Institutions that created or allowed toxic work conditions to flourish out of sheer laziness (laissez-faire, indifferent, management) should be responsible for cleansing the destructive environment of perpetrators who are discovered to be responsible. In worst-case situations, conditions become intolerable for any human trying to hold onto a shred of personal dignity. Some workers take their lives, seeing no way out, typically after years of frustration by the disbelieving employer who accepts the perpetrators’ version of reality.
Adults who thought their days of dealing with bullies were left behind on the schoolyard better think again.
A 2011 CareerBuilder study shows that 27% of U.S. workers have felt bullied in the workplace with the majority not confronting or reporting the bully.
Workplace bullying is defined as repeated mistreatment of an individual employee by a person or group that takes the form of verbal abuse, behavior that is humiliating, threatening, intimidating or sabotages the targeted person’s work, according to the Workplace Bullying Institute (WBI).
As a vocal proponent of the term “workplace bullying,” in my opinion only three individuals speak eloquently and authoritatively on “mobbing,” the original term adopted by Heinz Leymann at the movement’s birth. They are Ken Westhues, Len Sperry and Maureen Duffy.
Westhues wrote the Foreword to this new 2012 Oxford University Press book — Mobbing: Causes, Consequences and Solutions — by Duffy and Sperry. So, between the covers of a remarkable book, is found an incomparable compilation of research, clinical and practical information.
I stand by my comment for the book’s cover. “A fantastic, mesmerizing encyclopedic narrative jammed between two covers touching on every aspect of the phenomenon of mobbing like no other single volume in the literature. The authors clearly have been in the trenches helping abused workers. Their advice is spot on and keenly oriented toward improving the individual victim’s health and recovery from the mobbing assaults.”
This just in from Seattle KIRO-TV. A woman harassed a woman coworker to the extent that she invaded every aspect of her life away from work and threatened her children. The nutjob, Christina Orozco, was convicted of felony stalking. Stalking is clearly on the rise. Bullied targets are rarely believed. Victims of stalking are never believed — the cruelty borders on the unbelievable — but is very real in this public case. (Tip to a WBI newsletter subscriber.)
Welcome listeners of Doctor Radio (SiriusXM Channel 81) on Tues. Feb. 21, 8 am ET. Host Dr. Carol Bernstein, NYU School of Medicine, and the past president of the American Psychiatric Association.
Thanks to callers, Brenda (call the office for a gift), Sandra brave advocate for those bullied by another manager, Linda whose personal life lessons inspired us, and Mary.
WBI colleague, Peter Schnall (editor of the definitive book, Unhealthy Work and founder of the Center for Social Epidemiology) regularly points out that normal human blood pressure is 100/60. Unfortunately, only people living outside the industrialized world enjoy such a healthy BP. We are told our “normal BP” is 120/80, but that’s an average, according to Schnall. Working in our hurried world accounts for the difference.
The informative longitudinal Whitehall studies that track coronary health, including ambulatory BP of British government workers for 40 years, reliably find that workdays differ from weekends and vacation days. Metabolism differs. Just showing up for work carries a set of health risks. Continue reading this article… »
Lessons learned from a disaster that dramatically changed a baboon troop’s social culture from cutthroat to kinder comes from the work of Robert Sapolsky (author of Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers). From this there is reason for optimism that our social system of work can be re-engineeered to be kinder and less war-like. We just have to want to do it!
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The phrase “going postal” has become part of American culture since those awful days in the early to mid-80s when there were news accounts of mass murders at American post offices — murders usually committed by employees or former employees. Wikipedia even has an entry on the expression “going postal” — which explains:
“The expression derives from a series of incidents from 1983 onward in which United States Postal Service (USPS) workers shot and killed managers, fellow workers, and members of the police or general public in acts of mass murder. Between 1986 and 1997, more than forty people were gunned down by spree killers in at least twenty incidents of workplace rage.”
Please help us collect some useful and important data. We have created a short survey to answer two simple questions:
What attempts do Targets of workplace bullying make in order to have employers step in and resolve the situation? Do these attempts stop the abuse, or does it continue unabated?
Please take a moment to fill out our survey about your workplace bullying experience. Results will be published on the WBI Blog. Thanks for your participation!
Welcome listeners of Doctor Radio (SiriusXM Channel 81) on Tues. Feb. 21, 8 am ET. Host Dr. Carol Bernstein, NYU School of Medicine, and the past president of the American Psychiatric Association.
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