There’s an epidemic that affects millions of workers — and no one’s talking about it.

Everyday I receive at least one email or Facebook message from someone with a tragic work story. It’s usually from a woman over 40 who’s in a helping profession like teaching, nursing, nonprofit, or government, and she’s on the verge of leaving a field she’s dedicated years of service, passion, and hard work to. The details are different, but there’s generally a recipe to every story: she’s competent and ethical, and her boss or a co-worker emotionally abuses her. She reports the problem to a higher-up, Human Resources, or her union, but no one does anything about it. Her family and friends get sick of hearing about it. People who haven’t gone through it don’t believe her. She doesn’t know where to turn. She then suffers from depression, anxiety, and maybe even suicidal thoughts.

It’s called workplace bullying, and it’s the often repeated, malicious, health-harming mistreatment of a worker through verbal abuse, sabotage, or threatening, intimidating, or humiliating behavior. It’s often subtle and based on bullies’ intent to break highly competent, ethical employees. It’s pushing thousands of hardworking employees — often women and minorities — out of their jobs.

How do bullies pull off this abuse? They deceive others into thinking the target is the problem. They convince others the target is mentally ill, setting the stage for mobbing, in which coworkers join in to isolate the target.

The sad part is that much like with domestic violence, the perpetrator convinces the target she’s the problem, too. But it’s the bully’s insecurities and poor coping mechanisms with shame that put blame onto anyone who threatens his image. That setup puts a target squarely on the back of anyone who shows ethics and competence.

If the bully’s issue were the only problem, workplace bullying wouldn’t be an epidemic. Higher-ups and Human Resources staff would have processes for reporting and investigating workplace bullying. So the work culture is the real test of an organization’s health and whether or not bullies thrive — and create turnover and productivity loss to boot, leaving toxic organizations with lower bottom lines than they’d have with healthy work cultures. Higher-ups create work cultures, and those who are dictators or disorganized fail to understand the important connection between empowerment and productivity. Even so, prioritizing their power over the needs of the organization is one thing. It’s another level to reward abuse of others, creating entire work cultures in which the worst employees push out the best ones to serve their egos.

I know about workplace bullying and correspond with other targets because it happened to me. An assistant dean at a university in Boston removed responsibility from me without any communication of poor performance, gossiped about me, and fabricated information about my work. More than 10 co-workers reported her for similar problems. At every turn, management pretended there wasn’t a problem. Meanwhile, I suffered from sleepless nights, anxiety, and fear of her next move.

Right now, only employees in protected classes (race, religion, sex, age, and disability, for example) have recourse for harassment at work under law. Even then, those employees have to prove the harassment was due to their membership in a protected class. The result: those in protected classes who can’t connect the dots on paper from the harassment to their protected class suffer from legal discrimination. It’s a problem that keeps discrimination and abuse so rampant.

What workplace bullying targets can do
Workplace bullying is always a perpetrator and culture problem, not a target problem. The perpetrator must take full responsibility for their actions and change. But since so few change, where does that leave someone who realizes he’s knee-deep in a bullying situation at work?

Step 1: Look at the culture. If a target has evidence the organization will act responsibly when it comes to bullying, the target can report it. Evidence might include seeing Human Resources take action when others report bullying or experiencing an overall collaborative work environment in a growing or successful organization. Red flags include a reinforced hierarchy, meaning power is valued more than cooperation. Had I known to look at the culture, I would’ve saved myself months of hoping higher-ups would fix the problem.

Step 2: Report the behavior or create a safety net. If the target has evidence of a healthy work culture, reporting the behavior using documented evidence may work. But most likely, the work culture is toxic like mine was. In that case, a target may evaluate her safety net and update her LinkedIn account. Consider savings, other income sources, job options, contacts, and how quickly health is deteriorating.

Step 3: Speak up on the way out — only to take your power back. Sadly, bringing attention to the bullying is often seen as treasonous. But once a target gives notice, she can bring attention to the bullying with minimal risk of further damage to her finances, physical health, mental health, emotional health, and personal relationships. While this step will likely have little to no effect on changes in that workplace, standing up to abuse can help speed up the healing process after the job, focusing less on feeling victimized and more on teaching others what you deserve.

Workplace bullying is a problem because it’s not yet a household term. But we can make it one and use our voices and feet to disarm the organizations in which it thrives.

 

Deb Falzoi founded Dignity Together, an organization that seeks to elevate the term “workplace bullying” and provide employees with the dignity and respect they deserve.

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