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=7436 A Dec. 15 post on the Huffington Post by bullied-out-of-her-career Janice Harper caught the attention of those of us operating at “ground zero” of the workplace bullying movement. Attacks on the movement are analogous to attacks on the originators and chief spokespersons — that’s us. Space to comment on other sites is too limited. So, I use our own platform to respond point-by-point on behalf of millions of bullied individuals. Her piece was provocatively titled: “Top Ten Reasons to Rethink Anti-Bully Hysteria.”

First, let me say Dr. Harper, an anthropologist by training, and I, a social psychologist, probably have much in common. The difference is that she came through a horrific academic experience personally. Dr. Ruth Namie bore the brunt of that direct experience for our family; my experience was vicarious. For that reason, I am unwounded have necessarily been the spokesperson. Second, when unhealed wounded veterans of the bullying wars go public (as some of the more brazen critics of WBI do frequently), they can set back the movement with agendas narrowly focused on themselves. Harper’s injuries may not yet be resolved. She makes some silly and downright incorrect claims. I will reply to her Dec. 15 essay in italics.

Top Ten Reasons to Rethink Anti-Bully Hysteria

by Janice Harper

In previous essays I’ve discussed some of my concerns with the use of the bully label, the failure to distinguish between workplace and schoolyard bullying, and the need to distinguish workplace bullying from workplace mobbing. Now, as the year comes to a close and top ten lists rise like hit songs on a pop chart, I’d like to provide my own top ten reasons for rethinking the current anti-bully hysteria.

1. In the understandable rush to eradicate mean-spirited and aggressive people in the workplace, there is a tendency to move from anti-bully to pro-mobbing and encourage people to gang up and eliminate anyone labeled a bully.

Eradication of bullying is the goal, not of bullies. Targets do not suddenly convert to revenge-seekers who team up to bring down those who attacked them. Most individuals skulk away quietly shrouded in shame and secrecy just hoping to move on. Not sure who advises this. Certainly not us at WBI.

2. As awareness about bullying behavior grows, so too does the hysteria surrounding it, so that once a person is accused they are assumed to be guilty and vilified, regardless of their actual behavior or intent.

In the absence of company policies with full enforcement provisions and laws that would indict people in a criminal manner, there is no official sanctioning forum that labels people as “bullies.” In the American society where we are co-located, only child abusers (think Jerry Sandusky) are guilty and vilified without regard to due process. Business frauds who cheat old ladies are forgiven. Jack Abramoff writes a book on how to buy lawmakers. Sports heroes go to prison and return to contracts worth millions. Exactly what “bullies” are vilified? Steve Jobs, the deity? What you say, Janice, does not currently happen.

3. Even if a person does exhibit “bullying” behaviors, they are operating in the context of a specific organizational culture; the anti-bully focus is on the individual, not the organizational dynamics that might foster it.

Couldn’t agree more. We have tried unsuccessfully with two publishers have our book titles include “bullying” rather than “bully,” but neither cooperated. Our book for organizations to read about bullying decries the focus on the individual. This again is the experience in individualistic societies — anthropology told me so.

4. By failing to distinguish interpersonal bullying from collective mobbing, much of the advice given to targets of workplace aggression may escalate their suffering by provoking management’s retaliation and transforming bullying to mobbing.

The canard of mobbing vs. bullying was old 15 years ago when we started, and newcomers to the field like yourself seem to have to rediscover it and share the learning as if it’s new. Though Heinz Leymann died before he could attend our first and only US conference back in 2000, his representative did. She had no qualms about using the term bullying. She was a patient of his in Violen. As the leading proponent of the phrase workplace bullying in the U.S., it is safe to say that WBI has always said that bullying is a multiple-perpetrator phenomenon. End of “dispute.” We defer to Ken Westhues’ materials and arguments about the distinctions. When you use mobbing, you sound paranoid.

As for a focus on bullying (the systemic reinforcement of negative conduct) vs. bullies (the individualistic personality approach), that is another false accusation about the movement (hysteria, as you deem it). The press focuses on bullies. Book publishers fight the term “bullying” in book titles. But smart researchers and practitioners all focus on the former. You need to read the pages in the books, and not stop at perusal of just the covers.

5. Workplace bullying includes a power dynamic that is absent in schoolyard bullying, and although the processes are very similar, their differences are significant. The two forms of interpersonal aggression should be discussed with different terminology, strategies and objectives.

6. The “bully” focus tends to minimize group psychology, looking for convenient scapegoats and exempting others from responsibility when their aggression is collective.

RE: Points 5 & 6. I resent an anthropologist calling the extensive work done in this country by social psychologists on the topic to be somehow devoid of group dynamics. Colleagues Loraleigh Keashly and Joel Neuman were the only two brave souls doing this work back in 1997 (and before). And if you more carefully read what proponents in the movement say you would see it is well grounded in organizational models and processes. Those of us actually working with employers do much more than is known by the press. However, we have written books about it. So, you need to read more.

7. Just as “bullies” are viewed as inherently volatile and bad, targets are viewed as inherently passive and good, and typically advised they are morally superior and did nothing to contribute to the aggression. Such views preclude any possibility of behavioral changes for anyone involved, and flies in the face of human psychology.

You disqualify yourself as an outside observer of the phenomenon when you copy the provocative victim theory, commit the fundamental attribution error, and blame abuse victims for their own fate. Keep your academic perspective on this one. You may have been mobbed, but presumably not abused.


There is a morality play afoot. Don’t make the mistake of siding with the ones who initiate abuse. The parallel is to domestic violence. If one equivocates and stands equally with the abuser and abused, that person has lost her moral compass and right to distinguish right from wrong. Not ALL targets are saints, but if you worked with nearly 7,000 of them as we have at WBI, you wouldn’t perpetuate gibberish about them being equal to their assailants.

8. Too much of the focus on bullies has become associated with a single political perspective, namely liberal Democrats, even though interpersonal aggression affects a diversity of political interests.

Again read, read, read. Visit the national site for the Healthy Workplace Bill. There you can see the political party affiliation of legislators brave enough to sponsor an anti-bullying bill. At least three parties are represented. Republicans are not a itsy bitsy minority, either. As far as labeling, I’m not sure liberal democrats exist today.


However, your point is important in another, more profound perhaps unintended, way. Abuse in organizations is political. It derives its support from those in power. Rather, than dem vs. repub, it’s executives and bullies vs. those who came to their jobs to work. There is a partition, just not along the lines you describe so glibly.

9. Aggressive behavior in the workplace does indeed damage people’s lives and livelihoods, yet by calling for the elimination of workers labeled bullies, encouraging gossip and sabotage of anyone accused of bullying, and making anonymous reports against alleged “bullies,” workplace aggression has the potential to increase.

Who calls for the elimination of the bullies? Most of them will stop when their employers dare to challenge and expose them. They keep their jobs and move on. Who would ever call for anonymous reports against others? You must be reading the work of HR and “career” experts. We see you are associated with some newcomers to the field who profess an “expertise” but know little more than a bullied target. Just living the experience does not make one an expert, nor does publishing an academic journal article, or training in an academic field related tangentially to the topic. But it’s America. If you say you are an expert, you are treated that way by a lazy media.

10. The rhetoric is very negative and exclusionary, rather than focusing on how workplaces and other organizations can become more compassionate and humane toward others.

Interpersonal aggression is indeed a serious problem, and any form of aggression in our workplaces, schools and other organizations merits attention and remedies. But how we view the problem will shape how we address it. And as we move closer to ideological orthodoxy in how we approach it, all I see is an even bigger problem in the making.

You are a naive angel to think that eradication of truly destructive behavior begins with a focus on the positive through HR-type fads of the month: “employee engagement” “visionary management” “purposeful work” “ethical behavior” etc. You haven’t worked either as a consultant or manager enough to know what it takes to right a large ship sinking from destructive action by the few. Take the high road. You are young. But eventually you will learn how organizational default to the lowest ethical level, not aspire to the highest. And certainly not in the contemporary world of multinational for-profit firms that universities (like the host of your personal misery) emulate.

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My post-article observations:

We all await the publication of your own book, which your series of articles is no doubt meant to pre-promote. But we expect more than tales from the trenches by a wounded warrior whose perceptions have been distorted by horrific experiences. Too many newcomers to the field are so wounded they cannot separate their own injuries and resentments from them to see clearly what needs to be done.

Methinks that you will be a positivist, pollyanna, equivocator. You could use the moniker “Dr. FeelGood.” HR will love you. But your work will not help those abused at work. And your insistence on some of the principles you have espoused above will get you press coverage because you pose no threat to organizations that actually originate and sustain the conduct to which you were subjected. You will be seen as reasonable and corporate-friendly — the goal of all newcomers. You will be very TV-friendly. But will you be intellectually honest to audiences (and more importantly, to yourself, true to your self-perception)?

As for us, we choose to tell truths, side with the abused, and risk not doing business with those too frightened to do what it really takes to change their toxic organizations.

Janice, you live 100 miles from us. Come visit. We’d love to convert you to a champion for the cause rather than an apologist for abusers (part of the hysteria machine). Come see the world through the WBI perspective. Our door is open.

Gary Namie
WBI Director

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

In 2012, we expect a flurry of activity. There will be hearings for existing bills, new bills introduced, bills moving to floor votes and a real chance that one or more states may pass the HWB into state law. To prevent confusion during the hectic period when inaccurate portrayals of the HWB will surface, let me clarify our goals for the bill proposed in every state and then showcase the key features of the bill and distinguish it from what wounded, but unhealed, targets of bullying might wish for.

Repeated, Harmful Abusive Conduct Defined

It is important for legal laypeople to understand that the text of the HWB was written by Suffolk Law Professor David C. Yamada. He has made workplace bullying his legal specialty. His year 2000 treatise published in the Georgetown Law Journal was the U.S. legal world’s introduction to bullying and the need for “status-blind” harassment protections for workers. He modeled the HWB on existing anti-discrimination statutes. Practicing attorneys and we who are not familiar with the structure of laws make the poorest critics. That’s why we at WBI accept the HWB completely as the best model legislation for contemporary America.

Legal critics and bully apologists love to claim that bullying is too ambiguous, subjective, and undefinable. Not true. As a first step, we do not refer to “workplace bullying” anywhere in the HWB text. Given the full range of manifested bullying possible, from mild and covert to severe, it only makes sense to have a law address the most egregious, harmful and severe forms. The HWB puts the misconduct on par with domestic violence and other potentially traumatizing experiences. If people are to be given the right to sue, it must not be over a misunderstood interpretation of an arched eyebrow.

Here is the definition codified in HWB. “Abusive conduct is conduct, including acts, omissions, or both, that a reasonable person would find hostile, based on the severity, nature, and frequency of the defendant’s conduct. Abusive conduct may include, but is not limited to: repeated infliction of verbal abuse such as the use of derogatory remarks, insults, and epithets; verbal or physical conduct of a threatening, intimidating, or humiliating nature; the sabotage or undermining of an employee’s work performance; or attempts to exploit an employee’s known psychological or physical vulnerability.” Who gets to say what is verbally abusive or threatening? The recipient, just as in anti-discrimination law.

A Necessarily High Standard

Therefore, not every person offended by the actions of others could use the HWB. The bill requires that harm be demonstrated by a medical or mental health professional or that the employer foolishly punished the plaintiff worker by demotion, punitive transfer, retaliation or termination (some adverse employment action). Serious harm required to pursue a serious lawsuit against either the employer, the perpetrator, or both.

Critics argue that courts will be flooded with baseless lawsuits that employers love to call “frivolous.” But system hurdles will minimize the chances of that happening. First, plaintiffs will have to pay for a private attorney out of pocket to mount a case. Costs alone discourage filing cases just to annoy employers. Attorneys will not accept cases with no to little chance of winning. Judges are quick to grant summary judgment to employers (they throw out the entire lawsuit by siding with employers before hearing evidence).

Abusive conduct must be malicious, as defined in the HWB, not by the court. “Malice is defined as the desire to cause pain, injury, or distress to another.” This requirement also will help sort out trivial bullying from health-harming abuse. In severe bullying cases, this standard will most likely be met.

High standards are necessary to weather challenges of constitutionality, if they arise. Laws should have a higher standard to meet, a higher threshold of impact and severity, than company policies. Bullying happens before the onset of health harm. That’s why companies should be less tolerant of the misconduct and respond earlier than any law should require.

The Primary Reason to Enact the HWB

There are two goals stated in the text of the bill. First, it provides legal incentives for employers to prevent and respond to abusive mistreatment of workers. Second, it plugs holes in existing labor laws by allowing employees who have been harmed psychologically, physically or economically by being deliberately subjected to abusive work environments to seek legal relief which they cannot now do.

A good, non-abusive, employer need not fear the HWB becoming law. However, if abuse is routine practice in an organization’s work environment, that employer requires prodding to stop. WBI surveys show that employers do nothing 44% of the time when bullying is reported (according to the national 2007 WBI U.S. Workplace Bullying Survey) and the most common response of employers to bullying (according to an online survey of bullied targets, the real consumers of bullying-related employer responses) is to actively resist employee’s desire to address it (46%) and to remain unengaged (35%) with only 3% of employers creating specific policies and faithfully enforcing them.

It is obvious without the threat of litigation, employers can continue to ignore bullying. Plugging the gap in the law does that. More important is the use of the HWB to dangle the incentive for employers to do what they should be doing voluntarily. With the threat of vicarious liability (holding the employer liable for the misconduct of their managers (72% of bullies are bosses)), employers can be compelled to act.

Employers On, Then Off, the Hook

Plaintiffs can sue their employer (the entity with insurance to cover legal defenses for this type of misconduct, called Employment Practices Liability Insurance – EPLI) because managers are “agents” of the employer and are considered to have acted on the employer’s behalf, whether or not the bully’s actions are known to the employer. That’s the point of employer vicarious liability.

Under HWB, plaintiffs have the option of suing their bully. The only defense for an abuser is if he or she acted “at the direction of the employer, under threat of an adverse employment action.” In other words, the bully was made to do the bidding of the employer under threat.

The HWB text states that if “the employer exercised reasonable care to prevent and correct promptly any actionable behavior;” then it would not be held liable. That means that if the employer has a policy (a preventive act) and enforced it (corrected promptly), the employer escapes liability. It cannot be sued. It has a defense against a claim.

The get-out-of-responsibility provisions in the HWB for employers are called “affirmative defenses.” They are the incentives for employers to start addressing, rather than ignoring bullying. Similarly, the HWB cannot be used against employers if a bullying correction process was in place and the target did not use it, or if the employee was punished for poor performance, misconduct, illegal or unethical activity, or if “economic necessity” led to termination.

Inadequacy of Current Laws

The conclusion of Yamada’s seminal law journal article that launched the HWB is that the tort that most closely fits cases of workplace bullying, Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress (IIED), nearly always fails to provide relief for bullied targets. The primary reason for the failure is that the threshold of “outrageous conduct” is rarely crossed in U.S. courts. That is, what you and I would consider over-the-top cruelty, thus outrageous, does not meet the U.S. legal standard of conduct beyond the bounds of civilized society. That translates to a license for any manager to do anything and courts consider their tactics within their allowed prerogative. As Yamada concluded IIED is inadequate because courts are too strict for plaintiffs while forgiving most ever transgression of bullies. [In Canada, the tort uses the "reasonable person" threshold. There it takes much less violence for conduct to be deemed outrageous.]

In a 2011 case, a young woman won a $41 million jury award for a combined IIED and sexual harassment case. But it was extremely severe. Even the jury had to admit her manager’s lewd conduct and sexual battery crossed the line. But that’s what it takes to win.

The other existing laws that pertain to bullying cases are state and federal civil rights statutes. We know from the WBI 2007 national survey that 1 in 5 bullying cases also have an illegal discrimination component. That is good for the plaintiff. By filing an EEOC or internal discrimination complaint, the employer will have to pay attention. Of course, complaining triggers a reflexive retaliation by employers. But that’s more good news for plaintiffs. There can now be a charge of retaliation. According to the EEOC, more cases are won by proving retaliation for filing a discrimination complaint than are won when the claim is that one of the seven protected categories was the actual reason for the mistreatment. A 2010 study of the efficacy of discrimination laws found that plaintiffs win in only 15% of cases, and the rate is declining.

The public (and many lawmakers, pundits, bloggers, and nearly everyone who is a target) misunderstands is that to be eligible to claim discrimination — sexual harassment, hostile work environment, racial discrimination, religious persecution — it is best when only the recipient/target is a member of protected status group based on race, gender, age, disability, etc. When the harasser/bully/perpetrator is also protected, it is problematic and may disqualify the plaintiff from filing. The majority of bullying is same gender, same race. Thus, bullying which is 80% of all harassment, is invisible in the eyes of the law. Only a very narrow slice of the population is ever eligible to claim discrimination. Always determine whether the perpetrator is similarly protected. That nullifies any protection for the target. It is a simple and erroneous statement to say that a hostile work environment is illegal in the U.S. Sad, but true.

Given the inadequacy of IIED and civil rights statutes to address workplace bullying, a problem of epidemic proportions in the U.S., there oughta be a law! That’s why we need the HWB. We need it despite whining protestations from corporate defense attorneys who point to IIED and civil rights laws as adequate — for employers, yes — for plaintiffs, protections are non-existent.

A Target’s Wishlist

We certainly wanted a law in the beginning of our involuntary involvement with workplace bullying back in 1995. When we started the organization that has become the Workplace Bullying Institute in mid-1997, we had learned the hard way that existing U.S. employment law was very narrowly defined and did not deserve to be called “protection.” David Yamada annexed his legal work with WBI and in 2001 gave us the first version of the HWB to take to the California legislature. Ruth Namie, Carrie Clark and I learned amateur lobbying the hard way but were able to get the largest state to introduce HWB for the first time in 2003. Now, there is a nationwide team of volunteer State Coordinators carrying the HWB to their state legislatures. For the technical content of the bill, we defer to law professor Yamada. We and the Coordinator team are the implementers.

When deep in the throes of emotional turmoil through no fault of their own, bullied targets demand justice. They deserve it. Naturally they turn to the law and courts to provide this. They want to sue. They want retributive justice — someone must be punished and held accountable. They want revenge. One late website author used to insist that all bullies were psychopaths. He never seemed to heal. To individuals subject to such constrained thinking and prone to emotional distortion, affirmative defenses for employers make the bill sound weak.

The HWB will become a civil law. The only method for restoring a plaintiff’s dignity and sense of justice is cash. This is not a bill to create a criminal law. There are only two in the world: (1) a new 2011 bill in the Australian state of Victoria, and (2) the French Social Modernisation Law. So, please know that people, however heinous, will not be going to jail after the HWB becomes law.

Targets want draconian laws to punish employers. And so might we at WBI. However, the process of making laws in the U.S. is through legislators who win their elective seats by raising money, most of it corporate money. There is little appetite for advancing laws for middle class working folks. In fact, after the 2010 election, there was a spate of anti-worker, anti-union laws passed simultaneously in several states. Current politicians who populate the state legislatures mostly hate or are indifferent to the plight of workers.

The lawmakers who are the exceptions to the new rules are the brave sponsors of the HWB. Their lives have been personally touched by destructive bullying. They come from all political parties. They lend credence to our statement that the HWB is non-partisan. However, in states with majorities in both chambers and the governorships where anti-worker laws passed, it is an uphill battle to simply get the HWB introduced.

This is the political world we have for the next several years. Abuse at work is serious. But so is self-destruction of the planet by governments’ failure to deal honestly with climate change, pollution and the effect of the destructive human imprint on the natural world. If lawmakers can’t address ways to ensure we have suitable air and water for our grandchildren, you can imagine how easily they dismiss the abuse of adults in the contemporary workplace. The business lobby’s clamoring for jobs through the elimination of basic regulations for employers overwhelms our counter message that employers should be mildly constrained so that work does not become a war zone for anyone.

We appreciate that some legal writers have considered passage “inevitable.” The momentum of the workplace bullying movement that we originated here in the U.S. is building as the term “workplace bullying” enjoys more mainstream acceptance and usage every year. Much work remains to be done and it will not stop when the first state makes HWB law. That will simply launch a new phase in the struggle.

A short final word about why we are pursuing state laws and not a national one. Each state has different workers compensation laws to which the HWB must conform. It would be nearly impossible to craft a national law that could accomplish that task. With a national law, there are also interstate commerce clauses that must be dealt with, further complicating the task. And finally, have you looked at Congress lately, both the paralyzed Senate and the wacky House? We have lobbied a bit in Washington, DC but with a different purpose than to propose a national law to complement federal civil rights statutes.

For those who think we should expand existing civil rights laws, think again. Those statutes are considered sacred by constituencies that benefit most from those laws. There is a dormant opposition to tinkering with those hard-won laws that could be awakened if we sought to supplement current protections in the civil rights codes. Modifying them in the reactionary political climate that has prevailed for the last 31 years in the U.S. seems to be a fool’s errand. We shall stick with our state-by-state campaign unless there is a major upheaval in national politics and a new progressive era is ushered in.

The Confluence of Movements

The Healthy Workplace Campaign certainly benefits from the Occupy movement that addresses income inequality. The protesters have made clear the unnatural and undemocratic disparity that is reflected where we go to work (if we have a job at all). That owners control the entire work environment and can callously discharge workers with no consequences when no union is present. The intra-organizational political disparities reflect the broader economic ones in society. Workplaces are microcosms of society.

In America’s private sector, 93% of workers have no union. The doctrine of “employment at will” prevails. It is that same negation of workers’ rights relative to those of the owners that fosters workplace cultures where bullying thrives. Employers continue to fire anyone daring to organize a unionization drive. Employer campaigns to discredit unions at meetings where they can mandate all-hands attendance seem to work. Many workers, despite unemployment at Great Depression levels, prefer to side with employers rather than with their colleagues to demand fairer treatment.

To improve workers’ lives, there must be attempts to chip away at employers’ unilateral control over workers. They won’t voluntarily yield or share power without pressure from employees working collaboratively and collectively.

In the absence of unions, and to enhance the safety of unionized workers, please help us pass the Healthy Workplace Bill. Do it to restore some fairness to the American workplace.

Gary Namie
National Director, Healthy Workplace Campaign
Nov. 22, 2011

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An interview with Adam Cohen, Yale Law Professor, on CNN that provides a great tutorial on the HWB.

Child abuse deserves attention, but society has to acknowledge that adults also can be abused through no fault of their own in situations of powerlessness. Is equivalence possible?

Download Podcast 22 (in .mp3 format)

To Dad, on what would have been his 92nd birthday.

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.

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 Thursday, November 24, 2011, 9:00 a.m. – midnight EST

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.

November 15, 2011, from 2:00 PM – 3:30 PM, ET
Hosted by BNA, Bureau of National Affairs. CPE & HRCI credits available.

Register online or call 800.372.1033, option 6, then option 1

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

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.

See the original article

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.

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.

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

We launched The Work Doctor® radio on June 23, 2011. Gary Namie is the host.

In this debut show, Gary discusses the recent Supreme Court decision dropping the job discrimination class action lawsuit against WalMart by six women, representing 1.5 million current and former women employees of the giant retailer.

Joining Gary in conversation is guest Lewis Maltby, Director of the National Workrights Institute,

and author of Can They Do That? Retaking Our Fundamental Rights in the Workplace. Purchase the book on Amazon.com.

Lew is a U. Penn Law graduate, attorney, former HR director, and former ACLU project director. He is the definitive expert.

Mr. Maltby sounds a warning about hidden surprises in employment law that can hurt American workers. He discusses social media and how GPS-equipped, company-owned devices extend employers’ control over workers’ lives.

with The Bully-Free Workplace

with The Bully at Work

Videos can be purchased separately or together for a discounted price. A third option is to bundle one or both videos with the Namies' books -- The Bully-Free Workplace (for leaders and managers) and/or The Bully At Work (for individuals) for training participants.

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.”

You can read about the new book and order HERE.

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

Come meet Dr. Gary Namie and learn about workplace bullying, the phenomenon and its impact, in Tallahassee, FL. The free public event is hosted by the City of Tallahassee.

Wednesday May 18, 6 – 8 pm, at the Florida Sheriff’s Association, 2617 Mahan Drive.

More Information from Big Bend SHRM.

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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Typical Workplace Bullying Scenario

As bullied targets know all too well, they are not believed when they eventually tell their story. How can this happen? How can others be so incredulous? In this podcast, I describe the lengthy process that leads to the destruction of a thoroughly competent veteran worker.

Share this audio with disbelievers, whether they are in your family or at work. Hopefully, it helps. And as always, remember that targets did not invite the misery upon themselves. No rational person would.

Download Podcast 19 (in .mp3 format)

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

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.

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.”

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.

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.

Bentley made the superintendent give Spencer 24 hr. notice of termination for vague “shortcomings.” (Spencer had dared to uncover Bentley’s bullying and was interviewed by the local paper as an expert on the topic in schools. This obviously ticked off Bentley since all subsequent actions flowed from that single event.) Spencer defended himself the next day with his report of findings that several staff and administrators had been subjected to abusive conduct at the hands of the overreaching, zealous Bentley who fashions himself a populist education reformer (think Michele Bachman effective).

Taking a page right out of the bully quote book, said Bentley, “These are tough times and they require tough people to make tough decisions.” We’re having a national dialogue about civility and there is a person with a record of bullying insisting on his right to be tough. What are you teaching the children, Bentley???

We see that Bentley quotes Marine Corps Code on his private website with the first proviso: “Take responsibility for your actions, regardless of the outcome.”  OK, Bentley, time to live up to it and resign. Your actions — which would be revealed if you would stop trying to assassinate the messengers and stop the investigation — speak louder than your feeble attempt to dignify yourself by using a Latin quote.

Bentley invites comment by posting his personal phone and e-mail in the linked letter to the editor. WBI site visitors should take the arrogant bully up on his offer.

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

Perspective 1 is through the lens of people who know bullying from the inside, from the perspective of being the target of a bully’s wrath. They have the experience with their employer’s involvement with bullying. People who visit the WBI website and complete a front-page Instant Poll weigh in on a variety of issues. From their answers, we can describe the world through the lens of bullied targets because site visitors (98%) declare themselves to be bullied targets. The research samples are called “self-selected” samples. Despite the polls being “unscientific,” they provide the most useful information for other bullied targets and shed light on the bullying phenomenon.

Perspective 2 is the national snapshot captured when we commission a national poll. We did this in August for the 2010 WBI U.S. Workplace Bullying Survey. Our pollsters, Zogby International, polled 4,210 individuals selected to represent all adult Americans. The sample was a “scientific” one because of the sampling methodology used. It allows WBI to extrapolate the findings to the general U.S. adult population. Surveys like these meet the requirement for publication in scientific journals and at academic conferences. However, when half of the population has no knowledge of bullying (49.6% of the 2010 WBI-Zogby respondents claimed never witnessing and never being bullied), results can be misleading.

What a difference personal experience makes. For instance, we asked in our National Survey and also in one of our Instant Polls:

How engaged is your employer with preventing or correcting workplace bullying?

A large portion — 36.9% — of the national survey respondents said they were “not sure” about employer activity. We did not give the online survey respondents the same opportunity. We eliminated the “not sure” people and adjusted the percentages accordingly for a direct comparison between the two groups. Here are the differences.

For each response category, the percentages for the survey groups are given.

From the online targets’ survey, we see that 81% of employers are either doing nothing to address bullying or actually resisting action when requested to do something. The non-expert public direct comparison percentage is 44.8.

Most startling is how optimistic is the general public that employers are very engaged in the battle against workplace bullying. One-third of adult Americans gave employers credit for having specific policies and faithfully enforcing them. Perhaps this confidence assumes that since schools have been forced to deal with bullying, workplaces for adults would similarly address bullying. Of course, this statistic is not founded on truth. Bullied targets tell us that less than three percent (2.7%) of employers are actively engaged like the public thinks.

The two views about employer engagement are divergent. The differences are so great that the veracity of one or both groups warrants scrutiny. Who shall be trusted — the “average” American or a veteran of the bullying wars? We have 14 years experience with the latter group. They have proven themselves to us to be honest.

It also is true that one cannot imagine the intensity of the defense for the bully coupled with attempts to discredit and demoralize you, the target, until it happens to you. In other words, without direct experience, you might believe the promises that all employers care deeply about the health and safety of their workers. This is a naive belief not supported by the evidence — empirical (as shown in the above table) and anecdotal (if you talk to bullied targets).

The findings above illustrate a second point about the American public. Americans hold myths about employers as benevolent stewards of workers. They want to believe. And as most elections prove, they are susceptible to slogans, broad promises, and symbols. Facts and evidence pale by comparison. Americans are willing to ignore facts when their worldview dictates a contrary view. This indefensible ignorance about employer actions seems to have affected our own national survey.

It is critical that lawmakers understand the reality of the bullying phenomenon and employer resistance to voluntary action. A major point of our advocacy for the anti-bullying Healthy Workplace Bill is that without laws compelling action, employers will continue to ignore bullying. Employer lobbying groups promise that voluntary action will suffice. When lawmakers, the source of much of the over-hyped optimism and sloganeering in our culture, adopt the false belief that a third of employers are doing the right thing now, they will be reluctant to sponsor or support the legislation.

The danger of a society duped by untruths about workplace bullying is that action is stalled. The more credible truth about employer action is that very little is happening. Targets have told us so. And we see the resistance up close as consultants (Work Doctor®) who now focus our work with employers exclusively on eliminating workplace bullying in the workplace since 1998.

Gary Namie, PhD Research Director, Workplace Bullying Institute

© 2010 Workplace Bullying Institute

Zogby International was commissioned by the Workplace Bullying Institute to conduct an online survey of 4,210 adults from 8/18/10 to 8/23/10. The margin of error is +/- 2.2 percentage points. The sample was weighted to reflect accurate gender, age, and regional representation.

You can download a pdf version of this report.

Dr. Gary Namie, Workplace Bullying Institute Director commented on the Bennett accusations on Nov. 18 on CBC Radio Vancouver shows:  On the Coast with Stephen Quinn and All Points West with Jo-Ann Roberts. Welcome CBC listeners.

UPDATE: Check out a recording of this broadcast.

After a workplace bullying experience that left him physically sick, Brad Grinde quit his job as a South Florida executive and became a teacher. Grinde, 53, says he spent three years being told by a boss that he was “stupid” and “didn’t know how to manage people.”

“Why did I put up with that? I didn’t know what I was going through,” says Grinde, who was always a top performer and didn’t understand until changing careers that he had been the target of a workplace bully. That’s common says Gary Namie, who operates the Workplace Bullying Institute with his wife, Ruth, once the victim of an office bully. “The person doesn’t know they’re being bullied. They just accept it – ‘it’s just more of the same.’ We rationalize it,” Namie says.

It’s often when the victim becomes ill and goes to the family doctor that the physician tells the victim to leave the job, he says. Physical signs of stress can include nausea, profuse sweating, rapid heartbeat, elevated blood pressure and chest pain.

At some companies, bullying “becomes a management strategy,” Namie says. “It’s seen as motivational. Or, the bully is the friend of the executive.” Employees know that “if they dare to raise a fuss, they’ll be retaliated against.”

Stress during the economic recession has only made the office climate more ripe for bullying.

Thirty-five percent of adult Americans say they have experienced bullying in the workplace, first hand according to surveys conducted this year by Zogby International for the Workplace Bullying Institute. The surveys defined workplace bullying as “repeated, health harming abusive conduct committed by bosses and co-workers” and “repeated mistreatment, including sabotage by others, verbal abuse, threatening conduct, intimidation and humilitation.

Of the bullies, 62 percent are male and 38 percent are female, according to the Institute survey. Nearly 60 percent of the bully targets are women.

Namie says people rationalize workplace bullying like they once did domestic violence: “If it was so bad, he should have left.”

He says it’s important that workers who are targets of office bullies don’t suffer in silence. “

Learn to tell people about it and learn to ask for help. But don’t ask for help in an emotional way. Make a fiscal argument: ‘This is so costly. Why tolerate the turnover and the absenteeism?’ ”

If you have to leave, you’ve put the responsibility on your employer, he says. “At least you leave with your mental health intact.”

E. Carol Webster, a clinical psychologist consultant in Fort Lauderdale, says her recommendation to someone who is being bullied at work usually is to leave the job. “In certain cultures, it’s entrenched. People are walking around yelling and screaming,” she says.

Workers facing an office bully might try saying, “I don’t appreciate that tone of voice or the way you’re talking to me,” Webster says.

But in today’s volatile office environment, she would advise workers who feel they are targets of bullies to complain directly to human resources or the company’s Employee Assistance Program.

Employees in a bullying environment usually get worn down mentally and physically, she says. “It shuts the employee down, makes them feel paralyzed and fully empowers the bully,” Webster says.

Workers often don’t speak up. “I see a lot of shaming. Professional people feel humiliated they have to go through that and don’t seem to be able to do anything about it,” she says.

One place to start is by filing a complaint, which also is a wise legal move. While there are no laws against bullying, it often falls within other legal action such as harassment or discrimination charges, says Suzanne Bogdan, a partner with the law firm of Fisher & Phillips in Fort Lauderdale.

Employers need to be proactive in counseling and disciplining workplace bullies, she says. Many don’t, because the bullies at the office “are often your top performers.”

But she tells employers, “If they don’t get it — and a lot of people at that level don’t — and if you don’t get rid of them and there’s a claim, you’re going to have a problem.”

A company facing a harassment or discrimination charge might argue that the bully involved “wasn’t mean to women, he was mean to everyone,” she says. But, “in this day and age, a lot of times, judges won’t dismiss those claims.” Employers don’t want these cases to go to a jury, she says, because jurors will likely put themselves in the victim’s shoes and rule for the worker.

When the behavior is repeated and outrageous, there could be a legal claim of “intentional infliction of emotional distress,” Bogdan says. An example might be a bully who relentlessly picks on a co-worker with a medical or mental impairment by calling the person ugly names.

Grinde has put his bullying experience behind him and is now a teacher at a local middle school. He can now recognize the early warning signs of bullying, which helps him guide students.

”

My mistake was staying in the industry when I should have moved on,” he says. Even though his pay was higher as a manager, “it wasn’t worth the psychological stress.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Bullies aren’t just kids in the playground anymore — they are also adults in the workplace, or lurking online.

As anti-bullying advocates try to push through new legislation at the state level, several new studies have found that bullying affects different people in different ways. In the workplace, bullying is more likely to target educated employees, while victims of online abuse are more likely to feel depressed and isolated.

An estimated 53.5 million Americans are reportedly bullied at work, according to the Workplace Bullying Institute.

The non-profit organization released their 2010 Workplace Bullying Survey this month based on interviews of over 6,000 adults in August, along with data comparing the recent survey with one they conducted in 2007.

“There are many myths and misconceptions about workplace bullying advanced by disbelievers and opponents,” said the institute’s research director Dr. Gary Namie. “One portrayal is that bullying affects only the uneducated, unskilled workers.”

The participants were asked about experiencing mistreatment, sabotage, verbal abuse, threatening conduct, intimidation or humiliation at work, with 11 percent of workers with a college degree — and 7 percent of those without — responding that they are currently bullied in the workplace.

“Note that the respondents with more formal education reported a higher bullying rate,” added Namie.  “Not having a college degree was associated with a higher denial of bullying rate. Myth busted.”

Bullying, according to the organization, is “mistreatment severe enough to compromise a targeted worker’s health, jeopardize her or his job and career, and strain relationships with friends and family. It is a laser-focused, systematic campaign of interpersonal destruction. It has nothing to do with work itself. It is driven by the bully’s personal agenda and actually prevents work from getting done. It begins with one person singling out the target. Before long, the bully easily and swiftly recruits others to gang up on the target, which increases the sense of isolation.”

Writing on the institute’s website, Namie says that workplace bullies are “narcissistic” and “defensive,” and often target people who are effective, popular and helpful on the job — but who also may not be subservient, or not “sufficiently political.”

Among students, a survey by the National Institutes of Health found that depression is high among 6^th to 10^th graders who have been bullied through computers or cell phones.

“Notably, cyber victims reported higher depression than cyber bullies or bully-victims, which was not found in any other form of bullying,” the study authors wrote in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

They also report that “unlike traditional bullying which usually involves a face-to-face confrontation, cyber victims may not see or identify their harasser; as such, cyber victims may be more likely to feel isolated, dehumanized or helpless at the time of the attack.”

Bullying has been in the news lately because of the rise of teen suicides and deaths within the LGBT community.

States such as New York and Massachusetts recently passed anti-bullying legislation to protect children in the public schools.

Namie of the Workplace Bullying Institute is also directing a program to put similar protections in place at the state level for workers, via the Healthy Workplace Bill.

The proposed law was drafted by the Boston-based legal scholar David Yamada — but while it has been introduced in 17 U.S. states, has yet to be passed in any.

In Canada, the province of Saskatchewan banned workplace bullying in October 2007 under the Occupational Health and Safety Act.

VIDEO:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmPBPEWnhRE

Special Events for the Week

• OCT. 19. Thanks to the Texas Healthy Workplace Advocates, El Paso Mayor John Cook and the City Council will proclaim on October 19, Freedom from Bullies at Work Week! If you live in Texas, thank the Mayor. If you want to help Texas enact the anti-bullying Healthy Workplace Bill, contact the TX State Coordinator.

• OCT. 19, 5 pm (central time) on Pattie Porter’s Texas Conflict Coach radio show, the story of Kevin Morrissey’s suicide in response to his prolonged mistreatment at the Univ. of Virginia. Thank you, Pattie!

• OCT. 19 Wisconsin State Rep. Kelda Roys (sponsor of the state’s first bill, AB 894 in 2010) will be interviewed by Madison NBC-TV 15 news anchor Carleen Wild about her work in support of the legislation and 2011 plans. Air time is not yet set. Track the Wisconsin Healthy Workplace Advocates group for the schedule. If you live in Wisconsin, contact the WI State Coordinator to volunteer to help.

• OCT. 19 & OCT. 20 The California Healthy Workplace Advocates host Workplace Bullying Institute founders giving a public seminar, doors open at 6 pm, talk is 7 to 9 pm. Oct. 19 they will be in South San Francisco. Oct. 20 they will be in Sacramento. Come meet the Namies and CHWA volunteers to learn about legislative plans for 2011. If you live in California, contact the CA State Coordinator to volunteer to help.

• OCT. 23-24 BPW Saskatoon, Saskatchewan hosts a special conference for the community, “Powerless to Powerful.” Several workshops and presenters are scheduled. Topics include workplace bullying, the Ruth and Gary Namie will present, too.

Celebrate with us!

To help celebrate Freedom Week 2010 in Northern California, spend

An Evening with Ruth and Gary Namie

Tuesday October 19, South San Francisco – Grosvenor Best Western Hotel
Wednesday October 20, Sacramento — Radisson Sacramento

Each night the doors open at 6 pm.

The Drs. Namie will lead a seminar from 7 to 9 pm covering.
• Updates on the newest science related to bullying
• Status of the workplace bullying movement begun in Benicia in ’97
• Employer responses to bullying
• Status of the law in various states

Afterwards, members of California Healthy Workplace Advocates (CHWA) will be present to describe the 2011 campaign to enact the anti-bullying Healthy Workplace Bill.

S. San Francisco hotel location: 380 S. Airport Blvd., SSF
Sacramento hotel location: 500 Leisure Lane, Sacramento

Registration is $25 per person.
Inscribed copies of the Namies’ book, revised ’09 edition, The Bully At Work, must be preordered at time of registration.
$40 covers event + book

REGISTER ONLINE (using secure PayPal) or call with your credit card — 360-656-6630

Download and share the event flyer.

Make your own Freedom Week celebration/demonstration/project/rally.

Celebrate with us!

MARK YOUR CALENDAR!!

The Saskatoon chapter of Business & Professional Women hosts the

Powerless to Powerful Conference

Empowering ourselves against workplace bullying

Saturday-Sunday October 23-24

Travelodge, 106 Circle Drive, Saskatoon

Saskatchewan

Hon. D. Morgan, Q.C.

Invited Guests:

• Don Morgan, MLA, Minister of Labour Relations and Workplace Safety

• Peter J. Barnacle, Woloshyn & Co. Barristers, Labour & Employment specialist

• Dr. Ruth Namie & Dr. Gary Namie, Workplace Bullying Institute, presentations on Sat. Oct. 23

Ruth: (1) Impact of Bullying on Individuals, Family & Community; (2) Targets & Self-Defeating Strategies

Gary: (1) Identifying Bullying; (2) Converting Witnesses to Interveners; (3) Causes of Bullying in Societal & Organizational Traditions

• Shelle Rose Chavert & others

Online registration available here.

Listen to the audio report.

Read this Aug. 23 article: “The Rise and Fall of Ted Genoways” by the editor of ZYZZYVASPEAKS, a journal of West Coast writers & authors

UPDATE: As of Thurs. July 22, 93% of those who voted want a law! To elected state & federal legislators: if you are looking for a “populist” thing to do to help your beleaguered constituents, turn your back on SHRM and the Chamber of Commerce and do something for the “small people” (aka, the real persons, not Supreme Court “persons,” the corporations.)

For those new to the Workplace Bullying Institute, visit our Healthy Workplace Bill Legislative Campaign website to see the history of the anti-bullying bill movement led by State Coordinators and citizen lobbyists just like you. Sign up to help in your state.

This is an article describing an initiative of the American Arbitration Association, the ADR Consortium, and the Institute of Human Resources and Industrial Relations at Loyola University Chicago (Prof. Lamont Stallworth). They believe they can mitigate faculty bullying in colleges and universities. See full article and the related comments. Then read our opinion on the mix of mediation and workplace bullying.

Click here to listen: http://www.workplacebullying.org/media/audio.html

Check out Dr. Gary Namie in a variety of media appearances on the Workplace Bullying Institute’s YouTube Channel

Our YouTube videos provide education on the phenomenon of Workplace Bullying, guidance for targets of bullying, and suggestions for employers to create safe, healthy working environments.

The event was held Sunday Oct. 25, 2009 at Village Books, Bellingham, WA. Village Books, 1200 11th Street, Bellingham, WA‎, (360) 671-2626‎

Schools and student bullying are a September tradition. However, this year, there is a new twist. The Sioux City (Iowa) Community School District (SCCSD) is boldly taking steps to prevent bullying among teachers, staff and administrators. They are first district in the nation to launch an anti-bullying program for adult employees.

[Interested school district administrators are invited to call 360-656-6603]

The Workplace Bullying Institute (WBI) is consultant to the District with its nearly 2,000 employees and 28 schools. Through its consulting firm, Work Doctor, Inc., the WBI founders adapted their Blueprint for Workplace Bullying Prevention designed for corporate use to fit the public school district as employer. Work Doctor was the first consulting firm in the U.S. to directly design organizational solutions for workplace bullying.

Last October, with WBI’s help, a group of employees wrote the first-in-the-U.S. district bullying policy for adults. Bullying is defined in the policy as conduct that a reasonable person would find hostile, intimidating, offensive, humiliating or an abuse of authority. Accordingly, the alleged bullying must lead to negative consequences that affect an employee’s ability to perform his/her job.

SCCSD Human Resources Director Steve Crary said that the vision he and Superintendent Dr. Paul Gausman share is “to ensure our district is free of all forms of bullying and to create a respectful climate in our workplace.”

The policy writing group also created a team of current and former district employees, the Bullying Prevention Advocates (BPA), to serve as peer experts on workplace bullying. They will also educate staff and sustain the program in a variety of ways. The BPA group is likely more important than the policy alone because the group is central to creating a school culture intolerant of bullying among adults.

School board member John Meyers told the Sioux City Journal that “the initiative will generate positive role models for our students … if we’re asking students to do something we wouldn’t do ourselves, we’re not being honorable.”

WBI founders and consultants, assisted by WBI University graduate and teacher expert Carrie Clark, lead 3 days of intensive training for the BPA team in Sioux City on Sept. 15-17.

New York-based documentary filmmakers Lee Hirsch and Cynthia Lowen are featuring the WBI project in their forthcoming film, “The Bullying Project” that explores bullying’s impact across the lifespan from childhood through adulthood. Hirsch’s previous film, “Amandla!,” won awards at Sundance and an Emmy Award.

Dr. Alan Heisterkamp of the Waitt Institute for Violence Prevention is the liaison for this and other violence reduction-prevention programs at SCCSD. WIVP also partnered in 2007 with WBI to conduct the first scientific survey of all adult Americans regarding workplace bullying. WIVP and its president, Cindy Waitt, were responsible for this national project to serve as the prototype of how school districts can foster a bullying-free environment for adults as well as students.

“Schools are workplaces, too,” said Dr, Ruth Namie, WBI co-founder and project consultant. “Success here in Sioux City could launch a national movement to rid schools of bullying for adults as well as children.”

School districts interested in following the Sioux City model are invited to visit the Work Doctor website (the Drs. Namie consulting firm) or call 360-656-6603.

Visit the revised Work Doctor website.

[See post to watch Flash video]