A Noxious Environment: Bullying in the Workplace

by Andrea Newell (Grand Rapids, MI)

Have you ever berated an employee or colleague in front of other employees? Told an employee they were lucky to have a job at all? Used a minor mistake to demonstrate to others how incompetent you think that employee or colleague is? Taken credit for another colleague or employee’s work? Used personal information about a colleague or an employee against them in a work setting? Commented negatively on another employee’s style of dress in front of others (even though it was within the dress code)? Set an impossible goal for an employee without giving them adequate instruction or direction? If you answered “yes” to one or more of these questions, you might be a workplace bully.

According to The Workplace Bullying Institute (WBI), workplace bullying is defined as, “repeated, health-harming mistreatment of one or more persons by one or more perpetrators that takes one or more of the following forms: verbal abuse, offensive conduct/behaviors (including nonverbal) which are threatening, humiliating or intimidating, and work interference (sabotage) which prevents work from getting done.”

WBI lists these categories of mistreatment:

• Verbal abuse (shouting, swearing, name calling, malicious sarcasm, or threats to safety

• Behaviors/actions (public or private that are threatening, intimidating, humiliating, hostile, offensive, or inappropriately cruel conduct)

• Abuse of authority (underserved evaluations, denial of advancement, stealing credit, tarnished reputation, arbitrary instructions, or unsafe assignments)

• Interference with work performance (sabotage, undermining, or ensuring failure)

• Destruction of workplace relationships (among coworkers, bosses, or customers)

In a 2007 survey, WBI reported that 34% of American workers (an estimated 54 million people) have been bullied at work and claims that bullying affects half (49%) of American workers (71 million people) when witnesses are included. Surprisingly, bullying is an equal-opportunity character flaw. Although men make up the highest number of bullies (60%), women (40%) are not immune. In fact, women are the most affected—targeted 57% of the time. What is most disturbing is that when women are the bullies, 71% of their targets are other women.

Bullying can leave lasting scars. It can make you feel powerless, anxious, and erode your self-confidence. Years later, women describe still feeling shaky, upset and angry when they look back on the experience. Women have described bullying behavior in all types of working environments (academia, entertainment, non-profit, healthcare, law, business). A female employee sustained a serious, work-related injury and subsequently discovered she was pregnant. Due to her work-related injury, she experienced pain working on the computer and became unable to walk, requiring physical therapy. Her female manager increased her workload and made sarcastic remarks about her pregnancy. At the same time, the manager told the employee that her absences due to her physical therapy and prenatal doctor’s appointments were negatively affecting her job performance. The employee’s stress and unhappiness kept building until her concerned doctor ordered her to go on bedrest during the final month of her pregnancy.

A female business owner refused to allow any of her employees (all women) to leave the building for lunch, claiming that eating together was a bonding experience. She held frequent meetings to tell her employees how incompetent they were and how much she had to help them do their jobs. The employees were not allowed to leave until dismissed, although she made them wait while she placed and received personal calls during these meetings. She routinely tracked down employees at their personal appointments and demanded they come to the phone, while telling whoever answered the phone at the doctor or hair salon that she was checking to see if they really had an appointment or if they lied about it.

Another female employee was hired at a family products company and excelled under her female manager. Later she was moved into another group under another manager who didn’t like her previous manager. This manager immediately told the worker that she was unable to do her job because she wasn’t a parent. The worker complained to HR and the manager was reprimanded. Subsequently, the manager berated the employee at every opportunity. If the employee would ask a question to clarify an assignment, the manager would respond, “It’s easy for everyone else to grasp, I don’t know why it’s so hard for you.” Several other people have quit, citing this manager as the reason, but the company has taken no action. One former employee still has nightmares about it five years later.

Although WBI reports that 72% of bullies are bosses, bullying does occur between colleagues. Women are also more likely than men to involve others in their bullying. One female worker reported that she was targeted by a “clique” of women at work—even physically knocked into by one woman—and finally had to get HR involved to resolve the issue. Another woman was accidentally added to an IM chat where her coworkers were complaining about her and calling her names. She saved the chat and forwarded it to her manager, requesting that she address it. Her manager met with her coworkers and then called her into her office. In front of the employees who participated in the chat, the manager told the employee that the situation wouldn’t have occurred if she would try harder to get along with everyone else. No action was taken against the other employees.

What makes someone turn into a bully? There are many possible contributing factors, including workplace pressure, hard economic times, and having a bullying boss themselves at some point in their career. Some may have been a schoolyard bullies as children and never learned how to relate to other women. One female manager who suffered under two previous bullying managers said, “I was winning great business and running large teams, but as the pressure on me increased to grow the firm, I, too, became a bully. But I was fortunate—a very strong, wise manager made me understand that I needed to change my management style. I was mortified to think that I was exhibiting the same behavior that I had loathed in those other bullying managers, and I was determined not to be that way. Bullying can damage your career, but, if you’re lucky, someone can break the chain.”

Why would women exhibit bullying behavior? Cheryl Dellasega, author of Mean Girls Grown Up, has studied the effects of relational aggression—defined as “the use of behaviors, rather than fists, to hurt”—and places women into three categories: the aggressor, the bystander, and the victim. All three, she says, are hurt by bullying in separate ways. “The good news,” Dellasega says, “is that behavior can change. Women can learn a better way to interact with each other.” Her program, Camp Ophelia, helps young girls learn to relate to each other in a healthy way at an early age. Dellasega has hope that the next generation will be better. “Awareness is the first step to changing behavior,” she says.

Kathi Elster, a business strategist for 20 years, says women tend to make it personal. She and her partner, psychotherapist Katherine Crowley, help businesses resolve their difficulties. “In the beginning we went in to solve their business problems, but all we saw were personal problems.” Their book, Working for You is Killing Me is filled with case studies and advice on how to deal with various workplace bullying situations. Although workplace bullying is nothing new, our current economic environment only aggravates the problem. Workforces are leaner, people are more desperate to keep their jobs, and the pressure is on to visually contribute to the company in order to stay. These conditions are ripe for bullying.

Due to the high probability of coming into contact with a bully at some point in your career, workplace consultant Lynn Taylor advocates learning how to cope with bullies. She is quick to state that egregious bullying is never acceptable, but she has a strategy for dealing with the subtler bully. This person might not be aware of the effect their behavior is having on other employees, and, with some coaching, your professional relationship could improve. In her book, Taming Your Terrible Office Tyrant (TOT) Taylor defines her CALM approach: Communicate. Anticipate. Laugh. Manage. Begin by communicating with your boss and coworkers. Anticipate the best time to do this (perhaps not right before a deadline when people are stressed). Try to inject some levity into the conversation to take the sting out of any criticism, and “manage up” by beginning the conversation with something positive, lay out the negative objectively, and end on another positive note.

What is the difference between bullying and a tough management style? Good question. There is a fine line between toughness and bullying, and there are many tough (but fair) managers in workplaces all over the U.S. that shouldn’t be mistaken for bullies. Even though bullying is not illegal, yet, companies would be smart to institute their own policies about what is and what isn’t acceptable behavior, and ensure that HR departments and upper management enforce it. The problem is that unless witnesses are willing to come forward, bullying is a she-said, she-said issue, much of it taking place behind closed doors.

WBI reports that in 62% of cases, when employers were made aware of the situation, they either made it worse or ignored it. This deters employees from coming forward and reporting the behavior for fear of retribution. 77% (combined percentages) of targets are fired, quit, or change jobs to escape the situation. The targeted employees in each of these stories quit the job they were in when they were being bullied.

Since turnover is a substantial cost for companies,this translates into a big problem. Taylor adds, “Managers may get away with it in the short term, but in the long term, it hurts companies.” When the economy rebounds and fear of unemployment no longer binds employees, they will leave abusive managers in droves. “CEOs should absolutely be aware of what’s going on their own companies and take these reports seriously,” Taylor says.

In addition to employee turnover, bullying can cause other problems like absenteeism and stress-related illnesses. Perhaps the farthest reaching consequence for companies is one that can’t be immediately measured–the loss of reputation. People—especially unhappy people—talk. And in our connected society, they don’t just tell their friends about their unhappiness, they tell the world–online. As anyone in PR can tell you, positive stories do spread, but negative stories multiply and grow—especially when fueled by more than one account. A search on the social networking site, Facebook, returned more than 500 results for the term “bullying” and 90 results for “workplace bullying,” adding up to thousands of group members—each with a voice and a story.

In our current economic situation it is more important than ever for companies to retain and recruit talented employees. The companies listed in Fortune Magazine’s 100 Best Companies to Work For (2009) article demonstrate that they care about their employees, whether they show it by offering health and wellness programs, family-friendly schedules, on-site daycare, team-building, or just plain employee appreciation. A company that allows bullying to flourish may show a short-term gain, but over time, workplace bullying causes long-term damage to companies as well as individuals.