Over 53 million Americans, 35 percent of the U.S. workforce, report having experienced bullying. And according to a 2007 survey, bullying is 4X more prevalent than illegal harassment.
According to the 2010 WBI U.S. Workplace Bullying Survey, it appears that the 30-49 year age group is the most vulnerable. In addition, 62% of bullies are men; 58% of targets are women. And women bullies target women in 80% of cases. The majority (68%) of bullying is same-gender harassment.
An additional 15 percent report witnessing bullying. Half of all Americans state they have directly experienced bullying in some form.
What does bullying look like? A list was offered in a recent post on Examiner.com. The actions of bullies are not always obvious but when reading this list, I have to ask: "is changing work guidelines" really bullying? Isn't flexibility and change what makes a business competitive in today's marketplace? Where do we draw the line between holding employees accountable and creating a workplace full of wimps? Clearly a few of these descriptions of bullying are morally and legally wrong? But really.... is "blocking applications for training" a form of bullying?
According to the article, bullies are characterized by a pervasive pattern of grandiosity and self importance, the need of admiration and a lack of empathy. Bullying looks like...
- Spreading malicious rumors
- Undermining a person's work
- Threatening physical abuse
- Constantly changing work guidelines
- Withholding necessary information or purposefully giving wrong information
- Pestering, spying or intruding on one’s privacy
- Assigning unreasonable duties or workload which are unfavorable to one person
- Underutilizing - creating a feeling of uselessness
- Yelling or using profanity
- Criticizing a person persistently or constantly
- Belittling a person's opinions
- Unwarranted (or undeserved) punishment
- Blocking applications for training, leave or promotion
- Tampering with a person’s personal belongings or work equipment
At the core of bullying are isolation and humiliation. Bullying behavior creates feelings of defenselessness and undermines the individual’s right to dignity at work. Different from aggression, bullying involves repeated attacks creating an on-going pattern of behavior. While bullying may feel like harassment, workplace harassment has a legal definition supported by state and federal civil rights laws designed to protect workers from discriminatory mistreatment as a member of a protected group.
But only 20 percent of bullying cases involve illegal discriminatory harassment. Bullying cuts across boundaries of status- group membership. It has been said that bullying is status-blind harassment. While there is currently no federal law protecting the American worker from bullying, 18 states: New Jersey, New York, Illinois, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, Utah, Connecticut, Oklahoma, Vermont, Kansas, New Hampshire, Oregon, Nevada, Montana, Washington, Hawaii, Missouri and California have instituted various forms of the Healthy Workplace Bill.
The Healthy Workforce Bill defines its basic cause of action in this statement:
“It shall be an unlawful employment practice to subject an employee to an abusive work environment which exists when the defendant, acting with malice, subjects the complainant to abusive conduct so severe that it causes tangible harm to the complainant.”
To read more about The Healthy Workforce Bill and what employers and individuals can do to stop workplace bullies, click here.
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