Workplace Bullying Could Mean the Death of Your Organization

With the news of Miami Dolphin's Richie Incognito's bullying of Jonathan Martin dominating sport's news right now, it's easy to dismiss the bullying as part of the sport's locker room and not pertinent to the break rooms, warehouses and cubicles of the regular business world. However, there is evidence of bullying in nearly every workplace and while it isn't as bold or obvious as what occurred in the Incognito case, it is every bit as damaging and insidious.

How does workplace bullying manifest itself? Well, workplace bullies will steal your work, take credit for your ideas, exclude you from meetings or social events, tell jokes at your expense, intimidate you physically, sabotaging your work, yell at you, use sarcasm, gossip or spread rumors about you, haze you or conduct humiliating initiations, tease you mercilessly among other behaviors.

If the bully is a manager they could belittle your work, give unjustly negative performance appraisals, give you unwarranted discipline, refuse to promote you when you deserve it, give you the worst jobs or duties, hold you to different standards than your peers, micromanageyou, hold you to impossible standards or demand an unreasonable level of work get completed just to name a few examples.

Who are workplace bullies? 75% of the time they are managers or supervisors. Unfortunately, this makes complaining difficult. If your manager is the bully, then it leaves workers feeling powerless to combat it and guess what happens? The organization loses good employees and the culture at work stifles creativity and innovation. In addition, less work gets accomplished and workers suffer from any number of physical and emotional healthcare conditions.

So how is workplace bullying stopped? The only way to stop workplace bullying is for upper management to take it seriously. Everyone must receive workplace bullying prevention training that outlines what bullying training so that have a clear definition of what it is and why it is unacceptable. Employees must feel empowered to report bullying without fear of retribution. They need to know that you understand the situation and that you take it seriously. Workplace bullies need to disciplined (and if needed) terminated.

Bullying is a behavior that can eat an organization alive from the inside. The effect on workplace productivity and efficiency is dramatic. Workplaces with a culture of bullying lose good employees and have more absences and sick days. These organizations are a toxic place to work and allowing them to fester will only have negative results on the health of a business. Perhaps, even leading to the death of the company.