If you are a member of management, yes.
If you are an employee, don’t count on it.
In response to my article “Bully Boss: What do you Think?” one of our colleagues forwarded me a link to this excellent website The Workplace Bullying Institute (WBI). If you have a concern about bullying in your workplace I would encourage you to check it out. David Yamada’s blog Minding the Workplace is another source worth checking out.
The WBI makes this point in their FAQ about what you might expect if you report a bully to senior management:
Instead of correcting the problem you brought to its attention, your employer circled the wagons to defend the bully. You were retaliated against. You were the bearer of bad news, daring to expose truths about incompetence or illegality. You were branded the “troublemaker.” Most of the time the bully is a manager (72%). Your report made you an adversary. Bullies enjoy support from the top. You threatened to hold someone accountable who is beloved by senior management. He or she was hired because of aggressive tendencies (that simply looked like ambition) or the bully was following orders from the top. You probably reported the problem to HR or personnel thinking help was forthcoming. Unless the misconduct is illegal, HR does not have to do anything. HR is a management support function. Do not treat HR as employee advocates.
Unless HR has a seat at the roundtable in your company, employees are probably treated as a cost instead of an asset. HR usually functions as the organizational police that keep employees in line and protect management from their opportunistic inclinations.
Does your employer have an HR policy on bullying to go with its policy on harassment? Probably not.
You should follow me on twitter here.
The sad fact is that many people with abusive or merely incompetent bosses have no place to turn for support. That’s why many of them leave.
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Bret L. Simmons Reply:
September 21st, 2009 at 8:27 pm
Incompetence is bad enough, abuse is another thing in my book. This is another one of those things where organizations should be policing themselves. In the absence of that, legislation will come. Then they will whine about it. This one is a no-brainer and they should be much more proactive. Thanks, Wally! Bret
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I think it’s sad that HR is usually not on your side as an employee. I think it would benefit the organization if HR had the added capacity to investigate claims of bullying and find remedies for it. After all, isn’t it in the best interest of the company to provide an environment where employees can be most productive?
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Bret L. Simmons Reply:
September 21st, 2009 at 8:28 pm
Concur 100% Ajo. Seems so easy for us to see. I don’t understand why more leaders don’t make the simple connection. Thanks! Bret
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Bret, many organizations have an ombudsman for this reason. This individual is not (or shoudn’t be) in HR or a member of management. They are a neutral party who is there to intervene, negotiate, converse, and help in such situations.
Lucky are the individuals who work in an organization that has such an ombudsman. Its good for the organization as well – in possibly preventing lawsuits due to such bad behavior on the part of managers.
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Bret L. Simmons Reply:
September 22nd, 2009 at 6:29 am
Mary Jo, in your experience, when an organization has an ombudsman is it an effective program to stop workplace bullying? The ombudsman does not change the fact that the behavior is usually not covered in a policy and not illegal. Thanks! Bret
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Bret,
An ombudsman can be an effective program for all sorts of workplace issues including bullying IF the program is provided the proper latitude and reporting relationship.
In my experience working with an excellent ombudsman, they can be an employee advocate where there isn’t one. In other cases, they can provide a balance between what management wants and what the employee wants as a (sort of) neutral third party.
The ombudsman’s job is to intervene confidentially. They will investigate the situation (talking to parties involved) and make a recommendation for resolution. In some situations, the ombudsman reports to the CEO, providing weight to the recommendations made.
Having worked in HR, I understand that not everything can be covered by policy. Harsh as this may sound, bullying may be one of those things (I’d love to hear from HR practitioners on current thinking in this regard; what degree of verbal abuse constitutes bullying? Who decides?). We may think we know it when we see it, but having had the “opportunity” to work with situations like this, there are often two sides to every story, making these very difficult situations to resolve.
The ombudsman, when effective, can dig through the crap in a way that others in the organization cannot.
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Bret L. Simmons Reply:
September 22nd, 2009 at 8:54 am
I appreciate what you are saying, MJ. I think the bottom line would be what happens when someone takes a case of bullying to the ombudsman in a company. If the issue is resolved and the bullying is dealt with, then it could be an effective program. If the issue is not resolved, the bullying continues, it is just another HR smokescreen (must admit my bias is not in favor of HR). Thanks for the clarification! Bret
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I think Mary Jo brings up an excellent point relating to workplace bullying – who decides where the line for “abuse” is? The other thing that makes workplace bullying so insidious and hard to define is the cumulative nature of it. It’s not a single event, but a series that including things like verbal threats, public and private humiliation, spreading rumors, keeping information the employee needs to do their job, exclusion. Many of these events can be easily explained away (I forgot to invite her to the meeting. She’s too sensitive. I didn’t mean the comment that way.)
At it’s core, workplace bullying is psychological abuse. I didn’t recognize it was happening to me until 6 months into it. By then, I was so turned around I truly believed I was crazy and even deserved my treatment. That’s a hard thing to admit. But the messages can be so constant and consistent with the bully turning everything around so you are the problem. It truly is hard to know which end is up. And as the article Bret quoted said, often, the system protects the bully not the target. This causes the target to question themselves even more and creates secondary wounding.
It is important that “we” come to an agreement as to what defines workplace bullying. This will give us a starting point to be able to educate and work to eradicate it. Discussions, such as these, are so important to raise awareness to this problem. As a former target, I can say this: if you see or even suspect someone is being bullied, reach out to them. Let them know they are not alone. Document what you observe. As leaders, we need to define what is means to have a respectful, harassment- and bully-free workplace and then hold people accountable to those standards. Create a conflict resolution process that includes a neutral third-party (or ombudsman). We all deserve to feel safe – physically, emotionally, and spiritually – at work.
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Bret L. Simmons Reply:
September 22nd, 2009 at 9:11 am
Catherine, I appreciate you sharing this. You raise some great points, especially about the abuse being psychological. That does make it tough to define, and of course scarier for those that would want to define it in a policy. I’m not a big fan of policy, but it does show a willingness to recognize and issue and an attempt to address it. It is also a leadership issue at its core. If a leader observes or has reason to believe a bully is in the group, they need to address it quickly and without ambiguity. Thanks! Bret
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I took your “Bully HR Policy” challenge and alas, my company seems to have failed. However, we scored off the charts on Harassment Policies scale…we are definitely a no hugging or touching in any way kind of company (air high fives all around).
In my search, I scoured the employee handbook… nothing. I asked HR and here’s the response I got: “Professional behavior is really covered under our Code of Business Conduct and Ethics policy. We don’t have a policy specific to bullying because the Business Conduct policy covers a lot.” Apparently, as long as I am acting in a professional and ethical manner, I can’t be a bully. Who knew!?
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Bret L. Simmons Reply:
September 23rd, 2009 at 4:45 pm
Wow, that is very insightful. I think bullying should be covered explicitly in a code of conduct policy, if not a separate policy. If it is not, I’m sorry to say, the company is willing to and perhaps already has tollerated bullying. Thanks! Bret
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We have had tremendous problem in my workplace. The management team values this person’s knowledge but his workplace behavior has been bad for years. The person has been getting poor reviews from the team over a number of years but his Boss has pretty much said he is not going anywhere.
Not only does this make non-management unhappy with their boss but also causes a great deal of unhappiness and lack of respect for that entire management team who condones the behavior. And yes, turnover is the result.
I skimmed a book at B & N the other day entitled “The No Asshole Rule” that addresses the problems these issues have in the workplace. Hope to read it in entirely in the near future.
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Bret L. Simmons Reply:
October 9th, 2009 at 11:29 pm
Dino, that book you picked up by Bob Sutton called “The No Asshole Rule” is a great one. I highly recommend it. Tough situation you have there. My advice is to dust off your resume, work your network, and look hard for other options. Life is too short to spend it working for assholes. Thanks! Bret
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Hi Bret, Excellent post and comments.
I worked for a company where management revered bullying and turned it into an art. But they euphemistically referred to it as “constructive criticism” rather than “bullying.”
The distinction between the terms is important and was unrecognized by the people in the company whose opinions counted the most. Bullying is aggressive behavior designed to intimidate people who are weaker. Constructive criticism isn’t about intimidation but rather about sharing an opinion about what is wrong about someone’s behavior.
Many of the managers at this company reminded me of the children in William Golding’s book Lord of the Flies. They were so wrapped up in their quest for power and glory, they were acting like children.
Would appealing to HR have helped an employee who was being bullied? No way. It would have been the stupidest move possible. HR was being bullied too. They knew their job depended on placating the bullies.
I think upper management was reluctant to tamper with this aggressive behavior out of fear that it would decrease business results.
After a series of lawsuits, a period of poor business results, and a key set of bullies left the company, a new CEO created initiatives to instill more adult-like behavior. Has this eliminated the bullying? No. This company will spend years reaping the behaviors that it so carefully sowed.
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Bret L. Simmons Reply:
October 10th, 2009 at 1:49 pm
Steve, this is an extremely insightful contribution. So correct that bullying is about power and there is no motivation to help. I’m glad you bring up the issue of adult like behavior. In my role as an educator I run into folks from time to time that say “don’t you know we are all adults?” Well, I’m sorry, but I have found that is just not true. It is usually the ones that feel the need to claim it that are the least likely to be behaving as an adult. Thanks! Bret
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