Bullying in the workplace is
more serious than getting
your books dumped in the hallway at school or getting
shoved into a mud puddle at
recess.
It’s a problem that affects as
many as 33,000 American workers every week, says Timothy
Dimoff, but employers aren’t
treating it as a major issue.
“Companies are allowing bullying to take place, and they are
viewing it as a minor issue, so
they are not giving it the proper
attention,” Dimoff says.
Bullying is defined as anything
you do to intimidate someone,
short of physically harming
them, says Dimoff, a nationally
renowned expert on workplace
violence and founder, president
and CEO at SACS Consulting &
Investigative Services Inc.
“It’s ignoring them, excluding
them, yelling at them, making
fun of them, mocking them,
downgrading them in front of
people,” Dimoff says.
Part of the problem with
stopping bullying is that the
behavior is not always easy to
identify.
“You can have employees who
bully other employees with very
subtle things,” Dimoff says.
“They exclude the employee
from going to lunch with a
group of other employees. They
convince other employees to
ignore another employee. That
affects a worker because they
start to think no one wants to
work with them.”
And that can lead you to lose
a valuable employee, because
an employee who is being bullied is much more likely to quit.
“A victim needs and wants to
get away from it and has a hard
time coming back to that environment,” Dimoff says.
And that is often the goal of
those doing the bullying.
“They want to break that person down and eventually, if they
can drive that person out of the
job, they do,” Dimoff says.
How can you prevent bullying
in the workplace? Talk openly
with your employees about
what bullying is and provide
them with training programs
that make it clear what constitutes bullying. That training can
be in the form of formal programs conducted by experts or
through more informal group
discussions during lunch.
Then make it clear that bullying and harassment will not be
tolerated in any form. Post notices, distribute messages
that state your position on bullying and talk to employees about
how to keep it out of the work-place.
You also need to promote an
open environment that gives
employees a sense that they are
not alone in your organization.
And make yourself accessible
and willing to engage employees in conversation, both about
work and nonwork topics.
But you can’t monitor everything yourself. Dimoff says you
also need to train supervisors to
recognize bullying and work-place harassment. And create a
system for reporting incidents
of bullying by designating a person whom employees feel comfortable approaching to discuss
the problem.
“Over 40 percent of the cases
are never reported because the
employee doesn’t feel like anybody is going to take them seriously,” Dimoff says. “The CEO
has to be strong. They need to
implement a strict anti-bullying
policy, and they really need to
say we’re serious about this,
and then they need to carry it
out.”
But even after you’ve implemented all these steps, some
employees still may not feel
comfortable talking to a supervisor about being bullied, especially if it’s the supervisor who is
doing the bullying. To overcome
that, create alternative reporting
mechanisms — such as hiring a
company that fields complaints
— so that employees being bullied can report it anonymously.
By doing everything you can
to eliminate bullying in the
workplace, you’ll create an
environment where everyone
is respected and where
employees want to be.
Do your part
Employees who are leaving
their jobs no longer have a reason to fear repercussions over
accusations of bullying, making
the exit interview a perfect time
to gauge what’s going on at your
company.
People who have quit their
jobs have nothing to lose, so
take the opportunity to find out
why they are leaving.
“People don’t leave companies
they are happy at,” says Timothy
Dimoff, founder, president and
CEO at SACS Consulting &
Investigative Services Inc.
“Price becomes very low on the
totem pole if someone is happy
with their work environment.
The indicators are there. You
just need to stop and listen.”
Gathering information on what
is going on can keep you from
making a mistake with an
employee who you may view as
a poor worker.
“Companies are terminating
people that potentially are victims of workplace bullying,”
Dimoff says. “They don’t realize
the reason their productivity is
down and absenteeism is up and
their attitude has been hampered is because they are being
abused. When you ignore bullying, all it does is encourage the
perpetrator to do more because
you’ve now trained them that
they can get away with it.”
HOW TO REACH: SACS Consulting & Investigative Services Inc., (330) 255-1101 or
www.sacsconsulting.com
