The economic costs of workplace bullying

Workplace bullying negatively effects workplace productivity. Basically - bullying prevents people from doing their job and it also makes victims - not want to go to work.

If you allow workplace bullying to happen - you should expect to see both lost workdays and also - productivity losses. 

And it's not just me saying that - check out this report on the cost of workplace bullying in the EU (losses are estimated at 239 million euros/ year. 

https://phys.org/news/2020-05-highlights-economic-workplace-bullying.html

If you want to learn how to make this stop - both as a humanistic leader and as a human - considering taking one of my online courses. https://humanistlearning.com/category/bullyingharassment/

Protecting Your Workforce

Workers have rights. That’s because humans have rights.

When we agree to work for someone, we agree to trade our time and energy in exchange for something, usually money, which provides us with the means to purchase food, shelter, transportation and health care for ourselves and our families.

What workers rarely agree to is to be killed for money, or to be injured in exchange for a paycheck. This is why all the various safety compliance requirements exist. It is why companies are held liable for injuries workers sustain on the job.  These laws, while a bit of a legal hassle, are there to protect employees from injury caused by employers exploiting labor and unnecessarily introducing risk into the work environment. And yes, this does happen and yes, workers deserve to be protected from that.

I’ve participated in my fair share of safety committees over the years. I’ve put together safety policies to satisfy OSHA requirements and common sense. At my first big job out of college at an animal control shelter, I was able to reduce our injury rate so much that we actually got a refund from our insurance company despite increasing our volunteer work hours dramatically.

I was able to do all that by instituting effective safety training programs.  Programs that taught our staff and volunteers how to avoid common injuries (which in the case of the shelter work was – a program called – how not to get bit).

Nowadays I teach how to stop harassment and bullying in the workplace. To me, it’s all part of what should be ongoing safety training for your staff.

Too often employers treat sexual harassment training as a compliance hassle. It’s actually a safety issue.  Harassment is a crime in pretty much every state for a reason. The harm it causes is real. It’s not just protected classes in the workplace who are protected. Everyone is. It’s just that when you add the economic impact of it happening in the workplace into the mix, you also have additional monetary damages that are sustained as a result of the problem.

This isn’t just about holding employers responsible for the sometimes trollish behavior of their employees. It’s about ensuring that all your employees are able to work in a safe environment.

No one should have to endure harassment to receive a paycheck. I have yet to read an employment contract that says – in exchange for your time and energy – we will repay you with crap wages, limited advancement due to your gender, skin color, ethnicity or any other arbitrary reason we may have, AND we reserve the right to harass and abuse you endlessly. No one would sign such an employment agreement!

Employers have not only a legal obligation to protect their workforce; they have a moral obligation to do so as well. If you don’t know how to protect your employees from harassment and bullying or discrimination, learn the skills required. Only then can you protect them from abusive behavior in the workplace.

See: https://humanistlearning.com/category/bullyingharassment/ for learning opportunities

 

Navigating Minefields in the Office

Not every workplace has a toxic employee – but even non-toxic workplaces have their challenges.

If the Workplace Bullying Institute’s numbers are correct, then 48% of us have either been bullied, are currently being bullied or have witnessed bullying in the workplace. (see: http://workplacebullying.org/multi/pdf/WBI-2014-US-Survey.pdf) That’s half of the workforce. That’s a lot.

And for those of us lucky enough to not work in a workplace where that happens, we still have to deal with interpersonal dynamics. Even if we do get along, conflicts between people happen.

How can we navigate the potential minefields that exist in every office? Reason, compassion and action. The hallmarks of the humanist approach to life (see:  http://happiness.jen-hancock.com/)

In my career, I have dealt successfully with toxic people, annoying people, passive aggressive people and I’ve even survived a coordinated attempt to attack my character and get me fired, successfully.

I’ve survived all of these things because a) I’m a good person who is honest and conscientious. b) I own up to and correct my mistakes quickly. And c) I apply my reason and compassion to the problem to develop a strategy that will help me succeed despite what is being thrown at me.

Is it easy? No. Whenever these things happen, they catch me off guard like they do all of us. Most people are nice. Most of us just want to get our work done and do it well. People who are walking time bombs of insecurity are not the norm. It’s upsetting to become targeted by these people. The only thing worse than being targeted, is to be a walking time bomb of insecurity. I feel sorry for them.

By considering them compassionately, I resist the urge to demonize them. Not only can I treat them with respect, even if they fail to respect me, I can also often defuse the problem by using my reason to solve our collective problem because I’m not so upset or angry that I behave immorally in response to them.

While fighting back or defending yourself may feel emotionally satisfying, it does more harm than good. Behaving morally and ethically and conscientiously means I’m not adding to the problem. I’m just trying to get my work done and get along as best I can with other people. If I make a mistake, I correct it. I don’t blame anyone else. This is why it has been easy for all of my managers to see that I’m not the problem. I’m not!

Navigating the minefields of the office is hard, but you don’t need to tip toe around people who are just waiting to go off. You don’t serve your company or your coworkers well by avoiding them. Do your job. Do it well and be nice to everyone, including the jerks. If someone is intentionally making it hard to get work done document that fact. If they want to dig their own hole, you can’t stop them. But you can provide proof that they are the ones who dug the hole.

If you need help dealing with anger in yourself and others – consider taking this course by Dr. Leon Seltzer - https://humanistlearning.com/angermanagement101/

Sexual assault – in the workplace

We all hope that our workplaces are safe, but, the reality is sometimes quite different.

According to the website Workplaces Respond 8% of all rapes occur while the victim is working (see: http://www.workplacesrespond.org/learn/the-facts/the-costs-of-sexual-violence)  And this is not a crime that just affects women. 9% of rape victims are male.

For an example see: http://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/florida-farm-owners-assault-migrants-while-police-and-prosecutors-do-nothing-7530797 a recent story about women being systematically raped at a tomato processing plant they worked at.

Don’t let the shocking details of that story lull you into thinking it can’t happen in your workplace.  This story: https://bullyvaccineproject.com/how-bad-can-workplace-bullying-be/ is about a city worker who was raped with a glow stick by his co-workers and no one reported it!

I don’t normally talk about sexually abusive behavior in this blog, but I felt it was important to do so.  Sexual violence is a continuum of behaviors.  It might start with sexual bullying and harassment, progress to sexual assault (which is unwanted sexual contact that doesn't included forced penetration) and up to and including rape.

If leaders and managers don’t take sexual harassment (bullying of a sexual nature) or even workplace bullying seriously, then they are fostering a hostile work environment., because when left unchecked, harassment can escalate to assault very easily.

Don’t brush off verbal bullying as just normal interpersonal dynamics. It isn't. As much as a bully might claim they were only joking, they aren't. Bullying is an attempt to intimidate or coerce other people. When this intimidation is of a sexual nature, it is even more threatening.

If you are a manager, or an HR professional learn what it takes to get harassment to stop. This is not behavior that should be tolerated in our workplaces anymore.

In order to get this unwanted behavior to stop - we need to learn the science of how to make unwanted behaviors stop. And there is science to back up - how to do this.

These courses from Humanist Learning Systems will help you learn the science based behavioral skills necessary to curb harassment of any sort in your workplace.  https://humanistlearning.com/category/bullyingharassment/

Genuine Interest vs. Selfish Interest vs. Enlightened Self Interest

Do you genuinely care about other people? Or only when they can do something for you?

This topic came up the other day while I was considering my own difficulties in selling my services.  I created my company because I really want to make a difference. I feel like I have a moral obligation to share my knowledge with others because, if you know how to stop bullying, it’s immoral not to share that knowledge with others.

The problem is that it costs money to distribute this knowledge AND, people don’t value what they get for free. I gave away over 13,000 copies of my book. I got zero reviews written from that give away, which likely means, thousands of people downloaded my book with great intentions, but were too busy with life and never got around to reading it and so haven’t benefited from it and my attempt at massive knowledge distribution failed miserably, despite impressive give away numbers.

Asking people to pay for knowledge, on the other hand, makes them value it more and actually learn what you have to teach. Almost all the reviews of my book are from people who actually bought it and so were invested in learning from what I have to teach. The downside is that I reach fewer people that way, but the people I do reach actually take the time to learn. Altruistic intentions aside, what good is mass distribution if the knowledge goes unused and unlearned?

The other reason to charge for my books and programs is that I need the money. I do have bills to pay and even free distribution on the internet costs money (hosting, advertising to let people know your resource exists, etc), not to mention the time required to get this knowledge created, formatted and distributed precludes me from having a regular day job. So I have selfish reasons for wanting to distribute my knowledge in addition to the genuine reasons I have for wanting to distribute it.

The problem is how to balance my selfish reasons (I need the money) with my genuine interest (I want to help as many people as possible).  The solution is obviously enlightened self-interest.   The problem is how to make sure I stay genuinely interested in the people I want to help and prevent myself from drifting into selfishness.  This problem is especially acute when I’m trying to make a sale to a company interested in my workplace bullying programs that is worth a lot of money and that could potentially make a huge difference in my family’s finances.

It’s not easy to do. But paradoxically, I do find that the more I am able to remind myself that I’m offering my programs, not to make money (though that is nice), but to truly help other people, the more successful I am at getting the sale.

Remembering that other people are truly human too? Priceless.