management zone

When the Schoolyard Bully Graduates

Peter de Jager

Unfortunately, bullying isn’t a childhood behaviour restricted to the schoolyard and terrifying moments when the teacher isn’t looking. It’s an anti-social behaviour that persists into adulthood. Bullies may even attain positions of responsibility and power, perhaps because their aggressive behaviour is perceived as a management strength.

Bullying is somewhat difficult to define. At the root, it’s an abuse of power. It is perpetuated through the use of force, whether it is the ability of the schoolyard thug to generate fear of pain, or that of a manager with the ability to terminate our employment.

The key phrase is “an abuse of power.” The role of management always includes the ability to terminate employment of an individual, but a bully uses that ability as a threat to gain unreasonable control over other individuals. Sometimes, the violation of dignity is obvious as in many forms of sexual harassment, other times the abuse is more subtle, even debatable. Consider the following example:

It is obvious to the manager that the employee is more afraid of the thought of her manager getting upset, than she is of the pain she’s enduring.

Is this the act of a dedicated employee willing to go above and beyond the call of duty to meet a deadline? Or, is it an example of an abuse of power? Personally, I cannot think of any deadline in a normal office environment that could justify the type of fear capable of chaining a seriously ill employee to a desk.

What is also interesting is that the “bullying” manager isn’t even present. They have created a poisonous office environment that poses a threat even when they are absent. This observation highlights that bullying does not have to threaten physical violence. Economic violence, executed at a later date, is as much an abuse of power as a punch on the arm.

The word “fear” is important to this discussion. I suffer from migraine headaches and the pain is often debilitating. I’ve worked through a headache from time to time to meet a deadline, but I did so out of a sense of responsibility, and certainly never out of fear of losing my job.

It should be obvious that “fear” has no legitimate place in the workplace. However, if HR headlines and anecdotes contain any grain of truth, bullies thrive and prosper in both the rank and file and management. The cost of bullying to the organization is significant, even if it is difficult to measure. How many sick days can we attribute to a fear of going to the office? What percentage of employee turnover is due to people simply not liking their place of work, and seeking out a safer work environment? How many people don’t apply to your posted positions because they’ve “heard stories?”

If neither the existence of bullies, nor the above examples of hidden costs, are convincing enough to force us to impose – and strictly enforce – an anti-bullying policy in our organizations, then perhaps some hard cold figures will do the trick.

An employee of the Government of Newfoundland was harassed, bullied, and subjected to emotional and physical violence by fellow employees with the full knowledge of management. The case went to court, and the employee was awarded damages of almost $875,000.

The arbitrator pointed to several failings of the employer, two of which should suffice to make the case that employers have responsibility for bullying in the workplace:

• the employer allowed and did nothing to stop the campaign of harassment; and
• the employer ignored several complaints regarding the harassment, and when it did respond, its actions were insufficient.

Predatory behaviours have no place in the school yard or the work environment. Left unchecked, the consequences range from the invisible, to tragic headlines on the evening news.

The solution is to create policies that define the unacceptable forms of behaviour and the will to investigate, and take action if necessary on all complaints of harassment and bullying. MW

From the March 2005 issue of Municipal World

Check out Peter’s bio on the Municipal World website or visit him at www.technobility.com.

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Page last modified on April 26, 2006, at 07:30 PM