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Helping employees and employers address workplace bullying
Editorial by Christian Saint Cyr
National Director / Canadian Job Development Network
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I’ve often struggled with the notion that there are bullies in this world and everyone else. It seems we believe if we could just identify and call-out the bullies, we could be free of having abusive workplaces, schools, friends and family.
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Having grown up with three older brothers, I can assure you everyone has the capacity for bullying behaviour. In fact, I would suggest that most bullies don’t even see themselves as a bully. They might say they have high expectations, they don’t have time for the niceties or they were just joking. It’s human nature that most people don’t see themselves as villains and they are more often the victim than the aggressor.
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I’m not excusing any bullying behavior. In my opinion, no one has the right to verbally denigrate another person, to make personal attacks and certainly not to physically, sexually or verbally assault another person. Such acts can violate human rights legislation, employment standards and in many cases the law. Allegations such as these should be taken seriously, investigated and when substantiated, actions should be taken.
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The bullying I believe we see every day is much more subtle, less clear-cut and subject to interpretation.
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The Government of Canada defines workplace bullying as: “acts or verbal comments that could psychologically or ‘mentally’ hurt or isolate a person in the workplace … Bullying usually involves repeated incidents or a pattern of behaviour that is intended to intimidate, offend, degrade or humiliate a particular person or group of people.”
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Statistics Canada has found that workplace harassment is experienced by 19% of women and 13% of men. The most common types of workplace harassment are verbal abuse and humiliating behaviour. And yet, I believe if we really breakdown specific examples, we can see that bullying behaviour is much more prevalent.
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To provide a better sense of what constitutes workplace bullying, we have this article from Indeed titled: ‘12 common examples of workplace bullying to recognize’:
- Starting gossip and rumours about a co-worker
- Excluding or ignoring others in the workplace on purpose
- Acting aggressive towards others
- Undermining others work in front of management
- Getting physical or threatening physical abuse
- Giving unfair or unattainable tasks and deadlines
- Withholding information
- Withholding tasks
- Telling offensive or inappropriate jokes
- Invading others' privacy
- Criticizing others incessantly
- Devaluing others' opinions
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As an example, an employee might feel they are being criticized constantly while their employer believes they are simply stating they aren’t fulfilling their responsibilities.
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You may be working with a client who states their manager is withholding tasks and their manager might reply they are simply assigning the tasks to someone who is better able to perform them.
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It’s times like this where it can be difficult to be the job developer or the employer relations specialist who is trying to act as the go-between.
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Because there is a natural power-imbalance between employers and employees and our client is our client, our natural tendency is towards supporting the employee. And yet, we also want to support a good employer and help bridge these gaps that so often result in quitting or termination.
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I believe communication is the most important component to this challenge. Specifically, we need to address stated versus unstated expectations and conscious versus unconscious bias.
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Quite often employers are dealing with a more complex understanding of the organization and the employee can feel neglected or excluded simply because they don’t have all of the information. We can better support employees by drawing this to the attention of the employer but also sharing some of those insights with our clients.
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Employees also develop unstated expectations based on pieces of information they hear from colleagues or even employers who don’t fully articulate themselves.
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We can address stated versus unstated expectations, by reading through the job description at the time of the hire, by having a fully realized training plan and by ensuring we schedule time for short but regular check-ins between the employer and employee within the first three months of someone being hired.
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Conscious versus unconscious bias is much more complex. Employers are going to naturally gravitate towards some employees over others. Humour can create a fun workplace or a toxic one – and some people are going to see a fun workplace while others are seeing a toxic one. People are also very different and someone who is an extreme introvert is going to relate to someone who is an extreme extrovert very differently.
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It's also important to note that bullying behaviour isn’t simply a function of employers. In many cases lower-level managers, co-workers, customers and even subordinates can bully their supervisors.
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Oh yes, throw into the mix political views, social expectations, matters of religion and faith, generational divides, gender differences and cultural expectations and suddenly we see there are all sorts of challenges brewing beneath the surface.
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As a job developer you cannot condone abusive and offensive behaviour and I would encourage you to share resources with your employers and clients around human rights, workplace safety and employment standards.
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For more nuanced and subtle situations, I would encourage an open dialogue with your client about what their personal expectations are. Encourage them to self-advocate and open a dialogue with an employer. In many cases, the employer might not be aware of their behaviour and in other cases there may be additional information the employer can provide to help their employee understand a decision or an assignment.
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In supporting employers, we want to build our relationships beyond being simply order takers for new jobs. We want to build relationships with employers whereby we can not only provide them with valuable information about the labour market and employer best-practices but also be a sounding board about how their actions are interpreted by their teams and individual employees.
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We’ll be discussing the challenging world of workplace bullying at our #MotivatingMondays meeting of the Canadian Job Development Network, Monday February 26th at 8:30am Pacific; 9:30am Mountain; 10:30am Central; 11:30am Eastern; 12:30pm Atlantic and at 1pm in Newfoundland. Visit: www.MotivatingMondays.ca to join the session LIVE.
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