Bully behaviour – It comes with a high price, so rein it in

By Barbara Bowes, WinnipegFreePress.com

In today’s fast-paced world and challenging economy, corporate and institutional leaders, executive directors of not-for-profit agencies and board members for that matter, must be more alert to the potential organizational culture changes that can occur when everyone is under extreme distress. For instance, has your employee turnover rate increased? If so, are long-term employees and high performers leaving for other jobs and/or just plain quitting? Are the employees leaving in droves, so to speak?

Is the organization experiencing increased and more serious reports of interpersonal conflicts between employees and/or employees and their boss? At the same time, is there an increase in petty, annoying conflicts such as the failure to clean up after meals in the staff lunchroom or failing to make new coffee once the communal pot is emptied?

If these types of both serious and incidental type of conflicts are more constant, then your organization has probably morphed from a highly productive, harmonistic culture into a conflict-ridden, bullying environment. Why is it occurring, what does that look like and what can be done?

The economic downturn being felt in various industry sectors and that has led to outright employee layoffs has also led to a surge in employee fear and anxiety. These tensions are not just limited to home life because the behaviours and anxieties follow the employees to work. Fearful of losing their jobs, these anxious employees may find themselves with shorter tempers, less patience, and a greater intolerance for errors by others. In other words, these employees have entered into what is called career survival. They become self-protective and are wary of others.

Employees who hold the title of boss aren’t immune either. Unfortunately bosses who weren’t the prime models of good leadership in the first place, in many cases now begin to exhibit the signs of abusive tormentors. Some may be adopting this behavior inadvertently due to their own personal stress and anxiety as they are asked to do more with less. Still there is always that one manager out there who views this stressful opportunity as being ripe for seizing more personal power.

What does an abusive boss look like and what are they doing? Typically, a bullying boss, either male or female, will target employees and display aggressive temper tantrums; they’ll think nothing of swearing or screaming condescending insults at an employee while in a group of colleagues, or they ridicule employees and call them names. Some bully bosses may even be so aggressive as to step forward and break through personal boundaries and engage in physical assault such as pushing and hitting.

There are many bully bosses who are not outwardly aggressive but are bullies just the same. They engage in insidious, quiet and emotionally abusive attacks on their targets. They target a good performer, begin finding fault with everything they do and increasingly report false allegations to more senior authorities. They change the rules from one day to another, putting the employee in a no-win situation. They begin writing up disciplinary notes on anything and everything they can imagine. They make increasingly impossible demands such as requiring employees to work overtime when it wasn’t truly necessary. They change work schedules, threaten to reduce worker hours unless they bend to the wishes of the boss, or they send employees on an external errand that is nothing more than a wild goose chase.

Finally, for some reason, these bully bosses have an incredible knack for turning employee against employee and so individuals become isolated without anyone to turn to.

It’s no wonder that in just a short time, an organizational culture can change from being high performing to one that is poisoned by abusive behaviour. Employees will be confused and their self-confidence shattered — after all, they’ve been excellent employees for many years and all of a sudden, they’re not? Employee stress can be so severe that they lose sleep and suffer from depression, while some actually experience post-traumatic stress syndrome. At this point, people will go on sick leave and/or resign. As a result, organizational turnover will climb to new, unhealthy and unwanted heights.

Bully behaviour comes at a high price for any organization. Turnover costs are at minimum three times the base salary of any employee, including front-line workers. Other organizational issues such as absenteeism and stress-related illnesses, workplace accidents and lost productivity lead to increased health-care costs and higher insurance premiums. In some cases, organizations will face litigation costs as former employees demand severance payments. Still others are increasingly reporting abuse and harassment to their local government authorities, which in turn can lead to unwanted public press and financial awards worth thousands of dollars to employees.

If your organization is experiencing a bully boss, you need to deal with it immediately. Retaining an abusive boss who meets the sales and profitability numbers, yet causes turmoil in the organization, will no longer be tolerated by employees, by society or by the legal system for that matter. Failing to rectify the situation will increase bottom-line costs, put you at risk of legal costs and/or intervention by agencies such as the Human Rights Commission or provincial Workplace Health and Safety department. I am sure no one wants to see the investigation and remedy of internal conflicts posted on public government websites.

While there may be plenty of “soft” counselling advice for victims, the problem won’t go away unless the organizations take proactive, visible and concrete action. First, ensure there is a policy against bullying and the harassment of your workers and ensure it is widely communicated to all employees.

Include formal complaint and investigation procedures and be sure your human resource managers and health and safety professionals are fully aware of how to handle and investigate complaints. Allow for employees to bring an advocate to any meetings in which their personal situation is discussed. In challenging situations where conflict of interest exists because the complaint is against a boss, then consider hiring an external specialist who can provide an objective, third-party complaint investigation and who can recommend effective solutions.

Bully boss behaviour may be more prevalent today due to constraints in the economy, but that is no excuse. This behaviour is simply unacceptable and must be dealt with immediately. Failing to do so is just too risky. And keep in mind that no organization is immune.