The Bully at Work

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A Week for Support, Inspiration, Peace & Health

Freedom from Workplace Bullies Week is a chance to break though the shame and silence surrounding bullying. It is a week to be daring and bold. The following are tips for how you can celebrate Freedom Week.

Bullied Targets

Make this the time to break your silence. Tell co-workers, friends, and family. Ask for help. Put your health first. Read the voluminous research on health harm related to unremitting exposure to stress from bullying. Schedule an appointment with a mental health professional who understands bullying (see our Selection Guide). Talk to an attorney for one hour to see if you have any legal recourse. Refuse to believe the lies told about you and the shameful way you have been abandoned. It is not about you; it's the perpetrator's need to control others. Commit to either finding a new job or planning a fight-back strategy to reclaim your dignity. Call your state senator and state representative to ask her or him to sponsor the WBI Healthy Workplace Bill.

Spouses, Partners & Friends

Give unconditional positive support to the targets. Believe them. Provide needed respite from the toxic, stressful world of work targets endure. Remind them of who they were before bullying injured them.

Employers

Learn how bullying is an unsustainable cost. Look beyond personalities as causes to see how the workplace culture and environment make your organization prone to bullying. Commit to correcting and preventing it. Adopt the WBI/Work Doctor Blueprint to Prevent Workplace Bullying.

Mental Health Professionals

Learn about bullying at work. Trust what abuse victims tell you. Stop holding targeted clients responsible for the unsolicited psychological violence they endure. Understand how work environments, not personal flaws, explain health-harming mistreatment. Stop committing the fundamental attribution error. Believe that there are people as evil as have been described to you. Learn more about workplace bullying at WBI University so you can specialize. We will help market your services.

Unions

Help bullied members. Stop defending abusive members. Adopt the prevention of workplace bullying as an organizing tool. Schedule training for members to become internal experts in bullying so they can help member-coworkers. Make a bullying-free, safe workplace a goal for members.

School Administrators

Learn about the WBI Workplace Bullying in Schools project, begun in Iowa, to address bullying among adult employees -- teachers and staff. Complement your student bullying with the program that reduces your risk exposure while creating a healthy work environment to optimize student success.

Legislators

Sponsor the WBI Healthy Workplace Bill in your state. 183 state lawmakers already have already done so in 16 states. Listen to your constituentsŐ tales of workplace abuse. Add this bill to your populist - for the people - agenda.