Bullying - It's not just a playground thing

The Workplace Bullying Institute—yes, it really exists, and despite its name, it is actually anti-bullying—commissioned a study that found that 37 percent of the U.S. workforce have experienced bullying at work at least once in their life. With numbers that high, bullying is far more widespread an issue in the workplace than sexual harassment. While most organizations have policies to deal with sexual harassment, only a scant minority have policies in place to deal with bullying.

Momentum is building to pass laws and regulations to deal with bullying if employers won't police themselves. Unchecked workplace bullying creates so much discontent and stress with its accompanying feelings of disengagement by the victim that it would be in an employer's best economic interest to develop a policy without waiting to be forced into it by a law. With statistics available that show bullying eventually results in economic losses, it at first seems surprising that more companies have not come out with anti-bullying policies.

At least part of the problem is that there are different kinds of bullies. A law might help a worker have legal recourse with aggressive bullies, but what about the backstabbing and manipulative bullies? The bottom line is that onsite employers and managers need to be nipping bullying tendencies in the bud and not waiting until problems spiral so far out of control that the legislature attempts to do their job for them.

Here are some suggestions on how to get started:

Since manipulative behaviors are accompanied by a lack of respect for others, make "Respect" one of your company's core values. Train managers in the character of respect and take a few minutes to teach about respect at all employee meetings.

Management needs to be aware of bullies. That means realizing that manipulative behaviors don't have to display anger or overt threats; passive aggressive bullies exist. It means taking every report seriously and not excusing it without first investigating.

When bullying behaviors are reported, investigate and look for patterns. Take a friendly face-to-face approach with the accused bully. Do they seem real and transparent or not? Do comments from other co-workers tend to fall along the same lines?

Train the entire staff in conflict resolution. It's a skill all employees can benefit from, not just upper management.

Conduct exit interviews when employees leave. You'll get some of your most candid appraisals from exit interviews.