Workplace Bullying

Workplace Bullying = Repeated and targeted harassment at work that is intended to demean, humiliate or intimidate.¹

Although when we think of bullies and bullying we typically envision playground scenes and children – the unfortunate reality is that bullies are found in all age groups and the workplace can be a perfect environment for bullies to inflict harm on their victims.

For the harassment and aggression you experience at work to qualify as bullying, it must:

1. Be repeated and sustained: bullying occurs when aggression is targeted at you repeatedly, over time
2. Occur between people with differing degrees of power: Bullies typically attack people with lower work or social status or employment level – or those who are for any other reasons less able to defend themselves from attack
3. Put your health, safety or career at risk – Bullying is systematic and it’s intended to do you harm

Examples of Workplace Bullying

Workplace bullying sometimes occurs as obvious harassment and is sometimes more covert.

Some examples of overt bullying include:

• Teasing, belittling or consistently making a person the victim of mean-spirited jokes
• Abusive language
• Behaviors that are designed to humiliate or frighten - screamed critiques of performance by a boss, for example
• Intentionally presenting materials that are designed to cause offense (materials against a religion, for example, or sexually suggestive materials)
• Overt sexual intimidation or assault
• Overt violent intimidation or assault
• Threats
• Spreading mean gossip or rumors about the victim

Some examples of more covert bullying include:

• Giving an employee an impossible task or deadline, or a task that is obviously beyond their abilities or experience
• Dumping an excessive quantity of work on a subordinate and demanding its completion
• Assigning a meaningless, demeaning or unrelated task
• Not letting an employee gain access to the resources needed to complete an assigned task
• Writing unfair or inaccurate employee assessments
  
• Blocking deserved or normal career advancement
  
• Not offering equal access to training or other resources
• Tampering with personal belongings
• Intentionally isolating someone at work²

Bullying at work only rarely turns violent, in fact research suggests that only about 10% of workplace bullying involves physical assault.³

Not sure if you’re getting bullied or not? Then use the ‘reasonable person’ test. Would a reasonable person consider the behaviors you’re experiencing acceptable? If not - then it’s bullying.⁴

Also ask yourself:

1. Are criticisms of performance reasonable or justified, based on an objective assessment of the performance?
2. Are you performing at work up to an acceptable standard? – If you are failing to meet expectations at work, then repeated criticisms of your performance may not be bullying, and may be accurate and objective management.
3. Are criticisms constructive? Bullies aren’t trying to help you – they’re trying to hurt you, so if you’re getting constructive criticism, then you may not be getting bullied.⁵