When most people think of bullying, their minds drift to schoolyard battles long past. However, bullying in the workplace is a real problem that can make your employees feel as awful as those teenagers getting slammed into lockers. If you allow bullying to occur in your company, it can destroy your company’s culture as well as employee morale.
“A bullied employee is not a happy employee,” says Craig W. Snethen, attorney at law with Jackson Lewis LLP.
Legislation has been introduced in some states that would make it unlawful to subject an employee to an abusive work environment. For instance, if an employee resigns and claims that he or she was constructively discharged due to an intolerably abusive working environment, evidence of bullying can help support the employee’s claim.
Smart Business spoke with Snethen about how employers can curb bullying in the workplace and some of the potential liabilities involved.
What is considered bullying in the workplace?
Bullying has been defined as a systematic campaign of interpersonal destruction that jeopardizes a target’s health and/or career. It’s not mere incivility or rudeness. Bullying is a non-physical, non-homicidal form of violence.
Behaviors that may count as bullying, if they occur repeatedly for more than six months, include: (1) giving the ‘silent treatment;’ (2) refusal of requests for assistance; (3) receiving little or no feedback on performance; (4) subjection to pranks; (5) taking/destroying resources needed by the target to perform his/her job; and/or (6) the target doesn’t get praise to which he or she is entitled.
Why should employers be concerned about bullying in the workplace?
Generally, employers are and should be concerned about harassment and discrimination in the workplace. To be illegal and actionable in court, harassment or discrimination must violate the target’s civil rights. Therefore, the target must be in a ‘protected status’ group, such as race, gender, ethnicity, religion, national origin, age, disability, or sexual orientation.
By contrast, bullying is much broader than harassment or discrimination. Indeed, only 20 percent of bullying cases could potentially qualify as discrimination. In other words, bullying is ‘status blind.’ From a purely practical standpoint, however, a bullied employee is not a happy employee. Irrespective of whether the employee might have an actionable claim of harassment or discrimination, the employee may act out against the bullying in other ways, such as engaging in workplace violence and/or sabotage.
