feed off people who put up with their abuse. So the moment someone begins to pick at you, stand up to them. Let them know you won’t tolerate improper treatment.

The alternative is to let it go, and that’s almost guaranteed to not end well.

From the Chicago Tribune

The Drs. Namie began the first and only U.S. research, education, advocacy and consulting organization — the Workplace Bullying Institute (WBI, workplacebullying.org) now in Bellingham, Washington. Their current books areThe Bullying-Free Workplace (2011, Wiley) for employers and The Bully At Work (2009, Sourcebooks) for bullied individuals. WBI regularly conducts research, including the scientific 2010 & 2007 U.S. Workplace Bullying Surveys and online large sample studies. As the go-to experts, WBI has been featured on U.S. and Canadian network and local TV, national and local newspapers, business magazines and radio, with nearly 1,000 interviews.

Two important additional types of work the Namies undertake are (1) to direct the national campaign to enact the anti-bullying Healthy Workplace Bill in states (healthyworkplacebill.org), and (2) The Work Doctor® (workdoctor.com) the Namies’ firm that originated the field of workplace bullying consulting for employers in 1998. Gary was the expert witness in the nation’s first ”bullying trial” in Indiana with the verdict upheld by the state Supreme Court.

Prior to their 24/7/365 immersion in workplace bullying, Gary’s university teaching in psychology and management spanned 20 years. Ruth had counseled substance abusers. Both were corporate directors of organizational development and training – he in healthcare, she in the hotel industry.

The Namies’ professional preparation, consulting experience, and unwavering focus on workplace bullying give them an unrivaled, comprehensive perspective of the phenomenon that they introduced to the U.S.

* * *

How do you define “workplace bullying”? What isn’t it?

It is a pattern of repeated personalized attacks by one or more people against a targeted (our preferred term for the victimized) employee. It’s always repeated, chronic. The resultant health harm derives from the repeated exposure stressful work conditions completely out of the target’s control.

Bullying takes the form of verbal abuse, behaviors (physical and nonverbal gestures, space invasions & paralinguistic cues (interruptions, loud hostile volume, speech rate)) that are threatening, intimidating, or humiliating, and work interference or sabotage that prevents work from actually getting done.

We often refer to it as a systematic campaign of interpersonal destruction launched by bullies against targets who neither invited nor deserved the assaults.

We speak of abusive conduct at work as bullying. Contrast it with the less intense and less harmful negative actions — incivility and disrespect. These euphemisms are favorites of American employers who want to act like they are addressing bullying. Bullying is not rudeness or simply inappropriateness.

We frame bullying as a form of violence, albeit non-physical and sub-lethal (NIOSH agrees with this characterization).

The most important distinction to draw is with conflict. Conflict is a clash of intellectual differences between two equal-powered parties that can be resolved using time-tested strategies. Mediation is the preferred tool. But research and our experience find that mediation applied to serious bullying only compromises the previously compromised target. They begin the process as relatively powerless (the vast majority (72%) of incidents are perpetrated by bosses who outrank their targets). The so-called “middle ground” can never benefit, or ensure safety for, the target. To ask a bullied target to further yield to the bully is unconscionable.

The closest phenomenon analogous to workplace bullying is domestic violence. The interplay between abuser and abused victim mirrors the bully-target interaction. Bouts of explosive violence are followed by pseudo-nurturant interludes before a resumption of the violence. Witnesses do not interfere out of fear. Society (akin to the employing organization) remained aloof until pressure mounted to outlaw the practice. Prior to its proscription, apologists rationalized doing nothing because they felt it “inappropriate” to get involved in private family matters.

A final reason to compare bullying to domestic violence is that mediation is an inappropriate tool to stop it. There is no acceptable middle ground in abusive relationships — not in domestic violence and not in workplace bullying.

When and why did you two begin to work together?

That was in 1985. We started The Work Doctor consulting firm while Gary was teaching overseas for the University of Southern California. His graduate management students were military officers who sought guidance on real world organizational problems. So, we started the family-run consulting company, aptly named by Ruth. She and he worked together from the beginning. From its inception until 1998 Work Doctor provided a wide variety of consulting solutions, including lots of fun topics (e.g., strategy sessions at California beach towns with CEOs). However, when bullying so intensely interrupted normal life for us, we knew at the start what employers needed to do to correct and prevent workplace bullying. Work Doctor has focused exclusively on bullying in organizations since then. Services include professional speeches (done by Gary and son Sean who just joined the company), training on-site for caring employers, and, of course, the systemic solution we devised to stop bullying — Blueprint. Of course, market awareness has lagged in the U.S.

We married in 1983. Ruth’s separate career began after her graduate training in clinical psychology was completed in 1992. She was bullied in 1995. The situation resolved in 1996 and by mid-1997, we decided that to import workplace bullying from Britain was our destiny. So we started what became WBI.

By then had either or both of you already become especially interested in the problems that bullies create in the workplace?

We began collecting, at the Work Doctor website, tales of workplace mistreatment — the dark side of the world of work — thanks to inspiration from our friend Daniel Levine, host of the website and author of the book with the same title — Disgruntled! But it had not yet personally invaded our family in the early 1990′s. We understood the phenomenon only slightly and from the safe distance enjoyed by consultants. We had empathy for targets, but not intimate knowledge of its impact. We probably also confused serious abusive bullying with unethical or uncivil conduct (we were naive way back then).

Please explain when and why the Workplace Bullying Institute was founded.

Ruth’s pre- and post-doctoral career was spent in clinics treating individuals with chemical dependency problems. She was an effective clinician. She moved seamlessly across locations within a large HMO and enjoyed respect from her supervisors. In 1995, she voluntarily transferred to a clinic that allowed her to treat families and end the substance abuse specialty. Oops. She suddenly met the boss from hell, a woman clinical psychologist named Sheila. The demise of her happy career followed the predictable stages we have come to document over the years.

Like all targeted individuals and their caring partners, we did not know what to call the irrational thunderbolt that struck Ruth without invitation or deservedness. Ruth called it harassment as per HR instructions. However, we learned the legal lesson that most bullied targets learn — when the harassment is same gender or same race, it is legal and considered unactionable by HR folks who lack policies with teeth when no law exists to compel action. We hired and fired a lawyer and learned the first of many legal lessons.

After an 18-month recovery period, we surfaced emotionally and searched for the name for Ruth’s wretched experience. We found that the Brits called it workplace bullying; the Scandinavians called it mobbing. We assumed that given America’s size there must be a movement led by an organization we could support and help. In June 1997, there was none. So, we decided at that point, while living in the San Francisco suburb of Benicia, to start the Campaign Against Workplace Bullying.

The modest beginning was represented as a part of The Work Doctor website. We began writing about every aspect of bullying that we could find. We relied heavily on the European and Canadian research that had a decade head start on Americans.

The Campaign got its own website on Jan. 3, 1998 (bullybusters.org). It had grown to be rather encyclopedic. After all Gary was an academic (still teaching in No. California to pay the rent) and determined to teach. Ruth saw the need to reach out to people harmed like she had been. We established a toll-free crisis line for those seeking validation and advice. We answered the number day and night weekdays and weekends. It consumed us, both emotionally and financially. However, before we abandoned the goal of giving advice at our expense, Ruth and Gary had heard over 6.000 stories, most told in one-hour blocks.

Later, we would become known for our empirical quantitative research, but those first eight years when we lived on the phone with others we gleaned rich anecdotal information that no survey could yield. We had heard every conceivable variation of bullying that exists.

Oprah called and we worked for seven weeks to develop a November (1998) show for her. We were abruptly cut out of the show itself when Gary had the audacity to recognize the stupid idea a show producer had — to “rehabilitate a bully on stage” — and to call it just that. It’s still a stupid idea that TV shows still try to plug. Telling Dr. Phil “no” was easier after insulting the Oprah people back in the beginning. But sacrificing the dignity of the movement that stands against abuse is too great a price to pay for TV titillation.

Because of a pending Oprah appearance, we hurriedly wrote and published our first book — BullyProof Yourself At Work. We sold over 5,000 copies and quickly tired of buying bubble wrap in 6-foot diameter rolls and stuffing envelopes. In 2000, we attended the booksellers’ convention, BEA, and the publisher Sourcebooks discovered us and bought the book that became The Bully At Work. Its second edition was released in 2009.

Our first national press coverage came from the Washington Post, then USA Today as a special 1998 Labor Day feature. The Campaign first inhabited a kitchen nook, then a bedroom, finally overwhelming both the living and dining rooms. Callers flocked to us. We recruited volunteers to help with logistics and helping us respond to the hundreds of e-mail requests for confirmation that the sender was not crazy. Ruth ran a local support group and, under supervision, offered counseling to bullied clients.

We moved from Benicia, California to Bellingham, Washington in late 2001 to replenish family funds used for the Campaign. Gary again taught university for two more years, capping a 21-year career. For Western Washington University, he designed and taught the first U.S. college course on bullying — Psychological Violence At Work.

In Bellingham, the Campaign became the Workplace Bullying Institute because a team of volunteer research students made possible more surveys. Institutionalizing the name made it seem more academic. We consider the production and dissemination of research by WBI and others the activity that distinguishes us in the field. In America, WBI remains the first and only organization that integrates all aspects of workplace bullying: self-help advice for individuals, personal coaching, research, public education, union assistance, training for professionals, employer consulting, and legislative advocacy.

To what extent (if any) has its original mission changed?

The scope of our work grew from a narrow focus on bullied targets and their families to include a national campaign to enact state laws prohibiting malicious, health-harming abusive conduct at work (a.k.a. workplace bullying), and an extensive repertoire of consulting services for employers. Listening to, and advising, individuals in the throes of being bullied evolved to professional coaching (for a low fee) by a licensed counselor on staff, Jessi Brown. The public education work has expanded to include contributions of research — by WBI and by others — to inform all work. WBI, since 2008, trains professionals in its Workplace Bullying University, to extend the message beyond what a small group like WBI can achieve by itself. WBI also works extensively with unions striving to help their members restore lost power from bullying. In 2011, we are offering the first-ever union-only WB University. And in an oblique way, Gary educates courts and arbitrators by providing expert witness services in lawsuits.

The three domains of our work are related as follows. Individual targets are powerless to stop bullying by themselves and should not be held personally responsible to do so, regardless of how much knowledge they possess. Mighty organizational forces are assembled to block corrective action. To apply the ubiquitous “personal responsibility” mantra to bullied individuals is to blame victims for their fate, as if they wished upon themselves severe abuse.

Employers are responsible for the work environment — bullying or its absence. So, while we currently serve employers (and unions), voluntary steps are typically modest and ineffective without being driven by the CEO. That has happened but is rare since 1998 when we focused exclusively on bullying consulting (workdoctor.com). In 2009, we launched the nation’s first anti-bullying program for adults in schools (Sioux City, Iowa, Community Schools), melding protections for children as well as for adults (workplacebullyinginschools.com).

Abdication of responsibility by employers to address bullying within their organizations is not currently punishable by law, and is even perceived as an indication of an employer’s command over its workforce to deny relief from abusive supervisors and managers. Nearly all employers choose to not give workers additional rights or protections in the U.S. unless and until compelled by laws to do so. Laws are the motivation.

Thus we began legislative advocacy in 2001. It led to the introduction in 2003 in California of the first of over 70 versions of the anti-bullying Healthy Workplace Bill. The HWB has been introduced in 21 states since. Suffolk University Law School professor David Yamada contacted the Campaign in 1999. At the time, he was writing the seminal treatise on the need for workplace bullying laws (published in the Georgetown Law Journal in March, 2000). He shared the goals of what was to become WBI and offered to write language for the requisite legislation. It is called the Healthy Workplace Bill (HWB, healthyworkplacebill.org). Ruth and I took it to Sacramento, and the journey began.

We learned how to lobby state lawmakers the old fashioned way — without money. In the years since, we perfected and teach the methodology to citizen advocates who volunteer as State Coordinators in the Healthy Workplace Campaign. Currently, we have Coordinators in 36 states. We are a focused and successful group numbering 70 that challenges the Chambers of Commerce and other highly compensated business lobbying groups in each state. Our small but powerful team has 16 concurrent versions of the HWB active in 11 states in 2011. In 2010, both the Illinois and New York state Senates passed versions of the HWB, respectively. According to a 2011 New York Law Journal article, passage of the HWB seems inevitable. We believe this to be true, but cannot predict when or where. No state has yet passed the HWB.

Enactment of state laws will capture the attention of employers. The message will spread. Employers will eventually have to treat workplace bullying as seriously as they currently consider illegal forms of discrimination. Under threat of litigation, employers will create, and be compelled to enforce, policies specifically prohibiting bullying as we define it. In this way, and only in this way, will the millions of Americans afflicted by bullying at work be believed and protected.

Our enlarged mission now incorporates this tautological relationship: laws lead to employer actions that lead to protections for bullied workers that lead to diminishing (if not eradicating) workplace bullying.

Why has relatively little research been completed – at least until recently — on bullying in the workplace, given the nature and extent of its destructive and expensive impact?

The first English-language research journal article by Heinz Leymann, founder of the international movement, appeared in 1990. Leymann called the phenomenon mobbing instead of bullying. In 1996, a special Workplace Bullying edition of the European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, collected papers by Leymann, Norwegians, Germans and others. Bullying was a mainstream academic topic by then. The Bergen (Norway) Bullying Research Group, led by psychologist Staale Einarsen, produces more studies than any other single university or group. Norwegian transplant Helge Hoel completed his doctorate in England and from the University of Manchester is quite prolific. European researchers began to hold small biannual meetings to share new findings back in 1998. That group became the International Association on Workplace Bullying & Harassment. The group by self-definition remains a scholarly group. It holds its 8th meeting in 2012 in Copenhagen.

Laws followed research. The first law is Sweden’s, enacted in 1994. All Scandinavian countries have national anti-mobbing/bullying laws.

Reporter-turned-activist Andrea Adams in the UK launched the movement with her 1992 book, Bullying At Work. She defined the term we borrowed at WBI. Her legacy was extended after her death in 1995 by the Andrea Adams Trust, which closed its doors in 2010. UK unions are fierce anti-bullying advocates. The huge federal public sector union, UNISON, commissioned one of the first UK surveys on bullying done by Charlotte Rayner in 1998. Rayner has been a prolific researcher since. At universities throughout the UK and Ireland, doctorates were awarded in workplace bullying. This leads to a substantial body of peer-reviewed scientific literature.

Australians joined in 1994 with the staging of a conference in Queensland. Laws in various states followed culminating in June 2011 with the passage of a law in Victoria criminalizing bullying. It is only the second in the world to do so, but is the more prominent piece of legislation.

American researchers Loraleigh Keashly at Detroit’s Wayne State (a Canadian by birth) wrote a 1998 review of the literature about bullying, calling it emotional abuse at work. Subsequently, she published results of a Michigan scientific survey that stood as the best estimate of bullying’s prevalence in the U.S. (1 in 6 workers) until the WBI national surveys years later. She often teams with SUNY, New Paltz social psychologist Joel Neuman who applies his knowledge of aggression to the workplace and to bullying. In 2005, NIOSH convened a meeting of workplace bullying researchers. Only a handful of Americans were dedicated to researching the topic back then.

To answer your question about the apparent invisibility of research requires us to contrast the burgeoning international scientific literature with public awareness of research being conducted. Careers of academics depend on publishing articles in peer-reviewed journals. Journal readership numbers in the hundreds, and then only among others competing to publish in the same field. Rarely are articles translated for public consumption. At WBI, we are proud of translating and disseminating significant, but obscure, findings into useable information for the public. We feature such research in our training for professionals and at the website.

The other limitation of research is that it necessarily relies on the perspective of the targeted person. Thus, they are the ones who are researched heavily. Impact on their health, their perceptions of the bullies’ motives, leadership styles of managers involved, etc. The first studies of bullies’ perceptions come from Australia in 2011 where violators of employers’ law-dictated policies have been identified. To date, only their opinions about the injustice of the system that held them accountable for their behavior have been queried.

What are among the most common misconceptions about bullying in the workplace?

Misconceptions by executives: it doesn’t happen here and my trusted and accused colleagues are not capable of being abusive as alleged. Some executives genuinely believe these myths. The national statistics refute the first myth. Clearly the prevalence of bullying across all industries shows that it does happen nearly everywhere. The reason for disbelieving the subordinate who dares to accuse the manager is that that manager used years of ingratiation (butt-kissing) to curry favor with the executive so that accusers are not believed when they come forward with reports of bullying.

Misconceptions by the public: bad things happen to those who deserve it, so when people are bullied, they must have done something to bring the consequences upon themselves. This blame the victim rationalization allows the one believing it to feel protected against future personal harm. Of course, if they have the misfortune (not of their own doing) to be assigned to work with a predatory, toxic bully, they will learn firsthand that it is the bully who chose them, the method of torment, the timing of assaults, and how to convince teammates to betray the target. The target is not responsible for her or his fate any more than a battered spouse.

Misconception by HR-type workplace “experts”: targets are responsible, they actually owe it to themselves, to confront their bully with snappy comeback lines that will make her or him stop. What a joke! And how cruel to add this twist to the myth of “deserving or provocative victim.” By definition, a target is an individual who cannot defend him- or herself when subjected to a surprise character assassination. In other words, if she could have bounced the bully, she would have.

Misconception by workers: all harassment and a hostile workplace are illegal for everyone and HR will ride to the employee’s rescue when the call for help is made. Unfortunately, this is a costly myth. Only in very narrowly defined circumstances where the target is a member of a protected status group (on the basis of gender, race, religion, disability, etc.) and the perpetrator is not similarly protected do federal and state anti-discrimination laws apply. Hard to understand because the details require nuanced public education that does not exist. After a person is bullied, the legal lesson is learned. Part of WBI’s educational mission is to alert employees that most workers have no such legal protection.

Misconception (older and less frequently heard now): bullying happens in blue collar workplaces only to non-supervisors. According to the WBI 2007 U.S. Survey, 55% of targets are not supervisors, but 35% of all targets are managers — first-line supervisors, middle managers and non-executive managers aggregated. Managers are sandwiched between org layers that provide ample opportunities for bullies to emerge. Don’t forget, according to the national WBI surveys, 10% of bullies are subordinates who bully up the ladder.

Do those who are bullies in the workplace tend to be bullies at home and in the community, also?

The worst of the worst are abusers in every domain of their lives — in restaurants, when driving, at work, in church, at home. We cannot know the proportion, but we assume it is small. In worst cases, the person might actually be a psychopath (be diagnosable with an antisocial personality disorder). Robert Hare, the psychopath expert estimates that 1 in 100 executives are psychopaths. They would be excessively controlling and intimidating at home as well as at work.

However, to account for the 35% of adult Americans who have been bullied at work, another factor must be operating. Our preferred explanation subordinates personality as the prime causal factor in favor of powerful work environment cues that suggest to anyone paying attention that aggression is the key to higher status and advancement. When those are the operating rules, regardless of some lofty mission-vision-values language proclaiming that all individuals are respected, it only takes an astute observer willing to test the system to understand bullying. That is, a person who is kind, generous and wonderful outside of work can be transformed, with or without awareness, into a viper and predator at work. When asked why, the answer would be that certain conduct is expected of them at work and they are complying with that expectation. They would be saying that they were only doing what others had been doing all along, and they would be correct.

To what extent (if any) does confronting a bully in the workplace make it much less likely that the bully will be a bully elsewhere? Please explain.

Make no mistake. Bullies are confronted, just not as frequently by targets as they are confronted by bullyproof people. The confrontation conveys clearly to the bully that tormenting those who repel initial attacks will not deliver enough satisfaction to justify the effort required. Those people will not be targeted again.

Ironically, when a bully’s aggression is countered with equal or greater aggression, the respondent is often befriended, and, at the least, respected.

But bullies do renew their attempts to dominate others until they find a target who does not fight back immediately. With a target the benefit/effort ratio is high and the toxic relationship begins.

When coping with a bully, are group efforts much more effective than an individual’s efforts are? If so, why? If not, why not?

Theoretically, group interventions are the most successful. However, we know from studies, our and others, this is a too rare event. In a 2009 online survey, targets reported a joint confrontation in less than 1% of cases.

We could write an entire book describing the many ways coworkers fail their targeted colleagues. The despicable actions range from ostracism to estrangement to abandonment to siding completely with the bully. Many social psychological theories explain why, but the factor in common to all reasons is coworker fear. Fear of retaliation, fear of being the lone person to help, fear of being the next target for the bully.

When coworkers do nothing to help, it is imperative that the employer do something. We discussed elsewhere how dismal is the record of employer intervention, too.

In a way, our legislative advocacy is a way to mobilize the largest group possible – society – to declare the unacceptability of workplace bullying and to demand relief be given to those who request it.

Now please shift your attention to the book. When and why did you decide to write it…and write it together?

We have had the employer book outline on the shelf for years since we started WBI. There was no market for it. American employers showed little to no interest until recently. Corporate employment attorneys started writing about the pending success of our legislative campaign, warning employers to stop bullying voluntarily in preparation for the new law.

Since we started the national movement, drive the legislative campaign and originated the workplace bullying consulting field, we agreed to write the book when Wiley called saying that the market may be sufficiently mature for our employer-specific message.

To what extent (if any) does the book in final form differ from what you originally envisioned?

The Bully-Free Workplace is a business book written for managers and organizational leaders.

Wiley editors did an expert job of contrasting the goals for this reading audience with the business professionals who attend our 3-day immersive training on workplace bullying. For the latter group, we devote much attention to the science and theories that shed light on the phenomenon. The brief book cannot cover so much material without losing the audience. This was a lesson we had to learn.

So, we wrote the book in our most direct consulting voice. What should managers do? We tell them. What should executives do? We tell them. What problems arise when you engage in the wrong activities at the wrong time? We’ve been there and we tell them.

It’s not a coddling and comforting voice to put in an executive’s ear, but given their pay grade, they should be able to handle truths about bullying in order to be best informed. If they don’t care about long-term sustainability of their organization and retaining the most talented people who ensure that future, they should not be executives.

Thanks to our book, employers can no longer say they want to do something about bullying but don’t know where or how to start. We tell them.

Are there bully apologists? If so, what specifically is their rationale for defending/justifying bullies?

Yes. Bully apologists defend heinous actions by perpetrators based on one or more of the following reasons:

• He’s no bully, he’s following my orders (I see myself in the mirror when I see him)

• His personality may be grating to some, but they have to learn to live with him as he is. (“I’m as afraid of him as others are, just keep your distance and maybe he will ignore you

• A little bullying is a good motivational tool (learning theory in reverse)

• People can’t handle criticism, he (the bully) is simply trying to make the employees better workers (workers are thin-skinned, bullies build character)

• He (the bully) needs to be left alone to manage in ways tailored to the workers only he knows how to manage (the unlimited managerial prerogative models

In the book, you observe, “Trying to change bullies is a fool’s errand.” Please explain.

There is little hope that another person will ever alter another person’s personality. By definition, personality is stable across most situations. People marry with the foolish notion that they will change their partner. They leave the relationship disappointed.

Rather than change bullies – as the expensive and wasteful option of sending them to anger management or communication skills training implies – the more realistic goal is to simply constrain their behavior when they are in the workplace. That can be done with new rules, strictly enforced, and constant monitoring.

The behaviors change and how they act outside the workplace need not concern the employer. (Pity the spouses, pets, children, and restaurant waitpersons who run afoul of them daily.)

What are the dominant characteristics of a workplace culture in which there is little (if any) bullying?

A non-bullying workplace is one clearly free of abuse. Workers do not dread the possibility because if it happens, it is squashed immediately and the perpetrator is somehow branded anti-social and unacceptable. A fear-free place is the normal expectation of most workers new to any organization. When bullying surfaces, it always surprises people.

Some characteristics of a respectful workplace (a higher standard than the mere absence of abuse)

• Personally confident, curious, truth-seeking leaders

• Established channels of communication to leaders from staff that are trusted and used by workers without fear of reprisal

• Sick day and off-work policies that reflect an inherent trust of workers (not designed with cheaters in mind)

• Few, if any, secrecy mandates (e.g., compensation)

• Small CEO pay to lowest paid worker ratio

How specifically can bullying “kill” an organization?

We know the word “kill” sounds strong and hyperbolic, but right from the beginning of the movement, Heinz Leymann referred to employee death as the ultimate outcome from repeated mistreatment. Death comes from the onset of stress-related diseases traceable to the unremitting exposure to stress that bullying creates. And death can be by disease or suicide. Those are the literal ways that bullying kills.

It also undermines (kills) profitability, productivity, morale, team cohesion, employee trust and loyalty, and perceived effectiveness of leadership. All of these lead to sabotage, theft, sharing the flaws with external groups, and a tarnished reputation for the employer as one of the “worst places to work.”

Finally, bullying leads to the death of the organization’s vitality and ability to innovate and compete because the culture is understood by those on the inside as one that pits workers against their peers. There is no integrity, an ethical collapse, rendering employee engagement in any bold initiative necessary to keep the company solvent impossible.

Executive calls to purposeful action are met with sullen, disheartened, cynical employees.

Prior to what you characterize as an “epidemic” of bullying, are their any early-warning signs? Please explain.

The “red flags” missed by most organizations include:

• Not believing bullied individuals when they report the misconduct (disbelief from either the descriptions that sound too outrageous to be true or defensiveness of the first responders eager to protect the bullies)

• Simultaneously believing the alleged bully’s dismissal of the accusation as frivolous (who would confess to doing it?)

• Mislabeling bullying, aka psychological violence, as a simple “personality clash” and therefore not worthy of the organization’s attention

• mounting financial losses from lawsuits against the same few individuals who are inexplicably retained and never questioned

• C-suite mindguards who believe their role to be to block bad news flowing upward to executives

• A culture that prizes quiet (the absence of reports about potential interpersonal troubles) and considers conflict abhorrent, to be avoided at all costs (delusion accomplishes this goal)

What are the essential components of the “model of preventable causes of bullying” that you discuss in Chapter 8?

We agree that bullies bully because they can. Employers make it possible and some exploit the opportunities. It’s also true that personality has to be at least a small factor because not everyone sees the chances to hurt someone else.

However, our model states that bullying is primarily dependent on organizational learning. Bullies are excellent learners about, and interpreters of, cues in the work environment that signal openings to harm others. When there are situations in which others can be obliterated and one’s personal career advanced (a zero-sum competitive opportunity), it is because the employer has made the competition possible. (In Jack Welch’s world, the competition is by deliberate design in a twisted social Darwinistic way.)

When exploitation opportunities surface, only a few people willing to exploit need exist. With sufficient numbers of employees, a couple of Machiavellian types are bound to exist. Additionally, there must exist a pool of employees to serve as prey for the predators. In some fields (education and healthcare), the pool is vast. In workplaces where people with a pro-social orientation can be found in abundance, targeting is an easy task for bullies.

Third, the employer’s response to bullying when detected or reported is critical. If the actions are frowned upon and stopped, bullying can be suppressed. If bullying is rewarded, explicitly with promotions or recognition or implicitly by being treated with indifference or denial, bullying thrives. It’s simple learning theory in operation. Rewards reinforce and strengthen the likelihood of repeated actions, even in the case of negative conduct like bullying.

Thus, it is the employer’s responsibility to alter conditions under its control. Employers can stop deliberate zero-sum gamesmanship and even stop inadvertent destructive interpersonal strategizing with careful planning. Secondly, employers can shift the response to bullying from positive to negative in order to extinguish the undesirable conduct.

Bullying cannot continue unless employers want it to continue. If employers want to stop it, they can. And it would stop nearly instantly. Bullying is bringing value to employers; it continues unabated.

When contending with bullying, what are the specific leadership responsibilities, not only in the C-suite but at all other levels and in all other areas within the given organization?

Great leaders know that fostering trust among those purported to be led is critical. Leadership is earned, bestowed by the followers, not dictated or automatically granted to a position holder in the org chart. With respect to bullying, leaders and managers must have a modicum of the following abilities:

• Self-awareness: the ability to accurately read how others respond to them and be realistic about others’ perceptions

• Sufficient emotional maturity to allow that personal flaws do not preclude effectiveness in all tasks (a healthy, resilient ego vs. narcissism)

• Insight turned inward to recognize if they are bullies themselves

• An insistence on being told truths, however negative, by those who surround them – be explicit in your instructions and demonstrate that you can handle the truth when delivered

• Relationship-building with peers so that when others are caught being abusive, you can confront them safely, and in private, to compel them to change because unfettered abusive conduct shapes the workplace culture

• Empathy toward individuals who provide evidence of unconscionable psychological violence directed at them

• Desire to include the impact on employees’ lives and health of business decisions as a serious component of routine processes

By what process should bullying be addressed?

Bullying is rampant partly because nearly everyone is afraid to confront strong-willed, blustering bullies. Choosing to see bullying as the result of a few “bad seeds,” misleads leaders to personalize both the problem and solution. They mistakenly dive into the pointless task of personality re-engineering. It is a band-aid, short-term illusionary fix. Bullying recurs.

Relying on our explanatory model, leaders are guided to solutions that are impersonal. They apply to any organization and any bully, regardless of rank, personal abrasiveness or personality. Our Blueprint to Prevent and Correct Workplace Bullying does not ask executives to betray friends. The system, when in place, snares offenders. The system compels executives to act, rather than relying on personal motivation.

The systemic approach is not rocket science. In many ways it mirrors steps currently taken to address illegal discrimination. We do add our special variations to account for differences between bullying (legal, status-blind harassment) and illegal harassment.

1. Measure baseline prevalence. It stuns us how few clients actually want to know the starting rate prior to taking steps to reduce bullying. The fear of this metric runs counter to businesses’ obsession with tracking relevant data.

2. Create an explicit bullying prohibition policy. The ideal process is completed by a cross-disciplinary, cross-rank writing group assembled especially for this task. The group writes the policy, integrates it with existing ones, creates both informal and formal complaint and enforcement procedures, and, most important, designates a team of employees to be trained as peer experts in workplace bullying at a later time.

3. Train the Expert Peers Team. We find that disembodied policies that are introduced to employees once or twice are not inculcated into the company. Bullying generates self-doubt and personal uncertainty. Individuals need to be able to seek help without fear of repercussions. Peer team members provide the valuable services to colleagues of clarification of the experience, validation of their personhood, and information about how to resolve the problem given the new policy and systems put into place. Team members are volunteers. Teams decide which services they agree to provide.

4. Educate everyone. Peer Teams can provide the training. This is the classic program rollout.

5. Integrate the anti-bullying initiative with management training, performance evaluation, employee orientation, and staff re-training each year.

6. Ensure policy compliance. Hold accountable everyone, at all levels, for any misconduct. Skeptical employees will gauge the success or failure of the program based on the credibility of the first “trial.” If it is perceived as unfair or fraught with interference, the program could be untracked.

7. Continuity is guaranteed with a fully-functioning Expert Peers Team and endorsement by the C-suite.

Morris: To what extent must those involved receive training to prepare for response initiatives and whatever resistance they may encounter?

The primary training is for Expert Peer Team members. They need to become internal resources for all employees on the topic of workplace bullying and the organization’s new policy and enforcement procedures.

They are the first responders. Conversations with them constitute the first response that is an informal, non-punitive step towards resolution. They are trained in intervention and resolution alternatives.

Some become trainers. Some become personal coaches. All become ambassadors for the anti-bullying initiative.

When Team members encounter resistance from bullies and managers, it is imperative that their supervisor or leader intercede and mandate cooperation with the Team activities. Resistance should be considered insubordination and grounds for termination. That’s how we define executive commitment to the success of the anti-bullying effort. Anything less is timid and easily defied by bully managers.

Given your response to the previous question, what seems to be the most serious problem that most organizations encounter when attempting to sustain their bully-free workplace? Why?

We have found new executives unwilling to sustain their predecessors’ commitment to the prohibition of bullying. It reveals a lack of the necessary abilities we said executives should possess to comprehensively tackle bullying.

It can take years to overcome resistance within organizations so that anti-bullying efforts can be started. Sadly, with the stroke of a pen, in an instant, all those efforts by so many people can be eliminated and bullying instantly restored.

That’s the American way of doing business.

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The national disgrace that the U.S. lags behind the rest of the industrialized world continues.

When our colleagues don’t invite us to lunch, gossip about us, are condescending or otherwise rude to us at work, the impact can be so intense that we take our problems home, affecting our families and partners who in turn may also take the stress to their workplaces, a new Baylor University study reports.

“I didn’t expect to have such strong findings in this study. The research shows if we are treated poorly at work, we see the world as a less bright place and it’s hard to shake it off,” says study author Merideth Ferguson, assistant professor of management and entrepreneurship at the Baylor University Hankamer School of Business whose research was published online in the Journal of Organizational Behavior. “When this happens daily or chronically, it eats away at people’s self-esteem and they are less optimistic about their lives and the future.”

A stressed employee often shares work frustrations with their spouse or partner, and the partner feels desperate to fix it, Ferguson says. But that’s unrealistic, and the feelings of helplessness can build more stress. Additionally, she explains, the stressed and distracted worker may neglect family responsibilities and the ongoing issue also can affect marital satisfaction.

“This phenomenon jumps workplaces,” she says. “It goes from the workplace to the home to another workplace.”

James Powell, 36, of Detroit, understands how deeply work incivility can impact a happy home. About five years ago, as he vied for an executive-level position at a national retailer, a co-worker competing for the same position spread rumors Powell was breaching company policy and shirking his duties. He became depressed when he couldn’t figure out how to stop the jokes and gossip.

“I was consumed with work; it was my life,” he says. “I came home and complained about work every day. After a while, everybody – my wife, sisters and the rest of my family got so tired of it, they started telling me to shut up. My wife was telling me to just quit and asking how I could let people treat me that way. It really affected her.”

He says his world came crashing down soon after a holiday party, where the co-worker and others teased his wife, saying she was too pretty to be with him. He says she internalized the stress and jokes, and their marriage started breaking down. As a result, she began missing work and having problems on her job. The couple separated and eventually divorced. He got the promotion, but the work problems remained so intense that he resigned his position.

“I’m still suffering from it,” he acknowledges.

Ferguson suggests employees facing work incivility contact the human resources department, seek help from an employee assistance program or get outside counseling to help manage work-related stress. She also advises finding ways to avoid taking the stress home.

“Counseling sometimes helps you keep from stressing your family,” she says. “Exercise, go out with friends who are not co-workers, then go home to your family and be relaxed. It’s a trial and error thing; you have to find what works for you.”

Unfortunately, says Ferguson, who is working on a similar study on supervisor abuse, being treated poorly at work may lead to a decision to cut ties with your employer.

via Life Inc. – Workplace drama can damage your home life.

HuffPost Education, 8/19/2011

A Pennsylvania photographer has chosen not to photograph a group of high school girls for their senior portraits after she found evidence of the teens bullying other students on Facebook.

Jennifer McKendrick, from Indiana County, Pa., wrote on her own Facebook page earlier this week that she came across another Facebook page with nasty comments from four high school girls whose names matched her scheduled clients.

She emailed the girls and their parents to cancel their senior photo shoots, while including screenshots of their comments to explain why she was calling off the session.

McKendrick wrote more about her decision on her personal blog in a post titled “I Won’t Photograph Ugly People.”

“I mean how could I spend two hours with someone during our session trying to make beautiful photos of them knowing they could do such UGLY things,” McKendrick writes. “Realistically, I know by canceling their shoots it’s not going to make them ‘nicer people’ but I refuse to let people like that represent my business.

“The photographer told WTAE-TV that the comments she saw were more than just targeting other students for appearance.

“It was beyond ‘your clothes are ugly’ or ‘you don’t have any brand clothes’ or ‘you are ugly, your hair is not right,” McKendrick told WTAE-TV. “It was vicious. It was talking about sexuality.”

Her Facebook page has since been flooded with hundreds of comments from people supporting her decision.

McKendrick blogs that she hasn’t received backlash for her decision so far, but she’s prepared if she does. Two of the teens’ parents responded to her with apologies, noting that they were surprised by their daughters’ actions.

“If you are ugly on the inside, I’m sorry but I won’t take your photos to make you look pretty on the outside … I simply don’t want to photograph ugly people,” she writes.

via Jennifer McKendrick, Pennsylvania Photographer, Refuses To Photograph Teen Bullies.

August 18, 2011

As soon as I heard my friend’s voice, I could tell she was upset. Over the phone, she described an awful scene that had just happened at her workplace. Her new boss called a staff meeting and began to humiliate each sales person one by one, dishing out personal insults. “He’s a bully, and everyone at the office is miserable,” she said.

My friend is a single mother who can’t afford to be without a job. For now, she plans to endure the insults and humiliation. But some of her co-workers have started a desperate attempt to find another job.

In an economic environment where jobs still are scarce, standing up to a workplace bully has become difficult. Experts are calling workplace bullying an epidemic, citing several recent studies that confirm the seriousness of the problem in the United States. One government study says workers are bullied in 1 out of every 4 workplaces.

“Sometimes good people bully,” said Gary Namie, who operates the Workplace Bullying Institute in Seattle. “They become more and more aggressive at work because it gets reinforced. Employers who are indifferent are rewarding it.”

Although unprofessional, workplace bullying is not illegal in the United States. There is no law that prohibits managers from threatening, insulting or mocking employees or making their work lives miserable. Some bullies hide under the guise of being a tough boss.

Teresa Daniel, author of “Stop Bullying at Work” and professor of the human resource leadership program at Sullivan University, has studied the distinction. “A bully makes it personal and vindictive,” Daniel said. “With a tough boss, most employees said he’s not a nice person, but his motives were right — to make the organization profitable and strong.”

Employers may not realize that bullies take a terrible toll within an organization. Their behavior creates stress on employees, increases absenteeism and leads to turnover. Oddly enough, bullies can be strong performers and often do get results because they push people to the wall. But those workers usually are biding time while looking for an exit.

Brenda, an administrative employee at a Miami government agency, said her female boss torments her by questioning almost every accomplishment and rolling her eyes at anything she says in a staff meeting. “It’s wrecked my work and my home life. I dread going into the office,” she said.

Women, it turns out, are other women’s own worst enemies at work. Female bullies target women in 80 percent of the cases. Male workplace bullies, by contrast, tend to be equal-opportunity offenders, targeting both men and women.

Susan Strauss, a consultant and expert in organizational leadership, says women bully in a much more subtle way than men. They typically sabotage each other’s work, make disparaging comments, taunt, gossip, roll their eyes and give out the silent treatment.

“It has the same negative effect on the work environment as more overt forms of aggression,” said Strauss who is conducting workshops for companies on female-on-female bullying. Because female forms of bullying are generally more covert, higher-ranking male managers are less likely to catch on to the misconduct or know how to handle it, Strauss has found.

Experts say the best way to stand up to a bully is document every incident and every detail, including who else was present. Then show the documentation to an objective person of authority, maybe even including the cost of turnover or lost productivity. Namie at the Workplace Bullying Institute explains that getting a higher-up to discipline a bully can be difficult. Typically, he or she has the protection of a higher-ranking supervisor at the company who says something like this: “That’s Bob you’re talking about. I love Bob. Bob does what I want. Who are you to complain?”

For recovering bullies, Namie recommends identifying another manager who has a style totally different from yours. Engage them, ask them for feedback about your style and look to them for suggestions on how you can manage differently.

As the problem gains national attention, legislation known as the Healthy Workplace Bill has been proposed in 16 states, but none has passed it as law. The bill forbids a health-harming “abusive work environment” and requires medical documentation to prove workers claims of bullying.

Kathy Kane, senior vice president of talent management at employment agency Adecco Group North America, believes employers don’t understand the extent of the problem in their organizations. Workloads are building and bullying is more likely to be tolerated because managers don’t have time to deal with it, she says. She recommends exit interviews.

“Workplace bullying is costly to a company, but employers don’t understand those costs,” Kane said. “Good people leave and there’s a cost to losing good people.”

via Workplace bullying a growing problem – chicagotribune.com.

“My job is killing me.” Who among us hasn’t issued that complaint at least once? Now a new study suggests that your dramatic grousing may hold some scientific truth.

The 20-year study, by researchers at Tel Aviv University, sought to examine the relationship between the workplace and a person’s risk of death. Researchers recruited 820 adults who had undergone a routine physical exam at a health clinic in 1988, and then interviewed them in detail about their workplace conditions — asking how nice their colleagues were, whether their boss was supportive and how much autonomy they had in their position.

The participants ranged in age from 25 to 65 at the start of the study and worked in a variety of fields, including finance, health care, manufacturing and insurance. The researchers tracked the participants through their medical records: by the study’s conclusion in 2008, 53 people had died — and they were significantly more likely than those who survived to report having a hostile work environment.

People who reported having little or no social support from their co-workers were 2.4 times more likely to die during the course of the study than those who said they had close, supportive bonds with their workmates. Interestingly, the risk of death was tied only to people’s perceptions of their co-workers, not their bosses. People who reported negative relationships with their supervisors were no more likely to die than others.

The study was observational, so it could not determine whether toxic workplace environments caused death, only that it was correlated with the risk. But the findings add to the evidence that having a supportive social network decreases stress and helps foster good health. Being exposed to chronic stress, on the other hand, contributes to depression, ill health and death.

One factor that mitigated the association between unfriendly co-workers and death was people’s perception of control over their jobs. Men who said they had more autonomy at work had a lower risk of dying during the study period than men with less freedom. As Jonah Lehrer noted for Wired:

This makes sense: the only thing worse than an office full of a—holes is an office full of a—holes telling us what to do.

However, the opposite was true for women: those who reported having power at work had a 70% increased risk of death, compared with those with a perceived lack of control. That may be because higher-powered women had more life responsibilities than men — many were working mothers — so the added level of control and responsibility at work may have strained their work-life balance and compounded their stress overall.

Meanwhile, there’s some evidence that workplaces are growing ever less civil: research presented this month at the American Psychology Association found that 86% of the 289 workers at three Midwestern firms surveyed reported incivility at their job, including rudeness, bad manners and insults. Economic conditions like layoffs, longer hours and less pay may be to blame.

So what’s to be done? Every workplace has hierarchies and antagonistic personalities. But knowing that your co-workers may have a powerful impact on your overall health and life span, it might be wise to foster at least a few good relationships on the job. You’re spending 40 hours a week with these people — you may as well make it count.

The new study was published in Health Psychology.

via Job Killing You? Hostile Workplace Linked to Death – - TIME Healthland.

Every workplace has them, but it’s hard to deal with bullies at work because more often than not, they are in positions of power.

It may be the boss, or someone who has been there for a long time and who are just part of the system.

My mate, consultant Rowan Manahan says bullying has become worse in a tough economy because everyone is under more pressure.

What makes it even more complicated is that the issue of bullying is a murky area. What might be considered normal behaviour for some is considered bullying by others.

If you are any doubt over what constitutes bullying behaviour, the CareerBuilder site identifies some common examples: your comments are dismissed or not acknowledged, you are falsely accused of mistakes you didn’t make, you are forced to do work that isn’t your job, there are double standards for you and other workers, you are given looks that should be in a scabbard, people gossip about you, your boss runs you down in front of other workers, belittling comments are made about you at meetings and people steal credit for your work.

According to a Career Builder survey, women reported a higher incidence of being treated unfairly at the office – 34 per cent of women said they had felt bullied in the workplace compared to 22 percent of men. And age also plays a part with 29 percent of workers aged 55 or older and 29 percent of workers aged 24 or younger, reporting they had been bullied on the job.

For most, telling people in HR is no solution. They are unlikely to help because the HR unit is usually pretty political and don’t want to rock the boat. Besides, HR tends not to be that high up the chain of command in many organisations.

According to the Workplace Bullying Institute, HR hardly ever fixes the problem, and only manages it correctly about 3 per cent of the time. Even if that’s overstating it, I haven’t heard of any cases where HR actually resolved the problem.

Laurie Tarkan at BNet recommends you take things into your own hands, first by identifying what you’re experiencing and giving it a name. Emotional bullying, harassment, abuse – it’s all important because that tells you it’s not your fault. She also recommends getting some help. It could include everything from talking to a counsellor to seeking advice from a doctor to make sure you are not suffering symptoms of stress like hypertension.

Research your legal options. That includes reading the company’s internal policies, particularly on areas like harassment, just to see if there are any violations you can report. She recommends documenting what economic impact the bully has had on the company, citing what it has cost the company in terms of lost productivity and absenteeism. If you report the bully, report the person to the highest level in the company, which immediately eliminates HR.

Start a job search and be prepared to leave if management sides with the bully.

Psychologist Michelle Callahan has a number of suggestions that include: not getting emotional about the situation, building a support network, seeking some help, and most importantly, not expecting you’ll be able to change the bully. In most cases they simply won’t accept that they have a problem.

The Human Resources Degree blog has several good ideas. One includes confronting the bully based on the assumption that most bullies deep down are cowards and can’t handle confrontation. The other thing it suggests is to ignore them because when they see they’re not getting under your skin, they won’t derive as much pleasure from the bullying.

Cy Wakeman in Fast Company has a completely left of field approach. He recommends getting inside the bully’s head instead of wasting time and energy resisting them. This involves making some connection but not too much – just enough to neutralise them.

“To remain in a peaceful place and not be rattled by another co-worker, regardless of their assumed motive, is to assure them that you care about them, but you are unable to participate in the conversation or grant their request,’’ Wakeman says.

“Repeat yourself often and diffuse the manipulative co-worker. So stop wasting time hovering in the corner and stand up for yourself. You’ll feel better, and the office bully may turn into a co-worker you’ll want on your team.”

via Management Line.

The persecution and humiliation of Deb Caldieri, the teacher who responded to the suicide of Phoebe Prince with a compassion so utterly lacking elsewhere in South Hadley High School, is complete. She was fired last week.

Gus Sayer, the school district’s superintendent, sent a letter to Caldieri – who went on unpaid medical leave in December because of her multiple sclerosis – saying he couldn’t wait around any longer to see whether the symptoms would subside enough for her to return to work. Those symptoms got worse after Caldieri was punished for speaking out about Phoebe Prince’s treatment at the high school.

Sayer said he hadn’t heard from Caldieri in months, so he had to go hire a new Latin teacher before classes start in September.

“I called Gus Sayer on Friday and asked him why he couldn’t have called me about this and he said my phone was out of service,’’ Deb Caldieri said. “My house phone is out,’’ she said, “because they haven’t been paying me all year and I can’t afford it. But I still have my cellphone. When I asked him why he couldn’t have just called me on my cellphone, he said he didn’t have the number. But the school called me on that number all the time.’’

That’s not what Sayer told me.

“The only number we had for her was her house,’’ he said.

Why not just go to her house and tell her face to face?

“I didn’t know if she was living at home,’’ he said.

But then, that’s the address that the termination letter was sent to, so maybe we’re beating a dead horse here.

In the end, Caldieri’s termination was handled the same way as her slow and torturous exit from South Hadley High: with a cold detachment that made the deterioration of her health inevitable.

The day after Prince, 15, hanged herself in January 2010, after months of bullying at the hands of other students, Caldieri responded with compassion, taking four girls to visit a boy who had liked Phoebe and was devastated by her suicide.

Dan Smith, who has just stepped down as principal, accused Caldieri of not getting the proper approval to take the kids out of school. Whether she did or not was very much open to debate, but that was a smoke screen anyway. Caldieri’s real sin was to challenge Smith’s authority and suggest that Phoebe wasn’t protected as she should have been. Smith told her he was going to get rid of her, and he did.

Other administrators would sit in on her classes, challenging her teaching methods. Her MS was already wearing on her, and the stress from Smith’s threat and the intimidation tactics of other administrators triggered seizures. She went on medical leave in December, bullied out of South Hadley High just as Phoebe was.

Sayer maintains his people did nothing wrong in the Prince case, and he says they bent over backward to keep Caldieri in the classroom. He says her MS was an issue long before Phoebe Prince, and rejects any suggestion that the way the school treated her worsened her symptoms.

He also rejects Caldieri’s claim that Smith, who retired in June, was vindictive in pursuing disciplinary action against her. “We don’t treat anybody like that,’’ he said.

Phoebe’s parents consider Caldieri one of the few adults at the high school who tried to help their daughter. They were furious when they found out Smith purposely excluded her from the girl’s funeral.

Phoebe’s aunt, Eileen Moore, has been paying Caldieri’s health insurance. It’s paid up through this month. Caldieri’s trying to get health insurance elsewhere. She’s already destitute. She may soon be a very sick woman without any health insurance.

Deb Caldieri started crying on the phone with Gus Sayer. He tried to comfort her by suggesting that maybe if her MS gets better she could reapply for a job in South Hadley. That won’t happen.

“I can’t go back,’’ Caldieri said. “I can’t even go near the building.’’

via Cruel lesson for a teacher – The Boston Globe.

[See post to watch Flash video]

MICHAEL NAUGHTON/METRO July 20, 2011

With the suicides of two bullied high school students here in Massachusetts, the focus on anti-bullying efforts thus far has been on children.

But a group of advocates have been trying to convince state legislators to pass a bill that would give a legal avenue for victims of workplace bullies.

The bill was the subject of a recent State House hearing and members of the Committee on Labor and Workforce Development are currently examining it.

“Bullying is much more than incivility or someone losing his temper. It tends to be targeted, repeated and abusive behavior that causes physical and/or psychological harm,” said David Yamada, a professor at Suffolk University who helped author the bill. “Some of the most destructive workplace bullying is of the covert variety, involving attempts to undermine someone’s work performance and destroy her reputation.”

Advocates said that up to 59 percent of employees directly experience workplace bullying.

Gregory Sorozan, who works with Yamada and is also the state coordinator for the Washington-based Workplace Bullying Institute, said the effort has gained momentum and support over the last year. Last year there were 23 supporters signed up compared to more than 400 this year.

Avenues in the workplace, like human resources personnel, don’t usually work to curb bullying, he said.

“Bullying is perfectly legal, therefore there is no reason for them … to put an end to bullying,” Sorozan said. “Human resource officers … work in the service of protecting of the organization.”

Valerie Cade, the author of “Bully Free at Work,” said bullies grow up, but their characteristics don’t.

“For someone who has bullying behavior, it’s addictive, and they have to keep feeding it,” she said.

Currently, 19 other states are considering similar proposals, according to the State House News Service.

via Metro – David Yamada: Will this stop adult bullies?.

By: Gary Namie, PhD, author of The Bully-Free Workplace: Stop Jerks, Weasels & Snakes from Killing Your Organization (Wiley, 2011).

Back in 2007, many were surprised to learn that 37% of all adult Americans claimed to have been bullied at work. The scientific poll by the Workplace Bullying Institute (WBI) used the definition: repeated mistreatment by one or more employees that takes the form of either verbal abuse, threats, intimidation, humiliation, interference with work or some combination. Bosses were the main perpetrators (in 72% of incidents). Workplace bullying held steady at 35% according to the 2010 WBI survey.

Employers have a dismal record of voluntarily dealing with bullying. Why? Bullying benefits executives. Or people don’t know how to stop it. If the former is true, laws are needed to compel attention. Better to assume knowledge and skill shortcomings.

While waiting for executives to realize the benefits from adopting a comprehensive solution, there is much that can be done by managers and supervisors to tamp down bullying and dilute its destructive impact on employee and organizational health.

Here are three simple action steps for managers that can be done today.

1.)  Hold confirmed bullies accountable. Drop the “go work it out between yourselves” ducking of your responsibility as manager. Get involved or the festering problem eventually will prevent any work from getting done.

Your task is easier if there a clear statement about what conduct is, and is not, acceptable in the company. If none exists, you can always create one in collaboration with the team that applies to those you supervise. If such a code does not exist, write a list of what you consider unacceptable. Use work-relevant impacts to justify each item. Share that list with everyone you supervise.

If the alleged bully is your favorite, you will have trouble believing that she or he is capable of being mean. To solve the problem, you have to shelve favoritism. All your other employees are counting on you to do so.

Before questioning the alleged bully, provide the complaining target with physical separation for safety, assuring that it is not punitive. Do it because retaliation follows questioning of the bully. Bullies will justify their conduct — targets make them do it or they are perfectionists. Assess the relevance in terms of impact on the work team’s ability to perform without fear.

The rationale for your 1:1 interviews with employees is a “checkup” of the work climate, rather than an “investigation.” Getting information from terrified coworkers is nearly impossible.

Many side with bullies for self-protection. Ask if they personally ever had negative encounters with the alleged bully.  Ask how negative things can be hidden from you. Ask if they have seen personal changes, minor or major, in any coworkers.

Should you be concerned? Believe the accuser until proven otherwise. Bullies lie. Humiliated targets are ashamed. With a mind untainted by favoritism, you will understand the competing versions of reality represented by the alleged bully and target.

If the facts confirm that your “line in the sand” was crossed, make the bully apologize. Choose other appropriate consequences (HR can advise). Promise coworkers freedom from bullying in the future. Help restore the targeted worker’s health — paid time off, counseling, support. Monitor the bully’s conduct, imposing the threat of termination for non-compliance with the policy or your list. Practice in executing this step makes it easier. Paradoxically, it also becomes rarer.

2.)  Catch and correct peer bullies. If you stumble on a colleague berating a worker, you can intervene. The least risky method is to tug on the manager’s arm to remove her or him. Simply interrupt the incident. Then, deal with it behind closed doors for dignity’s sake. It is more likely that a worker supervised by your subordinate or by another supervisor seeks your help. Do not ignore the person who asked you for relief.

When you have the manager alleged to be a bully alone, make the case for stopping the bullying behavior. Encourage change by citing impact on employee health, morale, productivity, trust and loyalty. If an anti-bullying policy exists, remind her or him of the hassle of a complaint and investigation. Good managers do not use tactics of intimidation, domination or humiliation.  Become the anti-bullying advocate within the management team.

3.)  Your Management Style: Could you be the bully? This is the hardest step of all. Ask your family. Do you feel constantly misunderstood and misperceived? Do you think your standards are high and wonder why others seem to not care as much as you? Is it impossible for you make your contributions subordinate to those of others?

Indicators at work include being excluded from social events. At meetings, are your ideas never met with dissenting views? Is the employee turnover rate in units you supervise higher than elsewhere in the organization? Is absenteeism so high that production is subpar? Do you see decline in the pool of available talent so that no new hires seem acceptable?

Look in the mirror. You are the problem. Turn to your staff to ask how you could change to eliminate the above problems. Follow their instructions.

As soon as I heard my friend’s voice, I could tell she was upset. Over the phone, she described an awful scene that had just happened at her workplace. Her new boss called a staff meeting and began to humiliate each salesperson one by one, dishing out personal insults. “He’s a bully, and everyone at the office is miserable,” she said.

My friend is a single mother who can’t afford to be without a job. For now, she plans to endure the insults and humiliation. But some of her co-workers have started a desperate attempt to find another job.

In an economic environment where jobs still are scarce, standing up to a workplace bully has become difficult. Experts are calling workplace bullying an epidemic, citing several recent studies that confirm the seriousness of the problem in the United States. One government study says workers are bullied in 1 out of every 4 workplaces. “Sometimes good people bully,” said Gary Namie, who operates the Workplace Bullying Institute in Seattle. “They become more and more aggressive at work because it gets reinforced. Employers who are indifferent are rewarding it.”

Although unprofessional, workplace bullying is not illegal in the United States. There is no law that prohibits managers from threatening, insulting or mocking employees or making their work lives miserable. Some bullies hide under the guise of being a tough boss.

Teresa Daniel, author of Stop Bullying at Work and professor of the human resource leadership program at Sullivan University, has studied the distinction. “A bully makes it personal and vindictive,” Daniel said. “With a tough boss, most employees said he’s not a nice person, but his motives were right -to make the organization profitable and strong.”

Employers may not realize that bullies take a terrible toll within an organization. Their behaviour creates stress on employees, increases absenteeism and leads to turnover. Oddly enough, bullies can be strong performers and often do get results because they push people to the wall. But those workers usually are biding time while looking for an exit.

Brenda, an administrative employee at a Miami government agency, said her female boss torments her by questioning almost every accomplishment and rolling her eyes at anything she says in a staff meeting. “It’s wrecked my work and my home life. I dread going into the office,” she said.

Women, it turns out, are other women’s own worst enemies at work. Female bullies target women in 80 per cent of the cases. Male workplace bullies, by contrast, tend to be equalopportunity offenders, targeting both men and women.

Susan Strauss, a consultant and expert in organizational leadership, says women bully in a much more subtle way than men. They typically sabotage each other’s work, make disparaging comments, taunt, gossip, roll their eyes and give out the silent treatment.

“It has the same negative effect on the work environment as more overt forms of aggression,” said Strauss who is conducting workshops for companies on female-on-female bullying. Because female forms of bullying are generally more covert, higher-ranking male managers are less likely to catch on to the misconduct or know how to handle it, Strauss has found.

Experts say the best way to stand up to a bully is document every incident and every detail, including who else was present. Then show the documentation to an objective person of authority, maybe even including the cost of turnover or lost productivity. Namie at the Workplace Bullying Institute explains that getting a higher-up to discipline a bully can be difficult. Typically, he or she has the protection of a higher-ranking supervisor at the company who says something like this: “That’s Bob you’re talking about. I love Bob. Bob does what I want. Who are you to complain?” For recovering bullies, Namie recommends identifying another manager who has a style totally different from yours. Engage them, ask them for feedback about your style and look to them for suggestions on how you can manage differently.

As the problem gains national attention, legislation known as the Healthy Workplace Bill has been proposed in 16 states, but none has passed it as law. The bill forbids a health-harming “abusive work environment” and requires medical documentation to prove workers claims of bullying.

Kathy Kane, senior vice-president of talent management at employment agency Adecco Group North America, believes employers don’t understand the extent of the problem in their organizations. Workloads are building and bullying is more likely to be tolerated because managers don’t have time to deal with it, she says. She recommends exit interviews.

“Workplace bullying is costly to a company, but employers don’t understand those costs,” Kane said. “Good people leave and there’s a cost to losing good people.”

Cindy Krischer Goodman is CEO of BalanceGal LLC, a provider of news and advice on how to balance work and life. She can be reached at balancegal@gmail.com.

via Workplace bullying a growing concern.

BOSTON – With a law on the books targeting bullying in schools, it is time to look at another common arena for bullying: the workplace, according to supporters of another bullying proposal.

Known as the healthy workplace bill, the legislation would define and make it illegal to bully an employee or colleague.

Rep. Frank Smizik (D-Brookline) said there is a gap in the current bullying laws that needs to be closed.

“We neglected to acknowledge that bullying is not restricted to our children,” he said.

Several workers who say they were bullied by supervisors or fellow workers told their stories Thursday to members of the Joint Committee on Labor and Workforce Development. A handful of those who were bullied broke down in tears telling stories of harassment and mistreatment.

Debi Caldieri, a Latin teacher at South Hadley High School, said she was harassed and berated at the school that became synonymous with bullying behavior in the wake of 14-year-old Phoebe Prince’s suicide.

Caldieri, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, said teachers and the principal at the school made it difficult for her to work with her medical condition. Caldieri attributed her treatment to being one of the few who complained about Prince’s plight.

“I was disciplined if a student mentioned I wasn’t feeling well,” Caldieri said.

Caldieri said she was reprimanded for not staying at school to prepare for her six classes, and was once thrown out of the building after a misunderstanding with the principal, she said. She has since left her position because her medical condition deteriorated, partly from stress, she said.

Other workers told lawmakers they suffer emotional and physical stress from workplace bullying.

Juana Gayle Flores, a teacher, said she suffered ongoing harassment and “constant ethnic mocking” from the school principal who often publicly corrected her pronunciations in a mocking way.

“When I brought my concerns to the office of labor relations no one took my concerns seriously,” Flores said. “They labeled my case personal.”

Flores said she was hospitalized twice from stress and anxiety brought on by the bullying. “As a Hispanic woman who served in the Army for 23 years, I have never experience anything like this,” she said.

Several legislators testified in favor of the bill (H 2310 / S 916).

Sen. Katherine Clark (D-Melrose) said nearly one-third of all workers experience some form of workplace bullying in their careers. Bullying at work is four times more likely to occur than sexual harassment, Clark said.

“High unemployment rates only make this situation worse,” Clark said, adding that many people will stay in a bullying situation rather than risk being out of work.

Currently, 19 other states are considering similar proposals.

via Massachusetts legislators hear pitch for law targeting workplace bullying | masslive.com.

Americans face bullying long after they have left the playground with a startling 35% of adults either been bullied or currently experiencing bullying at work, according to the Workplace Bullying Institute.

Workplace bullying is defined by the WBI as “repeated, health-harming mistreatment of one of more persons by one or more perpetrators,” and includes verbal abuse, offensive conduct and behaviors (including nonverbal) that are threatening, humiliating or intimidating and work interference or sabotage, which prevents work from getting done.

These actions have serious side effects for victims, according to the WBI, including heart disease and post-traumatic stress disorder. Now lobbyists are increasing their calls for state lawmakers to pass anti-bullying in the workplace legislation.

Dr. Gary Naime, national director of the Healthy Workplace Campaign, started lobbying for anti-bullying laws in 2003. Right now, his “Healthy Workplace Bill,” has been introduced in 21 states with New York the closest sate to passing it into law. The New York bill has 43 current co-sponsors, and a new Senate version of the bill is in the process of being written. A companion Senate bill was introduced and referred to the Labor Committee in March 2011.

For employers, the bill defines an “abusive work environment” and requires proof of health harm by licensed professionals. It gives employers reason to terminate or sanction offenders and requires plaintiffs to use private attorneys.

“It’s very soft on employers, and will give them rewards for taking care of bullying voluntarily,” he says. “If they do, they have no responsibility – [legally] they are freed.”

For workers, the New York bill provides an avenue for legal action against “health harming cruelty at work,” and allows a victim to sue the bully as an individual. It also holds the employer accountable by allows for restoration of lost wages and benefits, and compels employers to prevent and correct future instances.

According to a 2010 WBI survey, 15% of workers reported they have witnessed bullying in the workplace. With that said, 50% of respondents reported they have never seen or “don’t know” what bullying is.

“It’s not that they don’t see it, but what they do see they do not consider unacceptable,” Naime says. “They consider it routine—not negative or bad. It’s much more severe than trivial stuff. It is repeated malicious verbal abuse, threats, humiliation and work sabotage. That is pretty severe.”

As the national sponsor of the Healthy Workplace Bill, Naime says he is not looking for lawsuits to bring an end to bullying in the workplace. His goal is to have bullying treated the same way as harassment in the office.

“Employers are ignoring it and HR has dropped the ball—72% of bullying is done by management.”

Also according to the Institute, once a person is targeted by a bully, they have a 64% chance of either being fired or quitting his/her job.

Polly Wright, senior consultant at HR Consults Inc., a management and human resource consulting and training firm, says bullying in the workplace is extremely common. She remembers being bullied by a manager at her first job out of college, but she stayed at the job because she had no other options.

“I was married to that job for financial reasons,” she says. “Bullying is just basically harassment. And sometimes you don’t even realize it is happening. As employers we should be handling it the same as we would unlawful harassment.”

Bullying in the workplace can begin with cliques forming in the office, or by hiring someone with a bad temper or anger-management issues. Wright says many of the Human Resource policies she has recently created for businesses have included wording about bullying in the workplace.

All managers in a company should be trained on what the legal line of harassment actually is, and make sure employees aren’t crossing this line, Wright says. Also, employees may try to work out the issue amongst themselves, but once HR is brought into the picture an investigation will be launched, she says.

“I really think that it takes a toll on morale, to the point where employees are so disengaged in their work environment they are just going through the motions,” Wright says. “They will go through their day trying to have the least amount of interaction with their bully as possible.”

Although Wright condemns bullying, she is not in favor of the Healthy Workplace Bill and says it can be addressed in already-established policies, like those that deal with harassment.

“It will be another burden on employers,” she says. “Hopefully we keep it out of final legislation—employers should just address [bullying] in conjunction with harassment. We shouldn’t need a law to tell us that.”

If a worker is being bullied in a family business, or small company, Naime advises to leave right away, and says changing the culture in a smaller office is often more difficult than in a corporation setting.

“All you can do is try and make it, but in a small business you are trapped,” he says. “In a bigger company there are more layers and you do have a chance of convincing someone that the idiot needs to go, not you.”

via New Bill Targets Workplace Bullying – FoxBusiness.com.

Americans face bullying long after they have left the playground with a startling 35% of adults either been bullied or currently experiencing bullying at work, according to the Workplace Bullying Institute.

Workplace bullying is defined by the WBI as “repeated, health-harming mistreatment of one of more persons by one or more perpetrators,” and includes verbal abuse, offensive conduct and behaviors (including nonverbal) that are threatening, humiliating or intimidating and work interference or sabotage, which prevents work from getting done.

These actions have serious side effects for victims, according to the WBI, including heart disease and post-traumatic stress disorder. Now lobbyists are increasing their calls for state lawmakers to pass anti-bullying in the workplace legislation.

Dr. Gary Naime, national director of the Healthy Workplace Campaign, started lobbying for anti-bullying laws in 2003. Right now, his “Healthy Workplace Bill,” has been introduced in 21 states with New York the closest sate to passing it into law. The New York bill has 43 current co-sponsors, and a new Senate version of the bill is in the process of being written. A companion Senate bill was introduced and referred to the Labor Committee in March 2011.

For employers, the bill defines an “abusive work environment” and requires proof of health harm by licensed professionals. It gives employers reason to terminate or sanction offenders and requires plaintiffs to use private attorneys.

“It’s very soft on employers, and will give them rewards for taking care of bullying voluntarily,” he says. “If they do, they have no responsibility – [legally] they are freed.”

For workers, the New York bill provides an avenue for legal action against “health harming cruelty at work,” and allows a victim to sue the bully as an individual. It also holds the employer accountable by allows for restoration of lost wages and benefits, and compels employers to prevent and correct future instances.

According to a 2010 WBI survey, 15% of workers reported they have witnessed bullying in the workplace. With that said, 50% of respondents reported they have never seen or “don’t know” what bullying is.

“It’s not that they don’t see it, but what they do see they do not consider unacceptable,” Naime says. “They consider it routine—not negative or bad. It’s much more severe than trivial stuff. It is repeated malicious verbal abuse, threats, humiliation and work sabotage. That is pretty severe.”

As the national sponsor of the Healthy Workplace Bill, Naime says he is not looking for lawsuits to bring an end to bullying in the workplace. His goal is to have bullying treated the same way as harassment in the office.

“Employers are ignoring it and HR has dropped the ball—72% of bullying is done by management.”

Also according to the Institute, once a person is targeted by a bully, they have a 64% chance of either being fired or quitting his/her job.

Polly Wright, senior consultant at HR Consults Inc., a management and human resource consulting and training firm, says bullying in the workplace is extremely common. She remembers being bullied by a manager at her first job out of college, but she stayed at the job because she had no other options.

“I was married to that job for financial reasons,” she says. “Bullying is just basically harassment. And sometimes you don’t even realize it is happening. As employers we should be handling it the same as we would unlawful harassment.”

Bullying in the workplace can begin with cliques forming in the office, or by hiring someone with a bad temper or anger-management issues. Wright says many of the Human Resource policies she has recently created for businesses have included wording about bullying in the workplace.

All managers in a company should be trained on what the legal line of harassment actually is, and make sure employees aren’t crossing this line, Wright says. Also, employees may try to work out the issue amongst themselves, but once HR is brought into the picture an investigation will be launched, she says.

“I really think that it takes a toll on morale, to the point where employees are so disengaged in their work environment they are just going through the motions,” Wright says. “They will go through their day trying to have the least amount of interaction with their bully as possible.”

Although Wright condemns bullying, she is not in favor of the Healthy Workplace Bill and says it can be addressed in already-established policies, like those that deal with harassment.

“It will be another burden on employers,” she says. “Hopefully we keep it out of final legislation—employers should just address [bullying] in conjunction with harassment. We shouldn’t need a law to tell us that.”

If a worker is being bullied in a family business, or small company, Naime advises to leave right away, and says changing the culture in a smaller office is often more difficult than in a corporation setting.

“All you can do is try and make it, but in a small business you are trapped,” he says. “In a bigger company there are more layers and you do have a chance of convincing someone that the idiot needs to go, not you.”

via New Bill Targets Workplace Bullying.

Sunday, July 10, 2011

As soon as I heard my friend’s voice, I could tell she was upset. Over the phone, she described an awful scene that had just happened at her workplace. Her new boss called a staff meeting and began to humiliate each salesperson one by one, dishing out personal insults. “He’s a bully, and everyone at the office is miserable,” she said.

In an economic environment where jobs still are scarce, standing up to a workplace bully has become difficult. Experts are calling workplace bullying an epidemic, citing several recent studies that confirm the seriousness of the problem in the United States. One government study says workers are bullied in one of every four workplaces.

“Sometimes good people bully,” said Gary Namie of the Workplace Bullying Institute in Seattle. “They become more and more aggressive at work because it gets reinforced. Employers who are indifferent are rewarding it.”

Although unprofessional, workplace bullying is not illegal in the United States. There is no law that prohibits managers from threatening, insulting or mocking employees or making their work lives miserable. Some bullies hide under the guise of being a tough boss.

Teresa Daniel, author of “Stop Bullying at Work” and professor of human resource leadership at Sullivan University, has studied the distinction. “A bully makes it personal and vindictive,” she said. “With a tough boss, most employees said he’s not a nice person, but his motives were right.”

Employers may not realize that bullies take a terrible toll within an organization. Their behavior creates stress on employees, increases absenteeism and leads to turnover. Oddly enough, bullies can be strong performers and often do get results because they push people to the wall. But those workers usually are biding time while looking for an exit.

Brenda, an administrative employee at a Miami government agency, said her female boss tormented her by questioning almost every accomplishment and rolling her eyes at anything she says in a staff meeting. “It’s wrecked my work and my home life. I dread going into the office,” she said.

Women, it turns out, are other women’s own worst enemies at work. Female bullies target women in 80 percent of the cases. Male workplace bullies, by contrast, tend to be equal-opportunity offenders, targeting both men and women.

Experts say the best way to stand up to a bully is document every incident and every detail, including who else was present. Then show the documentation to an objective person of authority.

But Mr. Namie at the Workplace Bullying Institute explains that getting a higher-up to discipline a bully can be difficult. Typically, he or she has the protection of a higher ranking supervisor at the company who says something like this: “That’s Bob you’re talking about. I love Bob. Bob does what I want. Who are you to complain?”

Cindy Krischer Goodman is CEO of BalanceGal LLC, balancegal@gmail.com.

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11191/1159109-407.stm#ixzz1Rp876Y20

Interview conducted by Taylor Korsak, Editorial Intern for Human Resources iQ. Listen to the Audio Podcast.

1. Let’s begin our discussion by defining “bullying in the workplace.” How common is it and why should it be a major concern for company leaders?

First, let me be clear that we distinguish bullying from incivility, inappropriateness, rudeness and disrespect. Our definition is “repeated, health-harming mistreatment by one or more employees directed toward another employee that takes the form of verbal abuse, threats, intimidation, and humiliation, interference with work production or in some combination.” It is a form of abuse. It is recognized by the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) as a non-physical form of workplace violence. Bullying is not merely an arched eyebrow or raised voice, it is a systematic campaign of interpersonal destruction launched by one person, with many others soon joining in, to destroy another person’s health, status, identity, job, career, and sometimes even their family.

We know from the national scientific studies we’ve run in 2010 and 2007 that 35 percent of all adult Americans have been directly bullied, according to our definition.

Business leaders should care because of its impact on employee health, work productivity impaired by excessive absenteeism, turnover (loss) of the best and brightest workers, workers comp and disability claims and litigation expenses. They should care, but those same national surveys found that the most likely response by employers to reported bullying was to ignore or worsen it.

2.  What is the most common bully-target relationship in terms of roles? Why?

Bullying is mostly top-down. Bullies outrank their targets in 72 percent of cases (2007 WBI U.S. Workplace Bullying Survey). Coworkers are perpetrators in 18 percent of incidents; 10 percent of the time it is a brave subordinate who bullies up the ladder.

Why? It is simply easier to inflict pain when you have title power. Coworkers can make your life miserable through ostracism (no small thing), but they cannot threaten to take your job away as the employer can. With so few people in unions, anyone can be fired for any reason on a whim.

All bullies share the need to control other people. They are bright, but not introspective or self-critical and they need to dominate to feel whole. There is an overwhelming narcissism that compels every action. Unless others agree to follow, they will be banished. Narcissism is not restricted to any position in an organization chart.

3. What are some researched effects of bullying and why do targets often neglect to speak up?

Bullying of adults by adults involves a great deal of shame and guilt. Shame is the bully’s goal from humiliating the target. Half of bullying is behind closed doors, so without explicitly telling friends and family, it is the bully’s and target’s secret. Personal guilt can arise because the person is mad that she or he allowed the bullying to happen. Bullies choose their targets, methods, timing, and place, but somehow, targets internalize responsibility, or shared responsibility (from our societal “it takes two to tango” or the equally inane “there are two sides to every story”), for what is happening to them. Shame and guilt prevent targets from speaking up.

In addition, the work culture is clear to those who work there. Complainers are dubbed troublemakers and retaliated against.

Research on the effects of bullying on individuals is extensive. The studies come from the fields of occupational health, epidemiology, medicine, neuroscience, and social sciences. A summary breaks the impact on people into three categories of harm: health, social relations and economic.

Health harm begins with stress-related physical health consequences. Cardiovascular system impact has the earliest onset — hypertension. High blood pressure results from abusive supervisors. The risk of coronary heart disease is 40 percent greater if workers believe their supervisors are unjust and bullies go well beyond being unjust. Cortisol, the stress hormone, is measured routinely in studies and is found to be too high in people exposed to unremitting mistreatment. Most fascinating is that prolonged stress ages women prematurely, costing them 9-12 years of life expectancy, based on studies measuring telomeres — the protective tips of DNA chromosomes.

Health harm is also the psychological-emotional impact, ranging from debilitating anxiety to clinical depression induced by work to PTSD to suicide. Our online (non-scientific) surveys found that 39 percent of targets have been diagnosed with depression and 30 percent of women targets suffer PTSD. Doubters don’t think work can traumatize individuals, but remember bullying creates an abusive relationship. Abuse can traumatize, not everyone, but far too many.

Harm to social relationships primarily involves ostracism, social exclusion, by coworkers. Targets are treated as pariahs once targeted. Coworkers do little to help – they fear for their own safety and status.

Economic harm is clear. The most effective current way to stop the bullying is for the target to lose the job she or he once loved. According to our 2007 national study, 40 percent quit (probably for their health’s sake). An additional 24 percent were fired (by manufactured performance reports or other lies).

4. You draw an interesting parallel between bullying and Darwinism – the concept of survival of the fittest – stating how certain corporate cultures designated by CEOs to weed out the least effective workers and bullying might beneficial for such a goal. Needless to say, CEOs are often thinking very differently than others in their business – how could an anti-bullying campaign appeal to the CEO? How should one build a case?

Yes, bullies and their apologists are social Darwinists. The organizing principle that dominates the entire company is the CEO’s narcissism. He (and it’s a “he” in 97 percent of firms in the U.S.) sets the tone.

Jack Welch comes to mind. He is granted hero status, forgetting his old moniker of “Neutron Jack” who had the reputation of obliterating companies of workers.

I agree that CEOs do think differently. Welch taught his CEO colleagues to focus on shareholder value and short-term profits. His famous strategy of firing 10 percent of workers regardless of performance, to keep them afraid, is simply not human. Unfortunately, that mindset has been adopted by sheep-like Welchians. It’s easy to be cruel.

Some leaders are different people but with a personal moral inner directedness. They stand out because of their rarity. Not everyone believes treating workers like chattel is sufficient. Some can see value in long-term viability, not simply having monotonically rising quarterly profits.

I draw this distinction because without CEO approval (and some degree of participation), there can be no anti-bullying initiative success in the long-run. The CEOs who have brought us in to deal with bullying fall into two categories: early adopters and the legacy-oriented. It is counter-cultural to want to stop bullying that historically has been the characterization of the American style of managing. Bold contrarian CEOs love to be first to adopt a new program before it becomes a fad. Public awareness of workplace bullying has grown exponentially since we started back in mid-97 and corporate attorneys are warning their clients to not ignore the problems bullying causes.

Legacy-oriented leaders may be transitioning to a different post or the final phase of their careers. They want to leave behind something for which they can be remembered. The legacy can be within the industry, among their peer CEOs or for the workers at the company they led. Their gift is to establish a bullying-free workplace with their name attached.

Sadly, the impersonal, traditional business-case arguments that bullying increases risk exposure and that it eats into the bottom line fall onto deaf ears. The personal bonds between executives and their beloved bullies trump fiscal impact, though it makes no business sense. It is a world turned upside down, driven by favoritism and ingratiation, but it is more tangible and real than balance sheets.

The ROI for an anti-bullying program is great. But as long as “Bob the bully” is free to operate with the CEO’s blessing (or implicit approval through his indifference to complaints), stopping bullying will appear expensive when in fact it is the bully who is too expensive to keep!

5. What are other contributing factors that could lead to a bullying situation in terms of personality types and environment?

Most people begin with the assumption that bullies must be crazy or disturbed. Not so. Most bullies are not psychopaths; however those who bully are certainly narcissistic. They have an inflated sense of themselves relative to what others think, but they need not have a certifiable personality disorder. They are egocentric and selfish though that is true of many millions of us.

Bullies are astute at reading cues in the work environment. For instance, they see subtleties that others miss. They see that aggressive acts are noticed by management, which, in turn, are rewarded. Sometimes the reward is a promotion though more likely it’s the granting of special privileges. Those of us who are not bullies might see it and decide that it is deplorable to take advantage of another person but bullies see it as a skill necessary for political survival and career progress. Then, when they are aggressive themselves and reap personal rewards for doing to, the pattern is established. It is simple learning theory — positive reinforcement increases the likelihood that the rewarded behavior will reoccur.

Bullying is always a mix of personality of the bully and target and work environment. But environment is more influential than personality. Regardless of the person’s disposition, if conditions are engineered to create and sustain bullying, most employees can act like bullies at work. They do not become bullies in other domains of their lives. At work, however, they slip into a role and follow the unwritten script. The power of environment over personality is backed by decades of social psychological research.

6. If one is a bystander or witness to a bullying situation, is it his/her responsibility to do something? How should he/she proceed?

We would all like to think we would jump to rescue another person in danger. A bullied target is in danger, but we know from experience and research that others do relatively nothing. We imagine a brave encounter with the bully when the coworker stands shoulder to shoulder with the target and counterattacks. That’s myth. It happens less than 1 percent of the time (according to our 2008 study).

So, why expect coworkers to help when they see a target emerge from a closed-door berating and slip into her or his cubicle without saying a word? Social influence is strongest when situations are ambiguous or murky. A witness can rationalize not doing anything by concluding that he was misinterpreting what he saw and that it was not his business to butt into someone else’s privacy.

You are not likely to be there during the bullying incident. The target will describe events later. Gather all the other coworkers and establish that the response will have to be undertaken by the group. Purposefully share the responsibility. Decide what to do together — go two levels over the bully’s head or confront the bully in person — and have all participate. Power comes from a unified group. Stick to holding the person accountable because of the disruption of work, not because they have a warped personality. Make an impersonal financial impact argument to the highest level manager you can find without accidentally complaining to the bully’s relative or the boss who hired him.

Link to the original article

By Anne Fisher, contributor, July 8, 2011: 10:30 AM ET

FORTUNE — Dear Annie: A friend of mine sent me your column about five ways to cope with an autocratic boss, but I’m facing a problem with my immediate supervisor that is actually quite a bit worse. Since I started this job about two months ago (it’s my first “real” job out of college), my boss has become a nightmare. He constantly snipes at everything I do, makes sarcastic remarks, and about once a week has a totally out-of-control screaming fit where he calls me, and a couple of my coworkers, names I don’t even want to repeat.

Another thing I’ve discovered: After cutting our time short to complete assignments, which he always does at the last minute so there’s no way to make up the lost time, he complains to higher-ups — who all seem to think he walks on water — about how “lazy” we are. I really want to succeed at this company, but I’m not sure how long I can stand it. Should I talk to the person above him, who seems like a reasonable human being? If not, what can I do? — Ulcer in the Making

Dear U.M.: Your boss sounds like a classic workplace bully, defined as someone who repeatedly inflicts on others “verbal abuse, threatening conduct, intimidation or humiliation” as well as “sabotage that prevents work from getting done” (those suddenly altered deadlines).

That definition comes from the Workplace Bullying Institute, a nonprofit research and training organization. Alas, it’s not an unusual problem: About 50% of the U.S. workforce reports either having been bullied by someone at work or having witnessed someone else being mistreated, according to a survey of 4,210 American adults that WBI conducted last year.

Another poll last month, by job site CareerBuilders, found that 27% of U.S. employees have experienced some form of bullying at work. Most “never confronted or reported” the bully, the study says.

The WBI research shows that about three-quarters (72%) of bullies are bosses, and one reason they get away with it is that, in most states, abusing employees is not illegal unless the mistreatment is demonstrably based on age, sex, race, or religion, so it flies under the radar of corporate human resources and legal departments. That is slowly changing. So far, 21 states have passed anti-workplace-bullying laws, and 11 more are considering following suit.

Even if you live in a state where bullying is illegal now, suing your employer is probably not your best move. Neither is complaining about your boss to the person above him. For one thing, your boss fits a profile that WBI chief Gary Namie recognizes all too well: The supervisor who is adept at kissing up and kicking down, as the saying goes, and is careful to make a great impression on higher-ups.

“Bullies sneak into companies disguised as high performers and desirably ambitious go-getters,” Namie says. In other words, you’re likely to be perceived as far more dispensable than they are. That’s probably why, a 2007 WBI survey shows, 53% of employers did nothing when employees reported a bullying boss. In 24% of cases, it was even worse: The person who complained got fired.

So what can you do? First, since you want to succeed at this company, start looking around to see if opportunities exist, or may soon exist, that would put you out of this person’s reach. Get to know as many people as you can in other areas of the company where you might want to work, and keep an eye out for job openings. Just knowing that you won’t be working for this boss forever can make it a little easier to put up with him.

Namie, who is co-author of useful book called The Bully at Work: What You Can Do to Stop the Hurt and Reclaim Your Dignity on the Job, offers three other suggestions for protecting your psyche — and your stomach — from your bullying boss:

1. Practice tuning out the tantrums. One way to keep your cool when your boss starts screaming is to practice repeating a mantra in your head like, “Ignore the anger. It’s not yours.” Another approach is to “simply think about the one aspect of the bully’s physical appearance you find most awkward,” Namie says. Focusing on the boss’s goofy haircut or oversized ears “can help you to stay calm” because “you’re not taking him too seriously.”

2. Get a reality check. Bullies have a knack for knowing exactly “how to make you feel incompetent or unworthy,” Namie notes. “When confronted by a constant critic who picks apart both your work and your worthiness, it’s hard not to believe he’s right.”

To counteract that, he says, you need a good friend or respected ally at work “who could help you determine whether any of the criticism is useful to your work. Which parts are valid, and which are incorrect, misinformed, malicious, or just plain whiny?”

3. Enlist supporters. Since you mention that a few of your coworkers have also been on the receiving end of your boss’s screaming fits, try sounding them out about the problem, Namie suggests. “Are they willing to brainstorm with you about possible ways to improve the situation, without anyone having to take on the boss alone?”

Even as a group of like-minded fellow sufferers, Namie warns, you probably can’t transform a bully’s behavior. After all, it’s clearly been working pretty well for him so far. But at the very least, you can provide each other with enough moral support to last until you no longer work for this bozo.

Good luck.

Link to original article

My friend, Kelly Abel, is one of those people you would hire to do anything. Why? Because she will not take on something she’s not going to succeed at and she’ll do anything (within reason) to win. It’s this quality that got her hired to manage a New York fitness center—even though she’d never done it before.

Her new job was a potential nightmare. She inherited a demanding clientele, a downtrodden staff, a history of sub-par sales, and a facility in sore need of an upgrade. But Kelly was up for it. Always one to relish a challenge, she was even excited.

Wildly competitive and energetic (and that’s putting it mildly), she worked around the clock with no regard for weekends or holidays, pitching in on everything from sales to cleaning the toilets when a housekeeper quit. Within eight weeks, a physical renovation of the club was underway and a cultural revolution had begun. Clients began popping into her office to compliment her on noted improvements. Her staff’s spirits were rebooted—a trainer even sent her flowers and a note saying she’d changed her life. Corporate was thrilled; the company president himself emailed kudos.

But not everybody was a fan.

Kelly’s regional sales manager couldn’t stand her and made no bones about it. She complained every time she made her rounds at Kelly’s gym, blaming Kelly directly for not meeting monthly sales goals. She and Kelly disagreed about strategy and she refused to give Kelly the support needed to try new things. She publically criticized her in management meetings and, in private, she stood over Kelly, yelled at her, fingers in her face, often reprimanding her in ways that felt more personal than professional.

“She spoke to me like nobody has ever spoken to me,” an outraged Kelly told me after a recent run-in. “My mother, my father, my best friends, even people who I know don’t like me have never talked to me like that. Is she crazy?”

Maybe she is. Or maybe she’s just one of the thousands of bullies wreaking havoc in the workplace. Google “bullying at work” and you’ll get a whopping 33,700,000 results. It occurs in every country in the world and has sparked the proposal of Healthy Workplace bills in 21 states in the U.S.

On-the-job hazing, hostile criticism, sabotage, and outright threats are on the rise, according to a recent study by the Workplace Bullying Institute. (Just the fact that there is a Workplace Bullying Institute is evidence enough that the problem is significant.) Managers and bosses are the worst culprits, although lateral peers do their fair share, often driven by insecurity or an unhealthy competitive streak

Almost any overly aggressive, inappropriate or unprofessional behavior—particularly if it occurs repeatedly and is designed to intimidate, humiliate or undermine—fits the bill. This includes being routinely yelled at, cursed at, insulted, gossiped about or excluded. Left unchecked, bullies cut to the heart of a company’s productivity and damage the bottom line as their victims’ morale and confidence plummet resulting in lost time at work due to stress related illnesses that can lead them to quit or, in the most extreme instances, even commit suicide.

Workplace bullying is no joke.

Sadly, the weak economy and high unemployment have combined to make office bullying numbers go up, but the incidence of reporting has gone down. Fearful of losing their jobs, victims are not seeking intervention. Even more sadly, the baseline abominable behavior we’ve become accustomed to in our reality-TV driven culture, has made many of us more accepting of treatment that is outrageously unacceptable. But Kelly didn’t hesitate to sound the alarm.

When the company’s regional sales manager berated her for “poor” sales, Kelly did her own research and discovered that 2011 sales goals were much higher than they had been the year before, despite the economy and the fact that half of her gym was under renovation. She also found that, while they were below goal, her team was exceeding actual 2010 sales, something the regional manager had failed to mention.

When the regional manager told Kelly that the other GM’s resented her for suggesting changes to corporate, Kelly reached out to her peers directly and learned that they was a lie. In fact, the other GMs confided that they also felt mistreated but, unaware that it was a general issue, they’d been afraid to speak up.

Armed with this information, Kelly fired off a letter to the company president and her direct boss, documenting in detail the regional manager’s behavior and accusing her of creating a hostile work environment that was detrimental not only to her success, but to the company’s overall success. The president is looking into it himself.

While the outcome isn’t yet clear, Kelly is. “I won’t work with someone like that, period,” she told me. “The company will decide who they want to keep. If it’s not me, I’ll find another job. What bothers me is that so many of the other people I work with don’t have the confidence to say that. Or they just can’t afford to take the risk.”

A tight economy is no excuse to tolerate poor, unfair treatment. Don’t get bullied, get help from Human Resources. And, if you have no other option, get out. No job is worth your self-respect or your health.

Caroline Clarke, Black Enterprise

Here’s the local newspaper account:

Grand jury finds workplace bullying a problem within county government by John Scheibe, Ventura County Star, June 16, 2011

The Ventura County Grand Jury recently concluded that workplace bullying is a problem in county government offices and encouraged county officials to develop a policy against bullying in the workplace.

“Unfortunately, bullying is not limited to schools,” the grand jury stated in a letter released in late May.
The 2010-11 grand jury investigated bullying within county government after getting a complaint about it. As part of this, the grand jury interviewed past and current county employees who were the targets of bullying or witnessed it.

John Nicoll, assistant county executive officer and the director of human resources for the county, said county officials are preparing a response to the grand jury’s report.

“We understand the concerns about conduct like that in the workplace,” Nicoll said.

Grand jurors found employees “were yelled at by managers in group meetings and in public areas.”
Also, employees, including some highly experienced ones, “were excessively monitored by managers to such an extent that they left their positions,” the grand jury’s report stated.

Some employees went to other agencies, while others accepted “a demotion to receive that transfer.”
Others left county government for other jobs or retired earlier than they had planned because of a “manager’s bullying behavior,” the grand jury found.

Some employees were isolated both “organizationally and physically,” the report stated.
The report found the county “has no written policy specifically directed against bullying in the workplace.”
It also found that processes to report workplace bullying “are not trusted by employees because the agency with the alleged bullying issue is allowed to investigate complaints using personnel within its own organization.”

Nicoll said there are mechanisms now in place for county employees to file a complaint if they believe they have been discriminated against.

As to the allegation by the grand jury that county employees have left their jobs because of workplace bullying, Nicoll said he “would be upset if someone were legitimately fleeing the workplace if they felt they were being mistreated” and felt they had no recourse but to leave.

“We do not tolerate employees being mistreated because they’ve filed a complaint,” Nicoll said. “I’m disappointed if someone left for that reason.”

Nicoll said he did not know how widespread a problem workplace bullying is in the county government.
However, he said “the county has gotten very limited number of complaints of inappropriate treatment by their supervisors.”

The Workplace Bullying Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to eradicating workplace bullying through research and education, commissioned a 2010 study that found 35 percent of workers in the United States have experienced bullying firsthand. Men constitute 62 percent of bullies, while women make up 58 percent of the targets of bullying, according to the study. Female bullies target other women 80 percent of the time, according to the study, done by Zogby International. The study found workplace bullying is a silent epidemic since many workers who are victims of it or witness it fail to report it.

The group, which is based in Washington state, defines workplace bullying as repeated, health-harming abusive conduct committed by bosses and co-workers against others. Workplace bullying is legal in many states across the nation, according to the institute. The institute is working to introduce bills in various state legislatures that would make workplace bullying illegal.

The institute also found that workplace bullying costs companies millions of dollars in employee turnover, lost productivity and lawsuits. The grand jury seemed to agree, stating in its report that workplace bullying costs taxpayers additional money because the county must incur the cost of recruiting and training replacement personnel for those who have left their jobs because of bullying. …

The grand jury is recommending the Ventura County Board of Supervisors issue a policy against bullying and collect data “to identify the existence and extent of bullying in branches of county government.”
Such a policy should include descriptions of bullying behaviors to educate employees on unacceptable workplace behaviors and encourage employees to report this type of workplace abuse, the grand jury said.

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READ THE GRAND JURY REPORT

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Solutions for Ventura County can be found in the book The Bully-Free Workplace and at the website for the premier workplace bullying consultants, The Work Doctor®

Note: the reference at the end to NY Senate bill passage refers to a 2010 result. In 2011, two bills — Assembly 4528 and Senate 4289 — are alive and well. Track progress toward passage here.

The new chief executive at a mid-size Atlanta technology company was technically brilliant but totally lacking in management skills. He turned everyone off, including customers. Morale started plunging, and employees began to grumble. Then they became emboldened, and they reached out to members of the company’s board, laying out how the CEO dampened motivation, wrought havoc with teamwork, and drove customers away. It took a long time, some four years, but the board finally let the CEO go.

Countless workers fantasize about getting their boss fired, but few succeed. I talked to five career coaches, a corporate consultant, a lawyer, and a management professor about how disgruntled workers might oust their superiors, and although I gathered a handful of success stories, all of the sources agree: Think many times over before you try it, because you will likely fail.

“Organizations are power hierarchies, and your boss is automatically one level up from you,” says Marie McIntyre, an Atlanta, Ga., career coach and author of Secrets to Winning at Office Politics. “All of these situations come down to leverage,” she adds. “If you declare war on your boss, 90% of the time you’re going to lose, because your boss has more leverage than you do.”

That said, my sources came up with several stories about employees who succeeded against the odds. I’ll share them here and draw some lessons, in case you feel compelled to take on the challenge.

McIntyre offered the tale of that technology CEO’s ouster. The lesson from that story: Persistence and patience can pay off, but it may take years.
McIntyre also described a near-miss that’s worth relating. A hard-driving salesman was promoted to serve as a district manager for the top sales group at his pharmaceutical company. He tackled the job by riding along with team members on sales calls and critiquing their performance. “He really ticked people off,” recalls McIntyre.

The aggravated employees started calling the new boss’s boss to complain. But they didn’t just say they were unhappy. They spelled out how he was interfering with their work. The district manager was on the verge of getting fired, says McIntyre, when the company brought her in to consult. The group’s approach was effective, she says, because taken together, each of the six employees’ strong track records gave them leverage. They also made a convincing business case: The manager was driving down sales. McIntyre says that after she led several sessions with the manager and the team together, he changed his style and saved his job.

Sarah Stamboulie, a New York career coach, told a story about a major bank with its headquarters in New York City and a human resources office in New Jersey that ran by its own rules. The main office wanted the New Jersey branch to get in line with corporate practices, but its head preferred to do things his own way. The department’s number two started ingratiating herself with her superiors in the main office and modified her own work to be in line with the central office. When the company had to cut costs, it laid off the head of the division and kept that number two, who had proved she could do a better job at running the department. “The lesson is to look for alliances where your boss is weak,” Stamboulie said.
Two of my sources offered tales from academia. Marcie Schorr Hirsch, of Hirsch/Hills Consulting in Newton Centre, Mass., told of a woman who came in as the new director of a university office with 30 employees. She was following in the footsteps of a much-loved boss and quickly developed a reputation as a very difficult manager. People in the department soon started quitting. Four left, and others became disgruntled and wrote letters to senior officers at the university. Prodded by the university, the boss wound up taking a leave and then not returning to her job. As in the case of McIntyre’s story about the sales manager, there was strength in numbers. “It takes a village,” Hirsch said.

Gary Namie, a Seattle corporate consultant, psychologist and author of The Bully-Free Workplace: Stop Jerks, Weasels and Snakes from Killing Your Organization, recounted the story of a tenured math and statistics professor at a junior college who felt he was being “persecuted” by a new dean, despite having job security and being well-liked by students. The professor collected evidence carefully, documented the dean’s attacks on him and others in his 15-member department, and approached the college’s chancellor and members of its board. Three of the professor’s colleagues had felt so berated by the new department head that they had had emotional breakdowns and sought psychiatric help, according to Namie. The professor prepared a report that laid out the extent to which the department head was costing the college money. One of the colleagues had filed a harassment suit, and students were becoming discouraged. The college let the department head go. The lesson here also echoes that of McIntyre’s sales manager story. Said Namie: Keep your emotions in check, and lay out a case that details how the boss is costing the institution money.

Despite these tales, the consultants, coaches and lawyer all agree: “Rather than get your boss fired, I would use my energies to find a new job,” in the words of the New York City career coach Connie Thanasoulis-Cerrachio, who is a consultant to the career website Vault.com. Adds Atlanta career coach McIntyre, “If you can’t think of a business case against your boss, then you probably just have a personality case, and you’d better get over it.”

Bosses seldom attack employees physically, but emotional bullying can cause enough damage that some say it should be against the law.

According to the Workplace Bullying Institute, half of the U.S. workforce has witnessed such bullying, experienced it or known a family member who was bullied at work. The group has promoted legislation that has been introduced in 11 states to outlaw what it calls the “silent epidemic.”

The group wants to hold employers liable for bullying on the job, much like the responsibility they already have of prohibiting discrimination based on sex, race, religion and other protected civil rights categories. Several European nations have made bullying unlawful.

Texas employment lawyer Michael W. Fox argues, however, that passing laws to regulate loosely defined misbehavior at work is not a good way to deal with the problem.

For example, the Abusive Work Environment Act in Illinois would prohibit repeated verbal abuse of employees including derogatory remarks, verbal or physical conduct that is intimidating or humiliating and sabotaging or undermining an employee’s work performance. The bill passed the Illinois Senate last year but is pending in the Illinois General Assembly.

“Lots of those things happen at work,” said Fox, an employment lawyer at Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart in Austin who represents management. Fox made the comments during a seminar presentation, Civility in the Workplace: Now It Is a Legal Issue, at HR Houston’s Gulf Coast symposium last week in Houston.

Bringing it out in the open

But to the anti-bullying forces, the problem is simmering, and they compare it to the time when people just whispered about domestic violence. No one wanted to intervene, said Gary Namie, director of the Workplace Bullying Institute in Bellingham, Wash.

Friends and family denied the violence or rationalized it by figuring it couldn’t be that bad or the victim wouldn’t put up with it, said Namie, who co-authored the recently published book The Bully Free Workplace: Stop the Jerks, Weasels and Snakes From Killing Your Organization.

Those who spoke out against domestic violence are heroes now, he said, and he hopes workplaces won’t tolerate bullying or attitudes like, “Hey, that’s why they call it work,” or “Why don’t you grow a thicker skin?” But he said the stress causes cardiovascular and gastrointestinal problems, panic attacks and depression.

Those who spoke out against domestic violence are heroes now, he said, and he hopes workplaces won’t tolerate bullying or attitudes like, “Hey, that’s why they call it work,” or “Why don’t you grow a thicker skin?” But he said the stress causes cardiovascular and gastrointestinal problems, panic attacks and depression.

Namie contends he’s fighting against entrenched business interests that claim regulations aren’t necessary and complaints can be handled as they come up.

Getting attention

Fox said, however, that Namie’s side of the argument has made progress in the past decade in getting legislative and other attention.

He points to a $325,000 jury verdict that was upheld three years ago by the Indiana Supreme Court for an operating room employee who alleged a cardiovascular surgeon bullied him by advancing “aggressively and rapidly” with “clenched fists, piercing eyes, beet-red face, popping veins, and screaming and swearing.” The employee, who was backed into a corner, reported he put his hands up to protect himself, but the surgeon abruptly walked away.

While the jury verdict was officially for assault, the testimony revolved around “workplace bullying” and included testimony from Namie, according to court records.

“It hit a receptive note with jurors,” Fox said. Workplace bullying has also drawn attention from researchers who study the effects of stress on employees’ health.

Namie said he saw that stress up close, and that’s why he launched the effort more than a decade ago to make workplace bullying unlawful. It all started when his wife’s new boss turned her life into a nightmare.

Bullies often target a thoroughly competent longtime employee, he said. The bully — typically a supervisor – feels threatened by that knowledge and competence and launches an effort to drive the person out.

The target is usually a nonconfrontational person who pays little attention to office politics.

“The poor targeted person never sees it coming,” he said.

Managing the image

Bullies, on the other hand, are masters at appearance management and ingratiate themselves with the higher-ups, Namie said. That typically includes casting aspersions against subordinates as untrustworthy and unreliable so that if they complain, they’re branded as troublemakers.

Since there is nothing to compel an employer to take the bullying seriously, about the only thing targets can do is control their departure, he said – leaving on their own terms and making sure others know the truth.

Namie’s wife received a settlement to leave her job quietly. A year later, in 1997, – the couple launched the Workplace Bullying Institute.

The group’s proposed “heathy workplace bill” would require employers to take action against bullies, while requiring employees who bring a claim to document health problems stemming from the bad behavior.

The initiative hasn’t gotten far in Texas.

Dozens of calls a month

Esque Walker, Texas coordinator for Texas Healthy Workplace Advocates in Dallas, said no Texas legislator has signed on as sponsor.

She said, though, that she fields dozens of calls each month from people who say they’ve been bullied at work and don’t know where to turn, including 10 in the past month from Houstonians. The callers include teachers, nurses, firefighters and government employees.

Walker, who joined the group after she was bullied at work, recommends they get professional counseling because being bullied can cause psychological harm. And then plan that graceful exit.

Read more: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/sixel/7573152.html#ixzz1MuXrTtcj

Women are a jealous, catty group. We’re raised to pay attention to the other women in our lives in a judgmental way. We even judge our friends. Despite the idea of sisterhood, we’re more prone to be critical of each other than men are. This mentality carries over into the workplace where female on female bullying is on the rise.

Since 2007, the practice has increased by 9%, according to the Workplace Bullying Institute. Yes, it’s that common, that there’s an institute.

Some women, once they’ve reached the top, are willing to help other women get there, too. But others will pull that ladder up behind them and secure themselves in the minority without looking back. In male-dominated offices, women who have succeeded tend to take on stereotypically male behaviors. They learn to be more aggressive and cut-throat, and once you throw in their natural jealousy of each other, it’s a perfect mix for workplace turmoil. Recent research shows that women are 71% more likely to be bullied by another woman. Whereas, the chances of a woman being bullied by a man is at a much lower 46%.

These statistic are startling and upsetting. As women, we’ve come so far in the business world in just over the last 30 year alone. For us, as a gender, to be so down on each other does not bode well for our future not only in the workplace but amongst ourselves as a society.

Some “mean girls,” will admit that there is a power trip in sinking their claws into another woman’s back, if only to prove that you’re better in some way. These same women can’t dignify or even justify some of the things they’ve done both in and out of the workplace to keep other women in their place – it’s as though it just comes naturally to some. But where it might be natural for some to be deceptive and, in some cases, outright evil, those on the receiving end understand the damage that can be done.

“I was 23 and pretty much straight out of college. My boss at the time admitted to me that she’d started out in a work environment where female bullying was completely normal. Because of her past she decided she would bully her inferiors one day, too. It was like a sorority game to her. I didn’t deserve to get hazed, but I was going to get hazed anyway on principle,” says one victim.

“I’m a teacher at a high school and I work with a female bully. She’s charming with the male teachers, but goes to great lengths to insult any woman who questions her. She’s as petty as criticizing someone’s outfit until they’re on the verge of tears. I don’t know why she doesn’t get fired,” says a second victim.

We can blame genetics or generations of struggle for equality that has given us a chip on our shoulders – but that’s just passing the buck. We owe it to ourselves to kick female on female bullying to the curb and to stand up for sisterhood in all its forms. You would not be where you are today if another woman didn’t pave the way for you. And like our inherent catty ways, this too, is a fact.

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The original article

The bullying started with verbal and email confrontations. Paula, a public school teacher who asked her real name not be used, teaches a foreign language to middle school students. Although she had a dozen years of experience, an older colleague who taught the same language began criticizing her lesson plans and teaching style.

When the two had to collaborate on a project to earn state-required continuing education credits, the older teacher demanded they meet after school instead of during the period set aside by the principal for the meetings. Paula, who has grade-school children, refused, and the bullying escalated.

“She would get right in my face and scream that I was not professional and couldn’t get along with people,” Paula recalls. “She would attack me in front of the students. She makes me feel like the worst person in the world.” Paula told her supervisor, who said he understood, but didn’t confront the aggressor. “I think he is just hoping she’ll retire,” she adds.

And Paula isn’t alone. A new survey of 5,700 workers by CareerBuilder found 27 percent of workers say they have been bullied in the workplace. Among the biggest complaints: workers’ comments were dismissed or not acknowledged (43 percent); they were falsely accused of mistakes they didn’t make (40 percent); they were harshly criticized and forced to do work that wasn’t part of their jobs (both at 38 percent).

About one in four respondents said they had been gossiped about; yelled at by the boss in front of other co-workers; and belittled in meetings. One in five said someone else had taken credit for their work. Of the 28 percent of workers who took their concerns to a higher authority in the workplace, the majority — 62 percent — said nothing was done.

Workplace bullying was splashed across the pages of The New York Times last week in a profile about David Sokol, the Berkshire Hathaway executive who is reportedly under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission for buying $10 million in Lubrizol stock before proposing the firm as an acquisition for Berkshire. Subordinates told the Times he alienated people with his “brass-knuckles approach,” and suggested that workers who were ill or suffering personal problems such as divorce “be pushed to the side.”

Bob Sutton, management professor at Stanford University and author of “Good Boss, Bad Boss,” says bullies destroy workplace satisfaction for both the victims and co-workers who observe the behavior. A separate poll conducted in 2010 by the Workplace Bullying Institute (WBI) which surveyed all workers (not just those currently employed) found 35 percent had experienced bullying at some point in their careers.

Sutton suggests the numbers may be declining at the moment for several reasons: “The positive one is that companies have gotten rid of the most incompetent and rotten apples in the downturn and things have gotten objectively better. Another is that everybody is so grateful to have a job that they’ve stopped complaining.”

Legislative initiatives designed to discourage workplace bullying have been introduced in 21 states since 2003 without success; 11 states have active bills in their legislatures. Earlier this week, New York State Sen. Diane Savino and Assemblyman Steven Englebright held a town meeting and press conference in Albany to discuss their Healthy Workplace Bill. The bill would amend the labor law to allow employees who have been harmed psychologically, physically or economically by bullying to sue for damages. (It was first introduced in 2006.)

“One of every five workers at some time in his career is subject to bullying,” says Englebright, “and there needs to be an alternative to that type of purgatory. Why employers look the other way is beyond my ability to fully comprehend. It’s reprehensive and needs a counterweight in law, in my opinion.”

Under the New York law, a bully who is found guilty would be liable for lost wages, medical expenses, compensation for emotional distress, punitive damages and attorney’s fees. The court could also order that the person be removed from the workplace. An employer would be civilly liable for failing to address the situation, with liability for emotional distress capped at $25,000 and no punitive damages.

The bill defines “abusive conduct” as malice against an employee by either a boss or co-worker that “a reasonable person would find to be hostile, offensive and unrelated to the employer’s legitimate business interest.” It would include repeated acts of verbal abuse, threatening language or behavior, intimidation or humiliation, or sabotage of an employee’s work performance.

The press conference included testimony by Maria Morrissey, sister of Kevin Morrissey, an editor at the Virginia Quarterly Review who committed suicide in 2010. She says bullying played a role in her brother’s death, which was widely covered by the media.

New York business groups oppose the measure. “We think it sets a terrible precedent for New York,” says Michael Moran, director of communications for the Business Council of New York State. “We think there is already sufficient federal and state law protecting workers from a range of abuses. Creating a private right of action would lead to chaos and people looking to locate business elsewhere.”

But WBI director Gary Namie, author of the forthcoming book “Bully-Free Workplace,” calls it “a very pro-employer bill. You get exemption from vicarious liability if you put a policy in place and enforce it.”

A growing pile of academic studies suggest that bullies diminish the bottom line along with their co-workers and subordinates. Sutton has found that productivity declines as much as 40 percent in workplaces dominated by bullies, “because they distract people and it gets contagious,” he says. People who work for an abusive boss are more likely to call in sick when they’re not, more likely to quit and less likely to put forth extra effort to help the organization, he notes.

In his book “The No-Asshole Rule,” Sutton cites a Silicon Valley company that decided to calculate the cost of a legendary bully who consistently ranked in the top 5 percent of salespeople. He had a terrible temper, routinely insulted and belittled co-workers and couldn’t keep an assistant. Over a five-year period, several employees had lodged “hostile workplace” complaints against him, Sutton writes. The company did a week-by-week calculation of the extra costs of the salesperson’s nasty actions compared with more civilized peers: $160,000. But the bully wasn’t fired. Instead, his employer deducted 60 percent of the costs of his behavior from his year-end bonus.

Namie says victims of bullying should try to calculate the bully’s impact on the company, such as absenteeism rates, workers compensation claims for stress, litigation costs for nuisance suits, and threats of lawsuits that lead to settlements. Try to find others who left the company because of the bully, and try to show how the person is damaging morale and engagement.

“Make a non-emotional, fiscal argument and bring the complaint to the highest level person you can,” Namie says. “If they refuse to see the impact on the organization, you will have to move on.”

Sutton says the only method that works against a bully who is valuable to the organization is a group intervention. He tells the story of a non-profit organization where all the employees went to a board meeting and threatened to quit en masse unless the abusive executive director was fired. They won. “Doing it together is the hallmark of people who are successful in removing bullies,” he says.

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Read the original article

Workplace bullying has become a silent epidemic in North America, one that has huge hidden costs in terms of employee well being and productivity. Also known as psychological harassment or emotional abuse, bullying involves the conscious repeated effort to wound and seriously harm another person — not with violence, but with words and actions. Bullying damages the physical, emotional and mental health of the targeted person.

The workplace bully abuses power and endeavors to steal the target’s self-confidence. Bullies often involve others using tactics such as blaming the target for errors, unreasonable work demands, insults, putdowns, taking credit for the person’s work, threatening job loss and discounting accomplishments.

Bullying has become a serious problem in the workplace. In two surveys by the Workplace Bullying Institute (WBI) and Zogby International, where bullying was defined as “repeated mistreatment: sabotage by others that prevented work from getting done, verbal abuse, threatening conduct, intimidation and humiliation,” 35% of workers experienced bullying first hand, and 62% of the bullies were men. A Harris Interactive poll conducted in 2011 revealed that 34% of women reported being bullied in the workplace. The WBI concluded while perpetrators can be found in all ranks within organizations, the vast majority are bosses — managers, supervisors, and executives.

What’s the impact of bullying behaviour?

Bullies create a terrible toll within an organization. Their behaviour leads to increased levels of stress among employees, higher rates of absenteeism and higher than normal attrition. Because bullies often get results by getting more short-term production out of employees, they are tolerated. One study by John Medina showed that workers stressed by bullying performed 50% worse on cognitive tests. Other studies estimate the financial costs of bullying at more than $200-billion a year.

A study by Dr. Noreen Tehrani, who counselled victims of violence in Northern Ireland, and soldiers returning from overseas combat and victims of workplace, concluded that bullying exhibited similar psychological and physical symptoms — nightmares and extreme anxiety, and a variety of physical ailments.

Swedish researchers, led by Anna Nyberg at the Stress Institute in Stockholm, have published a study in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine on the issue of leaders’ behaviour and employee health. They studied more than 3,100 men in a 10-year period in typical work settings. They found that employees who had managers who were incompetent, inconsiderate, secretive and uncommunicative, the employees were 60% more likely to suffer a heart attack or other life-threatening cardiac condition. By contrast, employees who worked with “good” leaders were 40% less likely to suffer heart problems.  Nyberg said, “for all those who work under managers who they perceive behave strangely, or in any way they don’t understand, and they feel stressed, the study confirms this develops into a health risk.”

A study of 6,000 British office workers found employees who felt that their supervisors treated them fairly had a 30% lower risk of heart disease. A 2008 meta-analysis of the connection between health and leadership by Jana Kuoppala and associates concluded that good leadership was associated with a 27% reduction in sick leave and a 46% reduction in disability pensions. The same study concluded that employees with good leaders were 40% more likely to report the highest levels of psychological well being including lower levels of anxiety and depression.

In an article by Richard Williams, Wallace Higgins and Harvey Greenberg, published in the Boston Globe, they cited numerous research studies regarding leadership style and the health of employees. They concluded “your boss can cause you stress, induce depression and anxiety or even trigger the onset of serious illnesses. It is not just bad managers who can negatively affect employee health, but it is also the half-hearted and mediocre who put employees on the sick list.” And the cost is huge in terms of lost productivity, health care costs and employee turnover. The authors argue that a whole new field of litigation in the U.S. is developing “lawsuits against ‘bad bosses’ and the organizations that negligently allow them to supervise.”

According to the WBI, 40% of the targets of bulling never told their employers, and of those that did, 62% reported they were ignored. According to Dr. Gary Namie, Research Director at WBI, and author The Bully at Work: What You Can Do to Stop the Hurt and Reclaim Your Dignity on the Job, 81% of employers are either doing nothing to address bullying or actually resisting action when requested to do something.
As John Baldoni, author of nine books on leadership, including Lead By Example, and Lead Your Boss, says bullies may “get employees to comply, but not to commit. Compliance is okay for day-to-day operations, but when an organization is faced with a challenge or even a crisis, you need employees who are willing to go the extra mile. People who work for a bully are biding their time looking for a way out, or a time when the bully will be replaced.”

What kind of people are bullies in the workplace? “Bullies typically possess a Type A personality; they are competitive and appear driven, operating as they do from a sense of urgency,” says Lisa M.S. Barrow, author of In Darkness Light Dawns: Exposing Workplace Bullying. “This has its advantages in the workplace but the shadow side of Type A is the tendency to become frustrated and verbally abusive when things don’t go according to plan. Impatience and temper tantrums are common for Type A individuals who haven’t engaged in t the personal growth required to gain self-awareness, maintain emotional stability and consider situations from multiple points of view.…  Above all, bullies crave power and control, and this craving underlies much of what they do, say and fail to do and say. Bullies use charm and deceit to further their own ends and seem oblivious to the trail of damage they leave behind, as long as their appetites for power and control are fulfilled.”

Contrary to conventional wisdom, the targets of office bullies are not the new, inexperienced and less confident employees. According to research, they are the highly competent, accomplished, experienced and popular employees. And making them targets makes it harder for them to get notice or reprieve. Independent, experienced workers pose the greatest threat to the bullies. And when bullies find targets that refuse to be controlled and intimidated, they escalate their behaviour.

Layoffs and financial pressures on managers to perform in the recent recession may have exacerbated the bullying problem. Research conducted by Wayne Hochwarter and Samantha Englehardt at Florida State University concluded that “employer-employee relations are at one of the lowest points in history,” with a significant decline in basic civility.

Is bullying a reflection of a general decline in civility? In poll after poll, Americans have voiced concern over the erosion of civility. According to a poll by Weber Shandwick, 65% of Americans say the lack of civility is a major problem in the country and feel the negative tenor has worsened during the financial crisis and recession.

So what’s being done about workplace bullying? In the U.S., 20 states are exploring legislation that would put bullying on the legal radar screen. In Canada, the provinces of Ontario, Saskatchewan and Quebec have passed legislation that addresses workplace bullying, although both countries are far behind some European nations and New Zealand.

One thing is certain; the problem of workplace bullying will not go away anytime soon and may never be fully remedied until enough people call for a return to a culture of civility, and demand  governments and companies take action.

Maria Morrissey, sister of deceased literary journal editor Kevin Morrissey, will speak next week at a news conference in support of New York legislation on workplace bullying.

Morrissey committed suicide last summer. The incident prompted a wave of news coverage when some of his colleagues asserted that Morrissey had been verbally harassed by his boss at the Virginia Quarterly Review, editor and poet Ted Genoways.

Sister Maria has emerged as a sort of national spokesperson on workplace bullying, and it is in that capacity that she will speak Monday in support of the Healthy Workplace Bill in Albany, N.Y. She sent me a news release from the organization New York Healthy Workplace Advocates that lists her as one of three speakers, all giving personal accounts of alleged workplace bullying. A spokeswoman for New York Sen. Diane Savino, a Democrat and chief sponsor of the bill in that chamber, confirmed the Monday event.

Supporters and detractors of Genoways — who still runs the journal on the University of Virginia campus — remain divided on his role in the affair.

An internal investigation by the university faulted Genoways for “questionable” management and the university for weak oversight. It did not directly address whether the boss bore any responsibility in the death of his employee.

At least one lengthy article on the case, in Slate, concluded that bullying wasn’t quite the right word for what happened in the journal offices. It asked, “Did Genoways act with malice — the bar set even by the bullying advocates — or did he just act clumsily or unfeelingly? And does it make sense to use the bullying framework to look at dysfunctional work environments?”

Fellow writers rose to Genoways’s defense. But Morrissey’s siblings and much of the journal’s small staff supported the theory that the top editor bore some measure of blame.

Meanwhile, copies of the struggling journal’s Spring 2011 issue have sold out.

While I will not admit to enjoying the downfall of others, it is refreshing to see an executive who treats others poorly fall from power.

Such is the case with David Sokol, once believed to be the heir apparent to Warren Buffett as the next CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. That plan evaporated when Sokol resigned in March after it was revealed that he had bought shares in Lubrizol, a company that Berkshire Hathaway since bought.

Now, according to reporting by Peter Latman and Geraldine Fabrikant in the New York Times, Sokol had an unsavory reputation within Berkshire Hathaway. He could be gruff and abusive and worse his track record as a “Mr. Fix It” was unwarranted. Insiders wonder why Buffett valued Sokol so highly. [Berkshire Hathaway has since announced that Sokol, in violation of corporate ethics policies, gave "misleadingly incomplete disclosures" about his stock purchases.]

Far be it from me to speculate on what Buffett saw in Sokol, but it seems that Buffett, who prides himself on hands-off management, is one more in long line of top executives who willfully or woefully are blind to the negative behaviors of underlings, even when those behaviors rise to the level of bullying.

Bullying Bosses: A Scourge in Corporate America

Bullying is not what Sokol is accused of, but as the Times reported, Sokol suggested getting rid of employees because they were in poor health or going through a divorce, which is bully-like behavior.

Bully bosses are the scourge of many organizations. According to a 2010 survey released by the National Workplace Bullying Institute, bullies are commonplace. One in three workers report being bullied by a boss. Six in ten bullies are men and 58% of their targets are women. Cases of bullying are four times greater than illegal harassment.

Bullies wreck a terrible toll within an organization. Their behavior leads to increased levels of stress among employees, higher rates of absenteeism, and higher than normal attrition. But here is the irony. Bullies do get results, typically because they push people to the wall forcing them to put in longer than necessary hours. Senior managers see only the results and look no further.

If you look at management as an exercise in employee engagement, bullies fall short. Bullies get employees to comply, but not to commit. Compliance is okay for day-to-day operations but when an organization is faced with a challenge or even a crisis, you need employees who are willing to go the extra mile. People who work for a bully are biding their time looking for a way out, or a time when the bully will be replaced.

Bullies also sully the reputation of their department. Talented employees will avoid working there. Couple that with the talented people in the department who have left or are seeking to leave, pretty soon the bully is left with employees whose only option is to endure.

Avoidance of the bullying issue by senior management is a contributing factor to why bully bosses remain in their positions. Until senior management looks more closely at the “numbers behind the numbers” – absenteeism, lower engagement scores, and turnover – bullies will remain with us.

Have you seen CEOs blind to bullies, and what impact has that had on the company?

John Baldoni is an internationally recognized leadership development consultant, executive coach, author, and speaker. In 2011 Leadership Gurus International ranked John no. 11 on its list of the world’s top leadership experts. John is the author of nine books on leadership including his Lead By Example: 50 Ways Great Leaders Inspire Results and Lead Your Boss: The Subtle Art of Managing Up.  Follow him on Twitter

By Janice Crompton, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Thursday, April 21, 2011

When Tom Shannon accepted a job 15 years ago, he expected to raise his family and retire after a long, satisfying career.

But instead, the 51-year-old information technology specialist from Butler County found himself confronted with what he describes as an alcoholic, abusive supervisor who, he said, eventually drove him from his job — and nearly out of his mind.

“There were days when I didn’t think I could make it through the day. It was that bad,” said Mr. Shannon, who left his job two years ago after complaints about his supervisor went nowhere.

After years of suffering through drunken outbursts and insults, the stress also took its toll on Mr. Shannon’s health, eventually causing him to develop high blood pressure and anxiety.

“If I would have stayed there, I’d be dead by now,” said Mr. Shannon, now happily employed by the federal government.

Mr. Shannon’s case isn’t unique, and he’s one of a growing number of people who are willing to testify before state lawmakers about workplace bullying and its consequences.

They are being organized by Washington, Pa., native Gary Namie, who heads the Workplace Bullying Institute, a nonprofit group devoted to resolving the issue.

A 2010 poll commissioned by the WBI and conducted by Zogby International showed that 35 percent of Americans reported being bullied at work; 9 percent said they were currently being bullied and 26 percent said they had experienced workplace bullying in the past.

Once a worker becomes a target of a workplace bully, research shows that person has a six in 10 chance of losing his or her job, Mr. Namie said.
“Forty percent quit and 24 percent get fired,” said Mr. Namie. He co-founded the research and education organization that would eventually become the WBI 14 years ago with his wife, Ruth Namie, after she experienced workplace bullying firsthand.

A 1970 graduate of Washington High School and 1974 graduate of Washington & Jefferson College, Mr. Namie met his wife, an Upland, Calif., native, when he moved to California to attend graduate school.

Married in 1983, the couple stayed in California for many years working in the psychology field: Ms. Namie worked as a therapist for chemically dependent people, and her husband was a business consultant.

A job transfer to a new mental health clinic in 1995 put Ms. Namie face to face with the issue that still stirs her passion today.

Though one of her new colleagues welcomed her to the job with a hug — “beware of the hug,” Ms. Namie warns — the claws soon came out, and the female colleague began a campaign of bullying against Ms. Namie that she said went on for several years.

It included verbal insults, sarcastic remarks, put-downs during staff meetings and “just constant digs,” criticizing everything from her clothing to her personality, Ms. Namie remembered.

“She had me running from place to place to avoid her,” said Ms. Namie, who was also ostracized by co-workers who didn’t want to get involved in the issue.

Ms. Namie said she received glowing evaluations, but was eventually placed on administrative leave for “insubordination,” then lost her job.

Employers — whether private companies, universities or small businesses — have been reluctant to take action against bullies, citing litigation concerns and workplace policies that don’t address such abuse. Most often, employees are expected to sort out personality conflicts among themselves, and it can sometimes be difficult to distinguish between ordinary disputes and bullying.

It’s a pattern of repeated mistreatment, insults, verbal abuse and even sometimes sabotage and threats, that defines workplace bullying today, Mr. Namie said.

The push for legislation to curb it has gained traction in recent years, with 20 states introducing measures to outlaw bullying, though no laws have yet been passed.

Most states have laws on the books addressing physical, emotional and cyber bullying, but they pertain mostly to education law, governing primary and high school students.

In New Jersey, legislators and prosecutors recently found themselves grappling with how to charge two Rutgers University students who were accused of surreptitiously filming an intimate encounter between fellow student Tyler Clementi and another man.

Mr. Clementi, 18, committed suicide after the students posted the video on the Internet.

His roommate, Dharun Ravi, was indicted Wednesday on a hate crime charge. If convicted of the most serious bias charge on the 15-count indictment, Mr. Ravi could face five to 10 years in prison.

Other countries have begun crafting laws aimed at criminalizing workplace bullying. In Australia, new legislation would make it a crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

The new legislation was prompted in part by the 2006 suicide of a 19-year-old waitress who was tormented by her co-workers.

At issue is how exactly to define workplace bullying, and recognizing the ways it differs from harassment or civil rights infringements, which are already outlawed in the U.S. if they involve discrimination based on race, sex, color, religion or national origin.

That’s why the Namies developed the Healthy Workplace Bill, a model designed to steer legislation by addressing the concerns of employers as well as employees with high standards of proof and independent medical evaluations.

They recruit volunteers, such as Mr. Shannon and others who have been targeted by bullies, to give testimony in front of legislative committees.
“I think that once one state passes legislation … it will be a domino effect,” said lawyer Jason Habinsky, who co-authored a Jan. 21 article about the legal issues surrounding workplace abuse in the New York Law Journal.

The Namies, who eventually relocated to Bellingham, Wash., have written several books about bullying. Their latest, “The Bully Free Workplace,” will be released May 23.

The couple have been featured in more than 900 print and broadcast media outlets and Mr. Namie has served as an expert witness in lawsuits, including during a 2005 jury trial in Indiana in which the plaintiff won a $325,000 verdict for emotional distress against his former employer.
Mr. Namie said he’s proud to stand up for people targeted by bullies, but it isn’t always an easy job.

“It’s tough to be mired in the misery of others,” he said. “Nobody calls us with good news. It’s like running a domestic violence hotline, except it’s in the workplace.”

Janice Crompton: jcrompton@post-gazette.com or 724-223-0156.

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11111/1140772-55-0.stm?cmpid=localstate.xml#ixzz1KBUGl0BC

She threw scissors across the room and barked at Cheryl to pick them up. She framed the young nurse for an egregious medical error involving a patient in their maternity ward. For an entire year – Cheryl’s first out of school – she verbally abused her in front of patients, who themselves feared this woman’s wrath.

“I actually had no confidence left, I thought I would have to try another job. On my last day of work, I didn’t even think I could take a blood pressure. [She] questioned everything I did.”

This senior nurse was Cheryl’s workplace bully and a recurring nightmare for the Calgarian, who did not want her last name used for fear of reprisal. While that was 36 years ago, the experience is seared in her mind as a reminder to refuse to be pushed around. But even recently, a colleague yelled at Cheryl in the hallway after she disagreed with how she was handling an issue.

“I said, ‘I don’t receive this. We have to agree to disagree. This is how I see it, this is how you see it.’ She ended the conversation, but she’s left me alone.”

Workplaces fraught with uncertainty are giving rise to office bullying. The antagonistic behaviour is becoming more commonplace, experts say, as the recession puts employees in survival mode – and contrary to macho stereotypes, some of the biggest workplace bullies are women.

A 2007 survey conducted by the Workplace Bullying Institute, an U.S. advocacy group, and polling company Zogby, found that female bullies target other women 71 per cent of the time.

Women make up 40 per cent of workplace bullies and 57 per cent of targets.

Just like Meryl Streep’s horrendous character in The Devil Wears Prada , the bullying woman often holds the power or at least some of it.

“Women are targeted because they’re easier targets [for female bullies],” says Erica Pinsky, a Vancouver consultant who works with organizations to form anti-bullying and harassment policies. “And they’re easier targets because they won’t stand up for themselves. You know ‘pick on someone your own size?’ It’s pick on someone your own sex.”

It’s mostly mid-level female managers or employees baring their fangs, says Nan Mooney, journalist and author of I Can’t Believe She Did That: Why Women Betray Other Women at Work .

“We can feel there’s a possibility we could lose our jobs if we cut another woman slack. We can also feel threatened by an ambitious, intelligent woman coming up from beneath us and want to knock her down and keep her in her place.”

That threat is fuelled by insecurity, which women tend to feel more than men do, Ms. Mooney adds. And with good reason – their jobs are often less secure.

“Women tend to be paid less, there are glass ceilings that are slightly porous, but still exist. … Women are dealing with issues of taking care of families, maternity leaves. Trying to balance all these things creates a great deal of tension,” she says.

But if gals are all facing the same career challenges, why lash out at another woman?

“I wish we could think more of that sensibility that we are in this together and it doesn’t necessarily help you to hurt other women,” Ms. Mooney says. “But a lot of times we’re in a position where we can take it out on other women, and we can’t take it out on our male boss or even a male underling who may become our boss.”

Women are more trusting and likely to share personal information at work, offering ammunition for a potential bully, she says.
Women have been socialized to play nice and many dodge conflict, Ms. Pinsky says.

“I hear from women, ‘I hate confrontation, I hate confrontation.’ The idea is any time you give people feedback, it’s confrontation and we need to change that,” she says. The change can come by developing a culture where the bullied victim can go multiple places for help – not just to the boss, who may be the bully.

But female bullies can be subtle and craftier than their male counterparts, says Marilyn Noble, who researches workplace bullying at the University of New Brunswick.

“Women tend to use relational aggression. It’s verbal, psychological, emotional bullying. People don’t recognize it – it’s covert, it’s harder to pin down and to prove,” she says.

There’s also a lot of reputation smearing, and female bullies often manipulate others into joining them, says Diane Rodgers, co-ordinator for the Bully Within, a B.C. group of professionals who have organized to fight workplace bullying. The consequences can be dire.

One woman Ms. Rodgers knows was hounded by a female colleague who would phone her up and berate her for not tying up loose ends before taking a sick leave for cancer treatments. Some female bullies pretend to be a woman’s friend only to spread lies that turn others against her. Some are driven out of their jobs and battle post-traumatic stress disorder.

To Cheryl, there’s just one catalyst for workplace shove-arounds.

“Stress. I think people are stressed. I think involved in it is all of our personality traits. Sometimes it’s an ego thing, like ‘I think I’m right,’” she says. But she also sees it getting better. Nurses like herself are vowing to guard young colleagues from the abuse with which she was initiated into the profession.

“I determined it would never happen. Nursing used to have a saying, ‘They eat their young,’” she says. “I say help them be the best they can be.”

After a year and a half of working at a Florida-based library, Maury Middlebrooks found herself to be a victim of workplace bullying. “It’s really embarrassing,” Middlebrooks said. “People think that it’s just a thing about [people not liking you], and you’re being such a baby because you just can’t take them not liking you.”

Maury Middlebrooks’ experience is unfortunately one all too common in the workforce today.

Research conducted by the Workplace Bullying Institute has found that 35 percent of U.S. workers report being bullied at work, and an additional 15 percent have witnessed it. Further, 68 percent of bullying is same-gender harassment; 58 percent of bullying targets are women; and 80 percent of the time, female bullies target other women, as in Middlebrooks’ case.

According to Middlebrooks, when she started working at the library, some female coworkers gave her the cold shoulder and began to make rude remarks about her.

Her coworkers would allegedly talk over her and ignore her requests for help at work. Conversation would cease whenever she walked into a room, Middlebrooks said. She also alleges that phone messages were never given to her.

“When I would need a book out of a particular section for a patron, I would come in and ask if anyone knew where that book was, or if [a] particular person knew where the book was, and they would just ignore me as if I wasn’t even talking,” she said.

The behavior, Middlebrooks said, began to make her feel uncomfortable about asking for assistance at work. Although she enjoyed her job, the behavior began to affect her work.

“I was really happy to work there because I love books,” she said.

Middlebrooks spoke with multiple supervisors, and an internal investigation was conducted in her department, but her claim of bullying was dismissed in late March. She has since quit her job.

Gary Namie, director of the Workplace Bullying Institute, has been working with those subjected to workplace bullying since 1997 after his wife, Ruth, was bullied by a coworker. In her case, the aggressor was also a woman.

“When you hear the infinite variety of cruelty that women foist on other women — it’s unbelievable,” he said. “It never lets up. Women are very clear that the main tormentors are women.”
Namie said in his experience, women tend to be open with jealousy and envy. He also said they are hypersensitive and hypercritical, focusing on tiny details. Those details are then used as a basis to “tear into each other.”

“I think it comes from the way girls are socialized compared to boys,” he said. “There’s a gender difference there.”

Namie said he finds the emphasis on woman-on-woman bullying is larger than male-on-male. “We have a tacit approval of an automatic acceptance of male-on-male aggression at work,” he said.

But it may not only be about gender. Namie also credits the American style of management.

“The style in the C-suite that enables bullying is laissez-faire,” he said, meaning executives tend to take a hands-off approach to addressing bullying. This indifference to bullying lets it thrive.

“It’s either positively rewarded in the militaristic, command-and-control model — people revered for their aggression — or it’s treated with indifference, and therefore that’s tacit approval and it’s allowed to continue,” Namie said. “In either case, bullying is done with impunity because it’s so rarely stopped. Rarely does management intervene and actually say this is destructive for people, employee health and the organization.”

According to Namie, bullying affects business in the form of turnover and absenteeism. It can generate lawsuits, as well as workers’ compensation and disability costs, he said.

“They all get away with it,” he said. “Bullies bully with impunity. They almost always get rewarded. That’s what’s sad.”

Middlebrooks turned to the Workplace Bullying Institute a few months ago for help and now has volunteered to get the Healthy Workplace Bill passed in Florida. The bill is spearheaded by Namie.

Middlebrooks also wants to help others by giving them knowledge or getting them involved. “It would make me feel like it wasn’t all for nothing,” she said.

Natalie Morera is associate editor at Diversity Executive magazine. She can be reached at nmorera@diversity-executive.com.

On March 24, in the wee hours of the morning, eight women from the grass roots organization Texas Healthy Workplace Advocates gathered on the north steps of the state capitol in Austin waiting for the doors to open.

The women arrived armed and ready to meet with lawmakers in several political districts across the state of Texas. The women had traveled from Alvarado, Corsicana, Dallas, Fort Worth, Graham, and Houston to speak to lawmakers about the prevalence and the devastating consequences of workplace bullying. The group was there to shop a bill for the next legislative session the Healthy Workplace Bill; we need this bill in Texas. The group presented accounts of their bullying experiences to lawmakers.

There has been an increase in the number of complaints of workplace bullying in Abilene, El Paso, Houston, and in Dallas and Tarrant Counties. People in Texas are suffering because of abusive work environments. Until there are laws we will continue to be plagued with this problem.

One member in the group stated, “I don’t want to die! But I can no longer afford to live because of workplace bullying.” The stories shared with representatives were powerful, touching, and captured the essence of the problem. We just went in and did what needed to be done; we told the truth about what has happened to us and other members of the group. Please do not be fooled by the appearance and the size of the group, there are a number of men in the group that are targets of workplace bullying and there are a number of members throughout the state of Texas.

Overall there is disbelief that this is happening in Texas, shock about the number of targets in Texas, and this behavior is not within the legal statutes. In one of the representative’s office, they couldn’t believe that workplace bullying is happening in Abilene. “It is a Christian community” is the belief there — I explained to the aide there is nothing Christian about workplace bullying. I felt sorry for the guy. He said he had grown up in Abilene and he couldn’t believe that a “Christian community” such as Abilene would allow this to happen; he was devastated.

I presented a profile of the Texas cities by ZIP code that have the highest concentrations of targets; the list showed only 171 targets in the cities of Abilene, Austin, Conroe, Corpus Christi, Dallas, El Paso, Fort Worth, Garland, Houston, Irving, Killeen, Midland, Round Rock, San Antonio, Temple and Waco.

Texas lawmakers have been slow to focus on workplace bullying and the devastation it is causing, however, I believe a small victory was won last October when Mayor John Cook and the city council in El Paso took an initiative to recognize bullying as an adult issue by issuing a proclamation declaring the third week of October “Freedom from Bullies week” in El Paso. This is the first official elected to an office to show interest in the well-being of the people he serves.

Workplace bullying is defined as repeated, health-harming mistreatment of one or more people by one or more perpetrators that takes one or more of the following forms: verbal abuse, offensive conduct/behaviors which are threatening, humiliating, or intimidating and work interference sabotage.

Additionally, workplace bullying is violence — it is emotional and psychological destruction of an individual for the satisfaction of another.
This issue needs immediate attention. Not only does the behavior impact the targets, their families, and the organizations; society as a whole is impacted through social welfare programs that targets forced from the workplace must depend on for survival.

If bullying could be stopped and money once used to support targets on social welfare programs, Texas politicians would be able to balance the budget and have money left over for other things.

Esque Walker is the Texas Coordinator for Texas Healthy Workplace Advocates.

Nancy Sadie of Ambridge is not easily intimidated, but a bully tested her limits in her last job.

A co-worker at the former Bellevue Suburban General Hospital where Sadie was a staff nurse from 2000 to 2003 frequently became confrontational, she said.

“She was really rude. She would bark at you,” said Sadie, 58, who recalled that when she returned to work after an excused two-hour absence for a friend’s funeral, the bully “went ballistic and chewed me out really good.”

There is no law — state or federal — against such conduct, legal experts say, giving victims little recourse other than to leave the job.

“I went to the (human resources) department and was totally ignored,” Sadie said. She got no further with her inquiry at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Sadie now teaches coding and billing to nurses Downtown.

The former Bellevue Suburban is now a campus of Allegheny General Hospital, part of the West Penn Allegheny Health System. Spokeswoman Stephanie Waite would not comment, citing employee confidentiality.

About 35 percent of workers believe they have been bullied in their places of employment, according to a Zogby International poll of 4,210 Americans last year. The institute defines bullying as “repeated verbal abuse, threatening conduct, intimidation or humiliation” by a boss or co-worker.

The survey, commissioned by the Workplace Bullying Institute in Bellingham, Wash., found 62 percent of bullies were men and 58 percent of targets were women. The poll did not offer data by state or metro market.

“It’s unfortunate and unfair, but under the law, the (bullying) has to be because of race, sex, religion, disability, national origin or age” to violate law, said David Spear, a labor and employment lawyer at Goldman Schafer & Spear, Downtown.

Yet the issue is drawing attention, if not legal protection, experts say.

“The more enlightened management teams develop policies and training, so they don’t engage in that type of behavior or tolerate it,” said David Baker, CEO of HC Advisors LLC, a human resources consulting firm in Sewickley. “Others are back in the 1960s.”

HC Advisors sometimes includes bullying or “hostile work environment” material in its training sessions at companies nationwide, Baker said. He could not provide client names.

In 2003, California became the first state to consider legislation to end workplace bullying, though legislators didn’t pass a law. Since then, 19 other states introduced similar legislation, according to the institute, but none passed laws. Pennsylvania is not among the states.

West Virginia lawmakers looked at curbing bullying with a “Healthy and Safe Workplace Act.” The bill, referred to committee, never made it to the House floor for a vote and died when the legislature adjourned for the year on March 12.

“We don’t need lawsuits. We just need employers to pay attention,” said Gary Namie, director of the Workplace Bullying Institute. The organization seeks to publicize such bullying and ways to eradicate it.

Bank of New York Mellon Corp. views vigilance against workplace bullying as a matter of “basic human dignity” and “employee retention,” said Carl Melella, head of employee relations.

“Through our code of conduct, we outline a work environment that is free from discrimination, harassment, intimidation or bullying of any kind, as those types of behavior are inconsistent with our values,” Melella said.

Michael Mullin, H.J. Heinz spokesman, said his company “has a comprehensive policy that does not tolerate harassing conduct that interferes with an individual’s work performance, or that creates an intimidating, hostile or offensive working environment.”

U.S. Steel, said spokeswoman Erin DiPietro, “prohibits discriminatory or harassing conduct by our employees and any non-employees working under the control of our company. Specific company policies, rules and procedures clearly outline the consequences for engaging in such behavior and provide detailed instructions for how employees can report potential violations.”

Namie, a native of Washington, Pa., founded the institute in 1997, after his wife was the victim of a bully at the California psychiatric clinic where she worked.

“They were both professional women, and we didn’t know what to make of that,” Namie said. “Current laws don’t give you a solution to that.”

“We get inquiries about (bullying),” said Colleen Ramage Johnston, a labor and employment attorney at Rothman Gordon, Downtown.

“If an employer doesn’t think the bullying will lead to litigation, they might just interpret it as a personality conflict and do nothing,” she said. “Because the employer is not liable under the law for having a bully in the workplace, the victim has to see if they can take legal action against the bully. But that’s often not successful.”

By Max Wittstein

LITCHFIELD—In a town where some red-haired students were recently kicked in an incident inspired by an episode of the animated show “South Park,” and in a larger region that includes a school district that lost administrators because of purported bullying and harassment, a discussion held Monday had plenty of context.

The panel discussion with one parent and two professors from Central Connecticut State University was scheduled at Litchfield High School to discuss the growing phenomenon of bullying. (Neither the recent bullying in Litchfield, nor the experience at Housatonic Valley Regional High School in Falls Village led directly to Monday’s session.)

Council’s Initiative

The event was set up by Betsy Fabbri and Lori Shuhi, president and vice president of the Student Teachers Parents Council, as part of the STPC’s programs to bring students and teachers together. Close to 30 parents and residents attended.

Dr. Katherine Hermes, a professor of history at CCSU, also spoke at the event. Dr. Hermes pointed out that she was not an expert on the phenomenon of bullying, but had joined the nationwide advocacy on the issue after the suicide of her friend, Marlene Braun.

Ms. Braun, an Army veteran and 13-year employee of the federal Bureau of Land Management, had been bullied by her boss over a difference of opinion in the maintenance of a national landmark of which she as in charge. She took her own life on Aug. 20, 2005.

The story of Ms. Braun’s death made headlines in the Los Angeles Times. Ms. Hermes has since been an advocate against workplace bullying, and has petitioned the Connecticut legislature to examine the phenomenon in its state agencies, including the Connecticut State University system, where she works.

“After 18 months of systematic bullying, this person, who had been a U.S. Army veteran, put a bullet in her brain,” she said. “Many, many people who don’t actually do it, think about it and have tremendous mental and physical health consequences.”

Dr. Hermes said that by the time her friend took her life, she had lost 30 pounds and was suffering from sleep problems.

“People would say to her, ‘Your boss is a jerk,” but we’re not talking about jerks,” she said. “We’re talking about intimidation of someone, such as telling them like a child that they’re not needed at a meeting and should sit in a hall; physical intimidation that is not quite hitting, such as backing them up against a wall. All those things are bullying.

”

Despite the timeliness of the event, given a recent bizarre incident at the town’s middle school called “Kick a Ginger Day,” Litchfield Superintendent Deborah Wheeler said the event had already been scheduled.

“Kick a Ginger Day” was based on an episode of the popular cartoon “South Park,” in which redheaded kids were singled out for abuse. In Litchfield, it was emulated by a group of seventh graders, prompting the parent of one of the students victimized to criticize the response by school officials.

Karen Ritzenhoff, a professor of Media Studies at Central Connecticut State University with three children in the school system, also spoke at the event Monday, and said that it was important for parents to not be in denial about the issue.

“If you think this is a community where you can say, ‘My child would never do anything like that,’ you may be taken by surprise,” said Ms. Ritzenhoff.

“The one point to take from this is whether you’re talking about bullying, harassment or sexual crimes, you need to know that these things have been around for a long time,” commented one audience member who said he had two children aged 16 and 21. “The difference is technology, the difference is no longer who your kids are hanging out with but the ability to communicate, and you’re not worrying about who your children are hanging out with in town or on the street; it’s a global issue.

“Don’t think because they’re in your house, on your computer, in the school or on the school computers, that they’re safe,” he added. “There’s no substitute for monitoring what’s going on, and making that effort to be on top of it and understand what can be done is important.”

Another audience member, who said he “had no idea how to turn on a computer,” said that it was important for parents and educators to know how to approach kids and ask questions about cyber-bullying; that idle curiosity brings more information than demands.

“When you get mad at your kids and criticize them, you’re getting nowhere,” he said. “Sometimes, if you just ask an innocent question—maybe not of your kids, but of someone else’s—you’ll get an answer about what’s going on.”

Dr. Wheeler stated after the event’s conclusion that the discussion could not have been timelier.

“I am very appreciative of the [Student Teachers Parents Council] elevating this to the level of bringing parents and educators together,” she said. “It’s a topic that we live with every day and there are so many nuances to it; it’s difficult to understand, let alone traverse it, so we appreciate this opportunity to engage in dialogue with parents and the community.”

Published: Thursday, March 31, 2011

A good article citing WBI’s 2010 U.S. Workplace Bullying Survey and the Healthy Workplace Campaign pushing for enactment of the anti-bullying Healthy Workplace Bill. Read the story.

A secretary at a major Chicago-area hospital endured yelling and name-calling. Then came the phone threat. Here’s how the author of ‘The Bully at Work‘ says to handle it.

By the time she called me, she had run out of options.

A secretary at a large Chicago-area hospital, she’d endured years of harsh treatment at the hands of a clique of nurses that basically ran her floor. The nurses referred to another secretary, a very large woman, as “fatty” and “fat-[butt].” They yelled at the secretary herself and scolded her when she stood up to them: “Watch your tone with me.”

But the final straw was a message she received on her home answering machine at 12:30 a.m.

“Be nice to the nurses, [witch]” a man’s voice said.
The secretary called the police, who helped her trace the call. But beyond that, they said, there wasn’t much they could do.

She had already complained to her union and her manager, who often went along with the bullying. Her attempts to simply transfer off the floor—about 50, she says, since 2007—have been similarly unsuccessful.

“What else are you supposed to do?” she asked.

I had no idea, so I called up Gary Namie, co-author of “The Bully at Work: What You Can Do to Stop the Hurt and Reclaim Your Dignity on the Job.”

“When bullying is this severe and this repeated and it involves stalking, [it's] abuse,” he said. “They are treating her like a battered spouse they can kick around. This is domestic violence where the abuser is on the payroll.”

Namie says it’s important that the secretary knows that she didn’t cause the bullying and she’s not alone in experiencing it. According to a survey conducted by Zogby International for the Workplace Bullying Institute, 35 percent of American workers have been bullied, or about 54 million Americans.

In this case, he says, the responsibility for fixing the problem lies with management.

“I guarantee you she’s not the only one [being bullied] and she’s not going to be the last one. It’s on every floor and it’s part of the culture of that place … they are a toxic workplace.”

Unfortunately, in these cases low-level supervisors are often cowed or co-opted by bullies and offer little help.

“[The secretary] has to go high up the ladder” to upper management, he says.

“She has to ask for safety, but she also has to say, matter-of-factly, ‘This is your leadership role. You’re in leadership to make this a safe work environment so we can protect the lives of patients. We’re here to cure, heal and rehabilitate and, by golly, this interferes with the mission.’ “

The executive may respond that the secretary isn’t a health care provider, but Namie strongly disagrees.

“The [heck] she’s not,” he says. “Families interact with her, people interact with her, staff relies on her, and when she’s disrupted, the department’s disrupted.”

Namie also advises the secretary to take good care of herself during a trying time.

“Trust me, [the bullies] are hurting her,” he says. “If she hasn’t gone to a physician, she’d better go to a doctor right away. She’s probably got blood pressure issues—gastrointestinal issues, a whole host of stress-related physical conditions.”

It’s not just the severity of the workplace hostility that takes a toll, Namie says. Frequency matters, too.

“It’s the constant, unremitting exposure that causes stress, and the harm comes from the inescapability.”

Office Hours appears weekly in TribU. If you have a work-related question — and remember, no question is too serious or too silly — send a note to Nara Schoenberg at nschoenberg@tribune.com.

Proponents say workplace bullying is widespread and procedures for dealing with it are ineffective. They back a model called the ‘Healthy Workplace Bill.’

Reporting from Annapolis, Md.

Kathie Gant knew the relationship with her new boss was bad, but she didn’t know how bad until the woman, a Maryland attorney, hurled a bundle of pencils at Gant, her administrative assistant. “You just don’t sharpen my pencils for me!” the boss raged, punctuating each word with exaggerated enunciation and the zing of a pencil across the office toward Gant.

Months later, Gant was in a storage closet in the courthouse where she worked when the lights were shut off. “I turned toward the door and she was standing there,” Gant said of the supervisor. “I tried to say ‘Hey, I’m in here!’ ” Her boss stared back, shut the door, and locked it from the outside, trapping Gant in the pitch-black space.

After months of taunts and needling by her boss, Gant said she ended up on a psychiatrist’s couch and nearly in a psych ward.

With a quavering voice and tearful demeanor, Gant testified about her job situation during a legislative hearing this month at the state Capitol as Maryland became one of the latest states to consider legislation against workplace bullying. She recounted some details later in an interview.

Progress has been slow since California in 2003 became the first state to introduce a “Healthy Workplace Bill,” which would give employees legal protection against those they say torment them at work (The measure died in committee). Since then, 19 other states have proposed similar legislation, though none has passed it into law.

David C. Yamada, a law professor at Suffolk University Law School in Boston and the author of the Healthy Workplace Bill, said laws protect workers from abuse only on the basis of such things as race or religion. Employees who do not fall into a protected category have no legal means of fighting bullying.

Opponents of legislation say employees already are protected by anti-discrimination laws and workplace rules against abusive behavior. They also say that human resources departments exist to help employees deal with workplace problems.

If all else fails, bullied workers can bypass their bosses and seek help from higher-ranking supervisors, said Champe McCulloch, president of the Maryland Assn. of General Contractors and a former human resources director at Verizon.

”There’s always an internal appeals process,” said McCulloch, one of three lobbyists to speak against the bill on March 3 when it was introduced to the state Senate’s finance committee. “At some point, the employee has to screw his or her courage to the sticking post and keep escalating the complaint up the management chain. I assure you … at the senior management ranks, somebody is going to take action.”

But proponents say that alleged bullying that may have led to highly publicized suicides last year — including that of a 52-year-old magazine editor who accused his boss of abusive behavior, and a 15-year-old schoolgirl who was taunted by classmates — have focused attention on the problem and galvanized efforts to pass legislation. So, too, has workers’ frustration over several states’ efforts to follow Wisconsin in curtailing the power of unions representing public employees.

While the suicide of Phoebe Prince, the Massachusetts girl, shed light on school bullying, Gary Namie of the Workplace Bullying Institute in Bellingham, Wash., said it underscored the need for legislation at all levels.

”

If it is not stopped at childhood, it clearly progresses into adulthood,” Namie said, citing a 2010 study by the bullying institute and the Zogby International polling company that indicated 35% of adults in the United States had been bullied at work. An additional 15% said they had witnessed workplace bullying. According to the survey, most bullies are men and most victims are women, but both sexes report being bullied by male and female bosses, and women are more likely to seek help from human resources.

“This year it’s an especially uphill struggle,” Namie said of workplace bullying legislation, citing “attacks on workers in general” in Wisconsin and other states proposing new limits on labor unions.

But Namie said he believes New York, where the state Senate passed a bill last year, is likely to get it signed into law in 2011.

“If New York becomes the first to pass it, that’s a bellwether state, so others would follow,” said Namie, a social psychologist who founded the institute 14 years ago with his wife, Ruth, after she experienced on-the-job bullying.

The Healthy Workplace Bill, used to guide individual states’ proposed legislation, forbids a health-harming “abusive work environment” and requires medical documentation to prove worker claims of bullying.

Proponents of anti-bullying bills say this is among the measures that would prevent a flood of lawsuits by disgruntled employees.

Yamada, the Healthy Workplace Bill author, said workers face the challenge of trying to prove bullying, which generally falls short of physical assault and is Machiavellian and difficult to identify. “I liken our understanding of workplace bullying to where we were with sexual harassment three decades ago,” Yamada said. “A lot of people have had to deal with this for years but didn’t know what to call it.”

Bill backers say internal appeals processes often fall short, citing the case of Kevin Morrissey, who was managing editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review magazine. Morrissey shot himself to death last June after relatives and friends said his — and others’ — repeated complaints about a bullying boss were ignored. The University of Virginia, which publishes the magazine, said it had handled the complaints properly and that the manager could not be blamed for Morrissey’s death.

The recession has made it easier for bullies to carry on because jobs are scarce and employees are reluctant to quit or to speak up and be seen as troublemakers, bill proponents say.

Gant, who worked in a county courthouse, said that after a few months a new boss openly called her “stupid,” humiliated her at meetings, and sent out office e-mails that belittled her work.

Gant is still at a loss to explain the behavior. Because much of the abuse was unseen by others — the pencil-throwing, the locking of the closet, the snide comments — it was difficult to make others realize how bad it was, she said.

“She was an attorney. I never felt she’d go that far,” said Gant, who was haunted by the experience long after the woman’s departure. One day, the woman returned to the office for a brief visit. Gant hid in an office until she was gone.

Gant remained on the job a few more months but has since taken another job that she enjoys. She said she also went back to school to study for a doctorate and bolster her self-confidence, “so if I ever see her again, I’ll be ready.”

###

tina.susman@latimes.com

Texas State Coordinator, Esque Walker, and WBI colleague Suzy Fox are interviewed for this local newspaper story from Abilene, Texas.

Though she can’t release names, Esque Walker said she’s heard enough complaints to think Abilene has its share of workplace bullying.

“The way we define it is repeated health harming and abusive conduct in the work environment,” said Walker, coordinator for Texas Healthy Workplace Advocates, a group overseen by the Washington-state based Workplace Bullying Institute.

Walker said her advocacy group, which became active in 2006, began receiving a steady stream of complaints from the Abilene area since getting one about six months ago.

“Between that time and this time, I have picked up about 14 more individuals,” Walker said, including five workers all with the same company.
“There is an increase in workplace bullying going on in that area,” Walker said. Four of the people complaining are men over the age of 55; the others are women between 48 and 62 years old, she said.
“One individual that I spoke to is a person that’s capable and willing to work. They were forced out of a job,” Walker said.

Her group is pushing for legislation that would give workers the legal right to sue a workplace bully, though the group stresses that any law would establish a high standard for misconduct.

For now, Walker said people making complaints are introduced to local lawmakers in hopes of finding a sponsor for the bill in Texas.

Bullying has become a hot topic in schools, and now groups are using the term workplace bullying to describe a hostile work environment.

“We use the term in order to connect to the growing body of research and media attention to school bullying,” said Suzy Fox, an associate professor and chairwoman of the Institute of Human Resources and Employment Relations at Loyola University Chicago.

“There are a lot of differences, but the behaviors are very similar,” she added.

Kathleen Shea, a licensed clinical psychologist in Chicago, said, “I think there is a great deal of passive-aggressive behavior going on in the American workplace that some people often call politics.”

Fox said many people can practice behavior like cutting off someone else’s speech or glaring at a co-worker.

“To be bullying, it has to be a pattern or repeated, or what I call pervasive,” Fox said.

Based on academic research, the consequences of being bullied can be serious, Fox said.
“The associations are with physical symptoms: headaches, migraines, upset stomach, up through more serious ailments,” Fox said. “Some people are finding evidence of post-traumatic stress.”

Shea said she recommends workers confront passive-aggressive behavior, but Fox said workers sometimes get burned if they approach a bully or even other management.

“Any individual solution is going to be dangerous. I have gotten many accounts of people, they went to HR and they were demoted, or they were fined or transferred,” Fox said.

As far as how common such behavior is, it’s difficult to know for sure, Fox said.

“In terms of pervasive bullying, it really depends on the industry. In my corporate study, I’m finding about 47 percent report being bullied pervasively,” Fox said, with an even larger percentage of public school teachers reporting bullying.

Bullying is domestic violence in the workplace, except that the aggressor is on the payroll, according to Gary Namie, who spoke on the issue of workplace bullying to a group of 35 faculty and non-classified employees at Oregon State University on Tuesday. He delivered a public talk on the issue Tuesday evening.

Namie, who has a Ph.D. in social psychology and previously worked in university settings, said bullying has nothing to do with work at hand but is an institutional problem that rewards narcissistic aggressors and undermines the targets of bullying.

Namie said he and his wife, Ruth, who has a Ph.D. in clinical psychology, got into the field of workplace bullying after his wife was a victim of such bullying in the mid-1990s. They’ve since started consulting business and educational institutions through their Workplace Bullying Institute.

Namie defined bullying as a “mistreatment by one or more people of an employee” through a variety of means, from verbal abuse to threats, to intimidation, to work interference and sabotage.

A 2010 national survey conducted by the Workplace Bullying Institute found that half of respondents reported that they witnessed, experienced or currently are experiencing bullying in the workplace.

Studies have also found that 38 percent of bullies are female; 62 percent of bullies are male.

Unlike harassment and discrimination, there’s no anti-bullying legislation at the state or federal level in the U.S. Although bullying isn’t illegal, it still causes stress that can lead to psychological and even physical damage.

“The reason we care about bullying is because it’s a health harm,” Namie said.

Namie said academia can be a “bullying central” because many department heads and deans are not provided with managerial training. “Academic license” and the traditions of peer review, the tenure process and generational differences sometimes can lead to workplace bullying.

To resolve workplace bullying on an institutional level, Namie suggested that organizations should be proactive by working in groups to create enforceable anti-bullying policy as well as train “peer expert teams” to put a stop to bullying as more than a disagreement between co-workers.

Here’s a link to the original article.

Headlines from around the country have brought the issue of abusive work environments also known as workplace bullying to light. The widespread and generally unaddressed problem of workplace bullying is often not understood despite studies that show nearly 40 percent of Massachusetts residents report experiencing some type of workplace bullying at one point in their working careers.

Workplace bullying is defined as repeated health harming mistreatment at a work environment in the form of verbal abuse, offensive and threatening behavior, or work interference and sabotage.  It happens when a bully uses a position of control to harm a coworker or employee.  Dr. Gary Namie states that 72 percent of workplace bullying occurs against a subordinate and 68 percent of the time it involves people of the same gender.

Workplace bullying, abuse, and harassment are four times more prevalent than sexual harassment.  These incidents not only hurt the victim, but can also negatively impact the entire workplace by dividing groups of coworkers, reducing employee productivity and morale, causing higher turnover and absenteeism rates, and increasing medical and workers’ compensation claims.

During this difficult and uncertain economic climate, workplace bullying can be even more dangerous. High unemployment rates make it risky to leave jobs and victims of bullying are many times forced to stay in abusive situations. Single parent workers are particularly vulnerable targets who face significant financial risk if forced to leave a job on which they rely to pay bills. A 1998 study at University of North Carolina demonstrated that out of 775 targets of workplace aggression, 28 percent lost time at work avoiding the situation, 22 percent decreased their effort, and 12 percent changed jobs.

The cost of bullying at a workplace also takes a significant toll on the health of victims.  Consistent bullying has been shown to cause stress disorders, clinical depression, cardiovascular disease, and symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  Many times victims of workplace bullying can also have strained relationships with family and friends as a result of abusive work environments.  These victims deserve to have protections in place to ensure a healthy and safe work environment.

Massachusetts currently has laws on the books to protect against sexual harassment, racial discrimination, and hostile work environments, but to take legal action the victim must be a member of a protected class that includes gender, race, disability, ethnicity, and religion.

I have cosponsored legislation that aims to end widespread workplace bullying. The bill makes it unlawful to subject an employee to an abusive work environment and protects victims of workplace bullying who are not included under the current law. This bill also makes it unlawful to retaliate against an employee who opposes any unlawful employment practice. To be considered actionable, conduct there must be a nexus between the behavior and impairing the worker’s health. The legislation does not incur costs for the state and any legal action is limited to a private action.

Through the Healthy Workplace Campaign, 19 other states have proposed similar bullying legislation. There is a growing recognition of the toll this abusive behavior can have not only on individual workers, but also the entire office. In response to growing awareness of this problem, many employers have begun to change internal policies and goals to address workplace bullying. Both the legislature and business community have an opportunity to be leaders on this important issue and ensure healthy work environments across the state.

Pity the bully who picks on Gary Namie.

“I’m bully-proof,” he says.

That’s easy to say when you’re built like a bear, but it’s Namie’s nature, not his stature, that makes him immune from bullies. Pitch him any you-know-what, and he’ll pitch it right back.
“I’m a really nice guy,” he says, “until you cross me.”

If everyone were like Namie, workplace bullies would be starving for targets. But many people aren’t wired for conflict and are unable to rebuff a bully — usually their boss but sometimes a co-worker.

Insults, intimidation and isolation are just some of the tactics a bully employs. The toll on the target’s health — everything from clinical depression to high blood pressure to post-traumatic stress disorder — can be devastating.

The issue exploded into the headlines last year when the editor of a University of Virginia literary magazine killed himself after complaining of alleged bullying by his boss — an extreme response but a testament to bullying’s destructive potential.

Such devastation is why Namie and his wife, Ruth founded the Workplace Bullying Institute (WBI). Based in Bellingham, the institute is the hub of an anti-bullying enterprise that combines nonprofit advocacy and education with a money-making consulting and speaking practice.

“What I’m most proud of is the breadth and depth of what we do,” says Namie, who was a college teacher and corporate manager before bully busting became his life’s work.

WBI is a virtual institute with a website  full of news and data about workplace bullying, including tips on how to respond, advice on how to get help and forums to share experiences. The nonprofit institute also offers telephone coaching sessions that — for a fee — provide bullying targets with emotional support and personalized strategies for dealing with their plight.

Media coverage of workplace bullying frequently features the Namies, who’ve been cited and quoted by the likes of CNN, and USA Today and authored articles in peer-reviewed publications such as the International Journal of Communication.

The institute commissioned what it says was the first national survey of workplace bullying in 2007 and followed that with another survey in 2010. In both surveys, one out of three respondents said they’d been bullied at work.

While the institute anchors their efforts, the Namies have many oars in the water. Their network includes:

— Healthy Workplace Campaign, which leads their nationwide push for anti-bullying legislation

— Work Doctor, home base for their consulting and speaking business

— WBI University, which provides training in how to spot and stop bullying

— Bully Busters, an online store selling mugs, buttons and T-shirts as well as their book, “The Bully at Work.” Another book, “The Bully-Free Workplace,” is due out this spring.

The Namies aren’t the only people addressing workplace bullying in the U.S., but they’ve been doing it longer than just about anybody else and are unique in combining advocacy, consulting and research, said Sarah Tracy, an associate communications professor at Arizona State University who studies workplace bullying.

“Everybody knows Gary and Ruth,” she said.

Although Ruth is retired and no longer plays an active role in the WBI, her story is the ongoing inspiration for the organization’s mission. Flash back to 1995. The Namies were living in San Francisco. Gary, a social psychologist with a doctorate from the University of California, Santa Barbara, was teaching at local universities and consulting. Ruth, with a doctorate from the California School of Professional Psychology, was working for a health maintenance organization.

Both were blissfully ignorant of workplace bullying until Ruth found herself in the crosshairs of a female superior who berated her, spread rumors, disrupted her work and generally made her life miserable.

As the Namies searched for remedies, they were surprised to learn two things: Bullying is usually not illegal, and there was nowhere to turn for support and advice.

But they didn’t curse the dark. They lit a candle — the Campaign Against Workplace Bullying. Through a toll-free hotline, a website and seminars, their ad hoc crusade helped bring the largely unacknowledged issue to light, letting targets know they were not alone and were not to blame.

“We didn’t set out to create a (business),” Gary Namie says. “We set out to fill a need that wasn’t being met.”

Gary Namie compares the lack of recognition given to workplace bullying at the time of Ruth’s episode to the lack of recognition once given to domestic violence.

“This is domestic violence where the abuser is on the payroll,” he says.

The Namies moved to Bellingham in 2001 when Gary Namie landed a job teaching psychology at Western Washington University. That’s where the Campaign Against Workplace Bullying morphed into the Workplace Bullying Institute. Gary Namie, who retired from teaching in 2003, began pouring all of his energy into eliminating workplace bullying.

The WBI defines workplace bullying as repeated verbal abuse, offensive conduct and/or sabotage of the target’s work that harms the target’s mental/physical health.

“How do you distinguish a jerk or a tough manager from a bully? A tough boss is tough on everybody,” Gary Namie said. “A bully dumps all the misery on the few.”

The WBI provides lots of information about surviving being bullied, but none about how to confront bullies. Gary Namie believes that if targets were capable of confronting their tormenter, they already would have.

“The employer has to stop it,” Gary Namie says.

The problem is that employers often ignore or even tolerate bullying, he said.

Bullying sounds a lot like illegal harassment, but it’s usually not. Canada and some European countries have anti-bullying laws, but bullying typically is not against the law in the U.S. unless it involves harassment based on a person’s race, religion, sex or other legally protected status.

Namie and a volunteer network of state coordinators are working hard to change that through their grassroots Healthy Workplace Campaign. They have yet to pass a bill, but they’ve introduced bills in 20 states — including Washington (see sidebar) — and are convinced it’s only a matter of time until one state and then another and then another makes workplace bullying illegal.

The proposed laws put the onus on employers to prevent workplace bullying. While employers aren’t wild about anti-bullying laws, they’re starting to prepare for their “inevitable” passage, Namie says.

That’s a bullish development for people like Namie who help employers assess and eliminate bullying in their organizations. The phone at Work Doctor is ringing more than ever, he says. Ditto for WBI University, which will hold its first out-of-state session this spring in Chicago.

There’s good money to be made fighting workplace bullying. Tuition for WBI University, which provides three days of intense training in a class of five to 10 people, is $3,600. The price tag for five days of on-site consulting by Namie and his team averages $45,000. He says he gets one to two on-site consulting gigs, plus up to 10 speaking engagements, every month.

Critical of Competitors

Namie is openly critical of the credentials of many of his competitors — including one who called him a bully in a BusinessWeek magazine article after he questioned her abilities. He shrugs off the accusation.

“I’m not considered a bully (but) that’s OK. It doesn’t matter.” His point, he said, is that people should have “some background and experience” in the field before billing themselves as experts.

If Namie has a fault, it’s that he might be too passionate about his work, said Pam Lutgen-Sandvik, an associate communications professor at the University of New Mexico who interned at the WBI in 2003 and studies workplace bullying. She suspects some might find Namie’s devotion — and decibel level when he gets on a roll — disconcerting.

“He cares about it so much,” said Lutgen-Sandvik. “I’m sure that someone may look at him and think, ‘Wow! Why is he getting so excited?’ But that’s the way it is for people who have a life’s mission.”

As for being a bully, “I’ve never heard anybody talk about him like that or call him a bully,” she said.

The question facing the Namies is whether to continue growing — they’re up to four employees — or start licensing their trademarked system for assessing, correcting and preventing workplace bullying dubbed the Work Doctor Blueprint. Either way, they’re pleased what they’ve achieved so far.

“It was born in misery with Ruth’s plight,” Namie said, “but out of that has come the ability to help a lot of other people.”

Namie directs a national network of citizen lobbyists, which is working to pass into law the anti-bullying Healthy Workplace Bill. He taught the first U.S. university course on workplace bullying and was an expert witness in the nation’s first “bullying trial” in Indiana.

Namie and his wife, Dr. Ruth Namie, produce information on eight public websites devoted to education about bullying for citizens, lawmakers, unions and employers. Their work has been featured on “Today,” “Good Morning America,” CNN, NPR and in newspapers across the country.

To ease traffic congestion caused by construction in the area, visitors attending the event may park in the large parking lot east of Rutherford Boulevard and ride the Raider Xpress shuttle to the Business and Aerospace Building.

For more information, contact Dr. Jackie Gilbert in the Jones College of Business at 615-898-5418. You also may check out Gilbert’s blog on bullying.

West Virginia is one of eight states with a pending workplace anti-bullying bill, but its longtime backer says he doesn’t expect it to pass this year.

Further, Dr. Gary Namie, a workplace educator and consultant, said what he sees as anti-worker sentiment brewing means he’ll be working longer on having a bill passed anywhere.

Namie began his quest to establish anti-bullying laws in the mid-1990s, when his wife, Dr. Ruth Namie experienced workplace bullying, complete with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Namie said despite all the federal and state laws covering worker relations and anti-discrimination laws, there is nothing to prevent bullying in many instances outside the federally protected classes of race, sexual orientation, religion or handicap.

The Namies started a campaign that eventually became the Workplace Bullying Institute of Bellingham, Wash., wrote books, held seminars, and began working to have states consider a sample law written by David Yamada, a Suffolk University law professor. They provide counseling and consulting services for employers as the Work Doctor.

They launched grass-roots efforts were in many states, including Ohio, where locally, John Smurda of Steubenville serves as state coordinator for the Healthy Workplace Bill.

Namie said he anticipates West Virginia House Bill 3015 introduced in the Legislature will be stalled between sessions, though he is hopeful it will be a topic for further study by an interim study committee. “The first time our bill gets introduced into a legislature, it doesn’t go far,” Namie said. “It usually takes two or three introductions, then, usually on the third try, there is enough awareness. For a lot of folks it’s the first time people heard the phrase ‘workplace bullying.’”

Bullying is defined in the West Virginia House bill as an employment practice that subjects the employee to an abusive work environment that exists when a defendant, acting with malice, subjects an employee to conduct so severe that it causes tangible harm. The bill also proposes making retaliation against a worker who complains or assists in handling a complaint an unlawful employment practice.

The Namies define the issue further on the website for their consulting firm, the Work Doctor.
Bullying isn’t mere incivility or crabby behavior. It’s verbal abuse, offensive conduct or behavior that threatens, humiliates or intimidates, takes the form of outright interference or sabotage that prevents work from getting done, exploits a psychological or physical vulnerability or is some combination of all of the above.

“Society has said no to every other form of abuse now,” he said. “If this is how you manage, you shouldn’t be in business. You’re making up for a lack of skill by being a bully.”

He said it’s often legislators who have had personal experience themselves or through family or friends who become backers of state legislation.

Since 2003, 20 states have introduced anti-bullying legislation for the workplace, including it advancing out of the Senate in New York in 2010, but it was not called for a full hearing in the state assembly. The bill was advancing well in Utah in 2010, but was stopped because the state had to focus on a budget crisis.

Namie said, despite the bill being portrayed by business organizations as unnecessary, or as being anti-business, it’s been carefully drafted. The burden of the proof falls heavily on the worker, who must pay to bring a lawsuit privately. “That precludes the frivolous lawsuits because attorneys won’t take cases they don’t think they can win,” he said.

Further, Namie said, the movement isn’t about putting greater burden on the state. It doesn’t call for any current agency or the creation of a new agency for enforcement. Strictly put, the proposal allows lawsuits to be brought, at heavy potential cost to a probably already unemployed plaintiff who will have to prove mental or physical damage came strictly because of bullying in the workplace, and that it was done with malice.

“Long before the current labor crisis, states already were strapped,” he said. “This would be enforced by private action only, so you’d have to convince an attorney to take the case, pony up the money to pay for it and that’s a disincentive for lawsuits.”

Further, the bill allows employers who deal with bullying issues in a proactive form literally to hang the accused bully out to dry in a legal sense.

So, what is Namie aiming for? Getting employers to recognize and deal with the problem voluntarily.

“This isn’t rocket science. We’ve done it when laws pushed us before. We’re saying don’t wait on the law. Do it now. Bullying is killing your organization from within now, and it’s not so much just the bully as that you’ve backed the bully. It’s the culture of bullying,” he said.

When bullying becomes the routine in a workplace, the environment is toxic, wreaking havoc on quality work.

The Namies’ Work Doctor site, for their consulting services for employers, says it’s not just a conflict between equally powered individuals having a disagreement on intellectual ideas, either. It’s violence that cannot be mediated.

Namie said 72 percent of bullying is against a subordinate, according to research done for the institute in Zogby International polling. The polls find that more than 52 million Americans say they’ve been bullied. Most bullying, 68 percent, is done by the same gender.

The Namies have written books approaching dealing with workplace bullying from the worker’s standpoint. They’re releasing in May a new book aimed toward employers, “The Bully Free Workplace.”

Namie said while the work of the Workplace Bullying Institute (www.workplacebullying.org) continues, he doesn’t consider success as anything less than finally getting a bill passed and made into law.

However, he knows with the events regarding public employee bargaining and budget difficulties, legislators are unlikely to consider any extra legislative issues.

“They will consider this bill a potential luxury,” he said. “Quality of work life is something to have after you have the job and income and some benefits, and I partially agree, but I think this is part of the abuse of the worker.”

Namie said the new book calls the anti-worker sentiment “macro-bullying,” a societal erosion of worker’s rights. He said despite public perception, even among workers, the American worker isn’t guaranteed many rights.

“Workers think a hostile work environment is illegal for everybody, that anti-discrimination rules pertain to everybody in all situations. They don’t, and that’s why we need the bill,” he said.

He said while lawmakers will be working on budget problems, it’s hard to convince them that a bully-free workplace is a monetary issue that costs employers and sends ill workers into the costly healthcare system.

“Originally, we will find some who are receptive, but to pass such a law takes most of the lawmakers in the middle with the time and mental space and energy to consider a bill like this,” Namie said. “Right now, with everybody hunkered down, it becomes survival against quality of life.”

###

You can read the original article here.

The story: Phyllis was a special needs teacher for seven years in the Dallas area before she was forced out of work by workplace bullies.

“I felt like I was in a combat zone,” Phyllis said. “I knew the moment I walked on that property, they had already made plans to make my day a living, whatever you call it, that day.” Phyllis said she was the target of an concerted effort to get her kicked off the job because she tried to get one of her students moved up from a special needs class to a regular classroom. Phyllis said her superiors increased her class size, made her workload unbearable and even tried to force her to withdraw previous grievances she filed against the school. Her experience with workplace bullying isn’t an isolated one.

Ron, who is a federal employee, said he too has been the victim of workplace bullying. “They keep picking on you and picking on you and they issue you discipline. They keep adding on the discipline until they finally try to get you removed from the job,” Ron said. “It affects my sleep, my home life, and it puts a stress on the whole family”.

Both Ron and Phyllis have stories all too familiar to Esque Walker, a workplace bully expert, who was once a victim herself. “Workplace bullying is the repeated, health harming mistreatment of an individual in the workplace,” Walker said.Walker said it is a real problem and it takes a toll on its victims. “People lose their lives because of it every day. It’s associated with a high rate of depression and suicide. They want to destroy your psychological well-being,” Walker said.

Walker also added the victims of workplace bullying are usually popular, smart and outgoing. They are a threat to managers who feel inferior. Walker likened workplace bullying to domestic abuse and said laws need to be passed to protect people in the workforce from superiors who bully.

Walker is pushing lawmakers to pass a healthy workplace bill that would establish guidelines to prevent bullying in the workplace, but she has yet to find a sponsor for it.” Until you have laws that govern workplace bullying, the same as you have that governs domestic violence, you will never have harmony in the workplace,” Walker said.

Quotes from the article we appreciate most:

“with bullying becoming front-page news across the nation, it is just a matter of time before the law adapts”

and

“it seems inevitable that some form of the HWB will become law, whether in New York or elsewhere, and that once the first state adopts an anti-bullying statute others will shortly follow.”

Read the entire original article, including case law examples illustrating how bullying is NOT covered by existing laws! We’ve always told employers this is true, but employers describe themselves as victims. They want no regulations and no legal liability no matter how severely they mistreat workers. Our Healthy Workplace Bill threatens only abusive employers. Good employers have nothing to fear.

Here is an excerpted version of the article.

For years the law has been stacked against an employee claiming that he or she was abused or bullied by a co-worker. Generally, the law offers no protection to such a victim as long as the alleged bully can show that his or her actions were not motivated by the victim’s status as a member of a protected class. Currently, there are no federal, state or local laws providing a cause of action for an individual subject to a non-discriminatory abusive work environment. However, with bullying becoming front-page news across the nation, it is just a matter of time before the law adapts. Since 2003, 17 states have considered legislation designed to protect employees from workplace bullying. Indeed, this year New York came very close to a floor vote on a bill that would provide a cause of action to an employee subjected to an abusive work environment.

Proponents of anti-bullying legislation contend that it is necessary given the prevalence of abusive conduct in the workplace. The proposed New York legislation noted that “between sixteen and twenty-one percent of employees directly experience health endangering workplace bullying, abuse and harassment” and that “[s]uch behavior is four times more prevalent than sexual harassment.” …

Existing Legal Framework

Currently, employers have little to worry about with respect to facing substantial liability as a result of workplace bullying. The existing legal framework provides very limited recourse to an employee who is bullied at work. While some types of harassment are outlawed under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title VII’s reach is narrow. Title VII prohibits employment discrimination based on an individual’s race, sex, color, religion, or national origin.

It is well-settled that “Title VII does not prohibit all verbal or physical harassment in the workplace” but rather only discrimination because of race, sex, color, religion or national origin. …

Likewise, the extreme behavior that gives rise to the tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress does not encompass most workplace bullying. In order to prove a claim for the intentional infliction of emotional distress a plaintiff must prove that the defendant acted intentionally or recklessly, the defendant’s conduct was extreme and outrageous, and the conduct caused severe emotional distress. Restatement (Second) of Torts §46.

Courts have found that extreme or outrageous conduct is “‘so extreme in degree, as to go beyond all possible bounds of decency, and to be regarded as atrocious, and utterly intolerable in a civilized community’…but does not extend to ‘mere insults, indignities, threats, annoyances, petty oppressions, or other trivialities.’”  …

Legislation Campaign

Notably, the jury in the Raess case heard expert testimony on workplace bullying from Gary Namie, the co-founder of the Workplace Bullying Institute (WBI), a nonprofit organization dedicated to the eradication of workplace bullying. The WBI’s Legislative Campaign division focuses on enacting anti-bullying legislation state-by-state. The WBI recruits state coordinators to introduce the Healthy Workplace Bill (HWB), drafted by Suffolk University Professor of Law David Yamada, to their local lawmakers. Thus, the campaign to pass an anti-bullying statute begins in each state with the same HWB language, although local lawmakers regularly make changes to the HWB as it is introduced and works its way through the legislative process.

The HWB provides legal redress for employees who are subjected to an abusive work environment, by allowing employees to sue both their employer and the alleged bully for monetary damages. The WBI contends that the bill is employer friendly since it sets a high standard for misconduct, requires proof of harm by a licensed health professional in order for an individual to collect damages, and protects employers with internal correction and prevention mechanisms from liability.

In 2003, California became the first state to introduce some form of the HWB. Subsequently, anti-workplace bullying legislation has been introduced in sixteen other states. In 2010, the New York State Senate passed the bill. However, the New York Assembly Labor Committee stalled the passage of this ground breaking legislation when it voted to hold the bill, rather than vote on it.

The New York bill, A 5414B/S 1823-B, establishes a civil cause of action for employees who are subjected to an abusive work environment. The bill defines an abusive work environment as “a workplace in which an employee is subjected to abusive conduct that is so severe that it causes physical or psychological harm to such employee, and where such employee provides notice to the employer that such employee has been subjected to abusive conduct and such employer after receiving notice thereof, fails to eliminate the abusive conduct.”

Abusive conduct is defined as “conduct, with malice, taken against an employee by an employer or another employee in the workplace, that a reasonable person would find to be hostile, offensive and unrelated to the employer’s legitimate business interests.” The severity, nature and frequency of the conduct should be considered in determining liability. …
The bill provides employers with an affirmative defense when the employer “exercised reasonable care to prevent and promptly correct the abusive conduct which is the basis of such cause of action and the plaintiff unreasonably failed to take advantage of the appropriate preventive or corrective opportunities provided.”    …

Therefore, it appears that we may be on the cusp of a new era of legislation and legal precedent targeted at preventing and punishing workplace bullying. Indeed, it seems inevitable that some form of the HWB will become law, whether in New York or elsewhere, and that once the first state adopts an anti-bullying statute others will shortly follow. The Mendez case, discussed above, should serve as a cautionary tale to employers about the potential for huge damage awards should such legislation be passed. In the interim, employers are faced with significant uncertainty with respect to how to deal with workplace bullying. We suggest that employers become proactive and take immediate steps to prevent workplace bullying. This will ensure that employers are better prepared to defend against a cause of action for workplace bullying.  …

Jason Habinsky is counsel and Christine M. Fitzgerald is an associate at Hughes Hubbard & Reed, New York office.

###

Read the entire original article

Chris Bentley, alleged Board bully

Assistant Superintendent: Bentley is a bully
HUSD head of personnel makes accusation about school board president
by Beau Yarbrough, Hesperia (CA) Star Jan. 16, 2011.

UPDATES below – latest on Feb. 4

What we know at WBI

Back in 2008, stay-at-home father of four, Chris Bentley (BA, History, Cal State San Bernardino) ran for the local school board. He marketed himself as a parents’ advocate to sit on a Board that historically did not listen to parents. He was branded a “gadfly.” Evidently, he was an vociferous contributor to the Op-Ed page fashioning himself as an expert in education in the time preceding the election.

Have you noticed that everyone is an expert in education because they attended elementary school! Would the same hubris apply to piloting a jet plane because they had flown in one?

Bentley campaigned to move the district in a “positive direction.” There was a clique of three Board members who isolated the newbie Bentley. It made him mad. In March 2009, he led a coup to oust then-president of the Board, Dr. Robert Kirk, by filing a recall petition that would have cost the District $200,000. Bentley, the fiscal responsibility aficionado, did not care one whit about that fact. Kirk eventually decided to not run again because of the “incivility on the Board” and the toll it took on his family.  The petition read:

“Robert Kirk has created an atmosphere of fear where long standing dedicated HUSD employees are fearful of losing their jobs if they cross him.”

Yet,  since Bentley has been on the Board, it’s been a contentious time. One news report captured the chaos that reigned at one meeting in June 2010. Bentley ignored his time limit, crowing that the “couldn’t care less!” Another Board member called Bentley a “crybaby.”

What the public does not yet know is how meddlesome and demeaning Bentley has been toward District staff. He has crossed the boundary from his governance role to that of administrator. That information may soon become publicly available.

The new assistant superintendent of personnel at Hesperia, Dr. Matt Spencer (a 32-yr. veteran educator with a doctorate in education) introduced himself to staff and assessed the workplace culture in the District. Spencer’s responsibility is to retain and recruit the most qualified staff available. Reports of Bentley’s harassing and haranguing staff for no objective reason were shared with Spencer by staff victimized by Bentley. Bentley even attempted to personally threaten and intimidate the veteran Spencer at District offices.

The 2010 election brought two new members to the Board. Bentley quickly jockeyed for position as the new Board president. And Kirk’s former allies yielded to Bentley.

On January 13, Bentley attempted to oust Dr. Spencer for no cause with only 24 hours notice. He convened the Board in private session. At that meeting, Spencer told the Board about Bentley’s misconduct and interference with the education of children in the Hesperia District.

“If the board would do as I implored them to do, they will find a significant amount of evidence that all of that is true,” Spencer said Friday. “The board members that have been in meetings with him, they have experienced those behaviors first-hand.”

Matt Spencer is an expert in workplace bullying, having received training from the Workplace Bullying Institute and facilitating the implementation of the anti-bullying initiative with the Desert Sands District (La Quinta).  Bentley cannot fool Spencer.

The next move is in the hands of the other Board members. Recall campaigns of elected Board members is nothing new at Hesperia Unified. It’s time for Bentley, the self-described people’s champion to be held accountable for his own misconduct. If he were honorable, after the evidence against surfaces at public Board meetings, he would gracefully resign. But bullies do not tend to fall on their own swords.

You can write to Bentley to share your opinion at his public e-mail:  chris.bentley@hesperia.org

UPDATE 1

On Tues. Jan. 17, Bentley responded with a letter to the editor. He addressed none of Spencer’s allegations. Instead, he deflected by referring to employees as “rats” wanting the district’s “cheese” that he was protecting as Board member — a true white knight and savior. This is a disingenuous claim.

When investigated, it will be shown how his harassment of staff costs the District time and money. If he wanted to be Superintendent and directly affect internal matters, he would get his doctorate in education, pay his dues in the trenches, and apply for the job. He’s a one-man wrecking crew. Matt Spencer is not a “rat.” The lawsuit Bentley cleverly mentions above is not one filed by Spencer. Spencer never had a problem with the HUSD or the Board.  He is an unusually uncompromising principled man.

Bentley can’t stand Spencer and used a technical right of his as Board president to try to oust him. Bentley launched a surprise attack with only 24 hr. notice. Spencer did not need an  internal complaint process (he was not complaining, but defending himself against Bentley’s unwarranted attack.)

Bentley has duped the Board, dominated the timid  Superintendent, and wants to eliminate those who see him for what he is. He’s a career assassin. Maybe because he doesn’t have one of his own, he believes he can rip the career of others apart based on his whims.

UPDATE 2

Peter Day, Editor of the Hesperia Star newspaper where the story initially ran had this to say about Chris Bentley.

It is common knowledge in the school district circle that Bentley can be difficult, brash and abrasive. Perhaps because of his longish hair and hip garb, however, his obvious high level of intelligence is often underestimated. He is thorough, focused and relentless when it comes to pursuing what he believes is right. That can lead to challenging exchanges with people.

Before he was elected to office, he called me at the Star office to discuss a concern about apparent inappropriate comments on our website. His intense anger made for one of the most difficult phone calls I have ever had in my journalism career.

In recent times, however, I have seen a different side of Mr. Bentley. When I ran into him at the Key Game, for instance, he was extremely affable and having a fun time with his children.

Chris Bentley is many things. He is a complex man. He can be very intense, and that can make some people uncomfortable. But is he a bully?

Mr. Day honestly does not know about Bentley, but he sounds much like an apologist for him.

UPDATE  3

Bullies need to lie. It distracts others. It encourages self-delusion. Some come to believe their own manufactured versions of reality. Take Bentley’s Jan. 17 letter to the editor. He claimed among other things:

My record clearly demonstrates that I have been a good steward of the cheese under my care. (no kidding he actually said it!) … HUSD is currently paying salary and benefits for two people in a position known as assistant superintendent of personnel. That’s right taxpayers, two people are being compensated for the same high-level administrative position at HUSD, and I am mad and frustrated as heck about it. And I have been for quite some time now, over two years in fact.

Bentley skipped over the inconvenient truth to make his hyperbolic claim. Assistant Superintendent #1 was reassigned to an assistant principal’s position before Dr. Spencer came on the scene. When Spencer joined HUSD for the school year 2010-11, he was hired as the only Assistant Superintendent for Personnel. Checking the calendar, this school year is not back dated to two years ago near the time of Bentley’s machinations and maneuvering to rid the Board of his perceived enemies. Wow.

Steve Williams at the VV Daily Press mused on Jan. 19 about the veracity of Bentley’s claim. Yes it would be interesting to see the facts.

If Bentley is such a good guy, as editor Day tries to convince himself despite being on the receiving end of Bentley’s wrath before, then why was an innocent Hesperia Star article describing workplace bullying in schools in general published, then pulled from circulation. It was an interview with Dr. Spencer that ran online briefly on Dec. 16, 2010. The headline read:  “HUSD Head of Personnel Seeks to Stamp Out Workplace Bullying.”

That was the trigger for Bentley’s campaign to oust Spencer that the public never got to see. He, like all bullies, is a coward and fears being exposed for who he truly is. The article was pulled even though Spencer said nothing about Bentley or HUSD in particular. Why? Was Day cowed by Bentley? Seems the town “leaders” could use a spine and redefinition of the mission of a free press.

Beware of the faux outrage, indignation and populism Bentley oozes. The man behind the mask will be revealed when an investigation makes public the voluminous record of e-mail exchanges Bentley has had with HUSD administrators and staff. He should resign now before he is disgraced by the record of his own actions.

While the national dialogue continues about the lack of civility in politics by public officials (and that’s the status Bentley bought with his $9,000 election), right in Hesperia, an out-of-control school board president is showing up close the face of incivility. It’s a hatemongerer in action at the local level.

BRING ON THE INVESTIGATION. Bentley tried to oust Spencer. Spencer accused Bentley. Spencer invited an investigation of his own conduct. He has nothing to hide. Investigate Bentley’s conduct since being on the Board, and the truth will be revealed. He has been hiding a great deal.

OPEN INVITATION TO CHRIS BENTLEY. You are invited to write a rebuttal to the charges leveled against you by Dr. Spencer on Jan. 13 in the non-public HUSD Board meeting. Be specific. Demonstrate with evidence that you have not engaged in “public humiliation, shaming, belittling, personal insults, withering and appalling e-mails, rude interruptions, screaming obscenities and other offensive and caustic behaviors” unbecoming an elected official. Prove how your actions do not model bullying in ways that influence the HUSD workplace culture, which in turn, affect the children you should be helping to protect. Your rebuttal will published here without revisions, if all of the above conditions are met.

UPDATE 4

The next public HUSD school board meeting is Mon. Jan.  24. This is a call to all affected employees to come testify to two things (1) in defense of Dr. Matt Spencer if you have found him a valuable addition to the HUSD staff, or (2) your outrage over Chris Bentley’s attempt to oust Spencer for no cause with 24 hr. notice.

Of course, it would be tremendous if individual employees directly affected by Bentley’s conduct via e-mail assaults or in-person disrespectful, contemptuous mistreatment testify to the other Board members about the stealth campaign Bentley has been conducting against the “rats” that work for the District.

UPDATE 5

I eagerly await reports from HUSD staff who attended the Jan. 24 Board meeting regarding Bentley’s next degrading move. Yes, “Virginia,” there is always a next low-blow move or tactic.

In the meantime, the Hesperia Star printed on Jan. 24 my letter to the editor rebutting Bentley’s Jan. 17 letter to the editor (see above). Here’s what I wrote:

Namie on Bentley

Odd that Bentley did not respond to Spencer’s allegations. Bentley is disingenuous and portrays himself as the white knight. When investigated, it will be shown how his harassment of staff costs the District time and money (that he professes to save). If he wanted to be superintendent and directly affect internal matters, he would get his doctorate in education, pay his dues in the trenches, and apply for the job. Instead, he’s a one-man wrecking crew— of past Boards and now of HUSD employees. Matt Spencer is not a “rat” (a hostile, angry analogy for employees who care for your children during the day). The lawsuit Bentley cleverly mentions in his letter is not one filed by Spencer. Spencer never had a problem with the HUSD or the Board. He is an unusually uncompromising principled man. Spencer cares about values and living them in the workplace. Bentley can’t stand that and used a technical right of his as Board president to try to oust him. Bentley launched a surprise attack on Spencer with only 24 hour notice. Spencer did not circumvent an internal complaint process (he was not complaining, but defending himself against Bentley’s unwarranted short-notice attack held during a non-public meeting — again so much for transparency Bentley.)

Bentley has duped the Board, dominated the timid superintendent, and wants to eliminate those who see him for what he is. He’s a career assassin. Because Spencer stood up for principals and staff Bentley has harassed, he was targeted for elimination. Maybe because Bentley doesn’t have a career of his own, he believes he can rip the career of others apart based on his whims. For people like him, it’s personal entertainment. He can wrap himself in all the lofty language of community advocate. His abusive actions belie his words. It’s all packaging.

UPDATE 6

The Hesperia Star published the latest Bentley Bomb in the Letter to the Editor section on Jan. 26. Here is what he wrote.

“Excitabat enim fluctus in simpulo,” said the great Roman philosopher Cicero. It literally means, “he was stirring up waves in a ladle,” or in other words, creating a tempest in a teapot. Matt Spencer and his boss, Gary Namie, are committing the Cicero described affliction of making something that is minor seem larger than it is simply to promote one’s own selfish agenda. And at HUSD, we have far greater problems.

Most people know that it is not odd to not respond to garbage not worth responding to in life. It is, however, proper to respond when one of Matt Spencer’s bosses, from out of state, starts bashing Spencer’s local boss, Mr. McKinney, in our local paper. Because the only way the old boss could make any assessment of Mark McKinney, is if Spencer told him to because Namie has never even met Mark McKinney, let alone have enough of any knowledge base to accuse him of “timidity.”

And it is also proper to narrowly respond to horse manure, particularly since the producers of said manure, Namie and Spencer, don’t even live in our community. They just seem to like leaving their manure in our town.

Mark McKinney, our superintendent, has lived and worked in this community for years. He does not deserve to have Namie/Spencer call him “timid” or any other thing because they don’t know him. Although it is odd that Spencer has decided to clearly disrespect the guy who recommended him for his very cushy and expensive job by calling him names. But Spencer has clearly demonstrated his lack of common sense and professionalism since he started cashing those humongous HUSD checks.

I believe that is proper to deal with false allegations of workplace “bullying,” only when the students that we are supposed to serve are fully protected from the very real bullying that occurs in their world. When each and every one of our students is fully protected from real bullying, then, perhaps, we should start to develop procedures to stop professional adults from engaging in human activity. But, as always, students should come first.

As noted at our last meeting, we may be facing the very real problem of a multi-million dollar hit to our budget—again—if the Governor’s proposed tax extensions do not even reach the ballot or fail to get voter support at the polls. And I have a hard time believing that Californians will vote for any increase or extension of taxes during this difficult economy.

The economy is the very real storm that I have faced in each and every year that I have been in office. It drives everything that we do, every decision that we have to make. There are no easy answers, only very difficult choices to make in this regard. How do you cut an additional 7 million dollars from an already lean budget? My stomach is still churning from the last two years and here we go again.

We have greatly expanded the cost of our cabinet administration while reducing our teachers and classified staff. That is wrong, unconscionable, in my opinion. I challenge the administration at 15576 Main Street and hold them accountable for their actions. It ain’t always easy or pleasant, but that comes with the territory.

The favorite answer/response that I have observed over the years coming from the protected enclave of 15576 Main Street is “but that’s the way we’ve always done it.” And that is unacceptable to me for these are not ordinary times. But I support, fully, the work done by our school sites and their staffs. I have not had one single principal, teacher, or classified staff, from our school sites, come to me with any form of the type of allegations that Spencer/Namie throw out. And judging by the number of phone calls I get, my phone numbers are not secret.

I am a fierce advocate for all of our kids. It is not “packaging” for I have demonstrated it for years. I am a fierce advocate for all of our good employees as they do the difficult task of ensuring that our kids have access to the quality education they deserve.
I have never portrayed myself as a “white” knight, and quite frankly, resent the racial overtones of the accusation made by Spencer/Namie. The 9000+ plus people who voted for me got exactly what I said I was when I ran for office; an intelligent, enthusiastic, fervent, and strong advocate for our kids and our employees.

I can be reached at home by dialing 760-949-7417. My cell phone number is 760-887-2288. My district email is chris.bentley@hesperia.org. I will listen, with an open mind, to anyone who wants to communicate anything to me with respect to our kid’s educations or any other issue. Stand up for our students and employees—that is what I was elected to do, what I have always done, and will firmly continue to do in the future.

Bentley has found the ongoing chronicle of his misdeeds at this site. For this, we congratulate him. Before countering some of the more nonsensical statements, let’s all remember the chronology. It’s rather simple and that’s why Bentley hates the truth. Everything he says is bluster and b.s. designed to distract everyone from focusing in on his personal misdeeds.

Matt Spencer was hired 5 months ago as head of Personnel, tasked with protecting approx. 1,800 employees. He toured the District in get-acquainted meetings and was told about the one-man wrecking crew, disruptive force that is Board member Bentley. Reports from several employees were complemented by an e-mail record of his badgering, battering, abusive, disrespectful style. Dr. Gary Namie was called to discuss with Mark McKinney how bullying undermines the District’s mission and what to do about it. Namie learns during that conversation about Bentley’s conduct prior to his becoming Board president.

Dr. Spencer is no ordinary school personnel director. Besides the 32 years of experience as teacher and coach and Superintendent and Assistant Superintendent, he is also a trained expert in recognizing and ameliorating workplace bullying. He claims affiliation with WBI as can all graduates of WBI University. The District is lucky to have this special person on staff.

The local newspaper introduced him in a get-acquainted article (in Dec.) where he stated in a general way how the HUSD would benefit from an anti-workplace bullying program in the future (as every school district could benefit). He assumes that this would be something the Board would eventually adopt since they will see the connection between adults being bullied and the deleterious effects on children and learning. The article is published in the paper’s online edition, then mysteriously pulled.

Dr. Spencer had written a March 2010 guest editorial for WBI describing the process, long before he worked at HUSD. His essay is titled Stealing From Children.

We jump to the post-election period when Bentley is designated president by the two veteran and two new Board members. His public comments express humility and surprise. In reality, he had been jockeying for the president’s role for two years to finally exercise certain privileges attached to the role of president. He was frustrated at not getting his way, revealing his incivility and arrogance in public Board meetings (see news accounts referenced above).

Spencer never backed down when Bentley personally confronted him. That was the turning point for Bentley.

Bentley discovered a little-known privilege of the Board — to remove a poor-performing, non-union District employee on 24 hour notice. He targets Spencer. It did not matter that Spencer was not a poor performer. Bentley ordered superintendent McKinney to deliver the notice on behalf of the Board. He did so with regret. It is unclear if the other Board members were made aware of Bentley’s decision. Bentley had no specific examples of incompetence because Spencer is a model administrator and principled leader and advocate for the children. No evidence of incompetence exists. Watch Bentley try to manufacture evidence.

Spencer never heard the charges against him because Bentley did not make accusations in the public session. Spencer, according to the procedural rules, was allowed to make only a 5 min. statement to the Board in public session. Spencer provided the Board with a letter detailing what time prevented him from saying. Rather than defend himself against a vague and false charge, he took the time to inform the Board about what he had learned about the impact of Bentley’s conduct on the HUSD staff. After the 5 minutes, Bentley convened a closed-door session during which he was free to say whatever he wanted without challenges or evidence to the contrary. I speculate that Bentley took the opportunity to assassinat Spencer’s character with no fear of repercussion. He must have relished the control and power his Board presidency afforded. This is why he bought the seat in the first place! Oh, I would love to have heard what the coward Bentley had to say. We know well the types of confabulations bullies can concoct. Spencer was not fired, but his reprieve will be temporary.

Predictably, Bentley will relentlessly press superintendent McKinney to manufacture a case against Spencer. It would be foolish for McKinney to follow Bentley’s commands. McKinney is Spencer’s immediate boss and should have the courage to defend his staff against frivolous and false complaints by an interloper on the Board, president or not.

The HUSD Administration and Board are partners. It should not be an abuser-battered spouse relationship. They share power. When one party abuses its authority, it is up to the other to inform the other that abuse will not be tolerated.  One partner should not refer to the other disrespectfully as “rats.”

Let’s be clear. Spencer was not filing a complaint against Bentley during his 5 minutes. The statements he made were in response to the charge leveled against him by Bentley. He did not unilaterally decide to expose Bentley. The facts about Bentley were offered in his own defense. If Bentley did not want to be exposed, he should not have attacked Spencer without evidence or reason. Spencer was educating the other four Board members about the petty tyrant within their ranks and his negative effect on the HUSD.

It’s time to investigate either Bentley or Bentley and Spencer. Let the evidence be gathered. Spencer has nothing to fear. He is the true champion for students. Let the public see Bentley for who he really is. He should have nothing to fear if he is telling the truth (which he is not).

Here are my specific rebuttal points to Bentley’s statements about me in his Jan. 26 Letter to the Editor posted above.

• Matt Spencer has a contract with HUSD, not WBI. Superintendent McKinney is his boss, not me, and not you, Bentley.

• The only one with a selfish agenda is you who is trying to fire Spencer without cause because even talking about bullying threatens you, the bully. All bullies are cowards. You are no exception. Admit it, you hate Spencer for standing up to you.

• It is not bashing McKinney to call him timid. And I have met him by phone — for one hour. So I have taken measure of the man. Stop bossing him around. You are not HIS employer!

• Spencer is not calling McKinney names. Using the convention Namie/Spencer or Spencer/Namie like Bentley does not make one person from two. Dr. Spencer is Dr. Spencer and Dr. Namie is Dr. Namie. And sadly, you are just you. Wishing to de-humanize others does not make it so.

• In Bentley’s make-believe world, real bullying happens between children and adult “bullying” is not real, it is a falsehood. Hey Bentley, you’re clever, conniving, devious, manipulating, and loose with facts, but also ignorant. While perusing the WBI site for comments about yourself (your narcissistic vanity does take over at times, doesn’t it?), try clicking on “Research” and discover a world of science out there about real bullying in the workplace studied by academics in universities around the world who know so much more than you. I am one of those producers of research. You’re a bullying denier (again, that’s part of the bully’s M.O.). If you cannot understand it, it does not exist! The campaign against workplace bullying is not about you. You’re just the poster boy who stumbled into our world by making the mistake of attacking a friend. It’s your time to be exposed. Bentley could have operated in the shadows and not been subject to public scorn if he had not run for public office. He now gets to live with the consequences. (Remember, you are big on holding others, but never yourself, accountable for their actions. Resign. It’s the honorable thing that a Marine Corps vet would do.)

• Of course not one of the people Bentley has assaulted will complain to him. Two reasons: (1) he is the source of their misery, and (2) when people refuse to be subservient to his arbitrary and capricious demands, he tries to get them fired. No one complains to the bully about being bullied by others, and certainly never to the assailant himself. Bentley’s record is yet to be revealed. His lame denials and protestations will pale in comparison to the facts.

• “Fierce advocate” ” and Bentley as the “tough” person who can make the tough decisions. Stop with the aggressive talk. Find your civil voice, if you have one. Bentley has declared war on the District and its staff. He slipped and revealed his true nature by calling the employees “rats” wanting your “cheese.”

• When I said Bentley portrayed himself as the “white knight,” I was complimenting him as a self-declared champion for others. Bentley interprets it as racist. Really? Spare us all the faux sensitivity to cultural diversity. Thank goodness your kids are at the HUSD. Home schooling by their stay-at-home dad would be disastrous for their intellectual and emotional development.

I’ve decided that you have no business being involved with schools at all. Get elected to another public commission if you feel the need to push government around for sport. Your closed-mindedness and your historical pattern of abuse and disrespect for others pose a lethal threat to the public education system and the educators who have devoted their lives to helping the development of others’ children.

• Why can I conclude what I do from a distance, not living in Hesperia? Because people just like you thrive in every community. We study them, extensively research the consequences of their misconduct on others, write books, teach college courses about them, tell the media, do on-site consulting where we meet them all the time, and testify in court about them. I can predict nearly every one of your moves without being told by anyone at HUSD. So, neither you nor Hesperia nor the HUSD is unique. You are that predictable.

Anyone working at HUSD can learn how to know Bentley better and how to predict what he will do. Serial killers have taught researchers a lot about psychopaths. Here’s a recommended reading list:

The Bully At Work by Namie & Namie
What Would Machiavelli Do? by Bing
The No Asshole Rule by Sutton
Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go To Work by Hare & Bobiak
Without Conscience by Hare

UPDATE 7     Feb. 3

The Hesperia Star ran an unedited version of Dr. Matt Spencer’s letter to the editor on Feb. 1. Here are some excerpts that illustrate a couple of important points.

“My beliefs and philosophies regarding the working environments for employees are quite similar. I believe that every employee has the right to come to a place of service each day and experience an environment that is safe, clean, helpful, and supportive…an environment where employees can enjoy their colleagues, join in harmony with them toward the common goal of educating children, and give of their unique talents and skills in service to the students. I believe every employee has the right to come to work and not be harassed, harangued, intimidated, or abused in any way. There should be nothing in the work environment that would cause an employee to dread to come to work at the schoolhouse.

As an outgrowth of these core beliefs and philosophies, I made the decision long ago that when I looked into the eyes of the students and employees who gather at the schoolhouse, in whatever school district I would serve, I must say to them what I feel in my heart…”You are deserving of all of my efforts to give you the gift of such an environment to learn or serve.” My commitment to the students and employees I serve is inescapable; I view this commitment as a promise and a duty.”  …

If his belief that no one should dread coming to work sounds pollyannaish to you, you’ve grown to cynical. This is a modest expectation — to work without fear. What Spencer is talking about when he mentions “duty” is what every other industrialized nation imposes on its employers — the duty of care. Employers in those nations, including Canada, have an implicit contract to protect workers’ safety. Only in America is that ridiculed.

Violators and abusers must be stopped, and if necessary, expelled from the schoolhouse. Those who have the responsibility for accountability must be steadfast in the fulfillment of this responsibility. They cannot be distracted or deterred by the kicking, screaming, finger-pointing, or diversionary tactics of those caught in the accountability spotlight.   …

For Board members, administrators, union leaders, community leaders, and elected officials who serve in some leadership role and have an opportunity to influence the destiny of their local school districts, what do you say when you look into the eyes of the children and employees who gather at your schoolhouse? Do you say to them …”You are deserving of all of my efforts to give you the gift of such an environment to learn and serve.” Or do you say “You are not worthy.”

Here Spencer is referring to violators of the principle of duty of care who act with hypocrisy when claiming to hold others accountable for mistreatment or malfeasance when it is they who have acted so. To have branded employees “rats” as Bentley did as if they coveted HIS “cheese,” was the ultimate act of disregard for the committed staff and teachers who take care of the children at the HUSD.

Spencer ended with

“As for the question of whether or not employees in our schools are deserving of a respectful, dignified, abuse-free environment in which to serve…I made my decision long ago. I chose to be an educator. I chose to be an educational leader.”

Revealing his honest motivation. I know the man. He could have been an engineer, scientist, physician, clergyman. Instead, he has served his life in schools. The same cannot be said for Bentley. He is not an educator. This takes me back to something I said in the beginning.