Roughly 40% of workers — more than one million in Massachusetts — will experience workplace bullying during their work lives.
Workplace Bullying is repeated, health-harming mistreatment of one or more persons (the targets) by one or more perpetrators that takes one or more of the following forms:
- Verbal abuse
- Offensive conduct/behaviors (including nonverbal) which are threatening, humiliating, or intimidating
- Work interference — sabotage — which prevents work from getting done.
Workplace Bullying...
- Is driven by perpetrators' need to control the targeted individual(s)
- Is initiated by bullies who choose targets, timing, place, and methods.
- Escalates to involve others who side with the bully, either voluntarily through coercion.
- Undermines legitimate business interests when bullies' personal agendas take precedence over work itself.
- Is domestic violence at work where the abuser is on the payroll.
(from the Workplace Bullying Institute)
Survey Says:
A 2007 national suvey by Zogby International and the Workplace Bullying Institute found that:
- 37% of workers have experienced workplace bullying
- 62% of employers who received complaints about workplace bullying either ignored the problem or made it worse
- 64% of bullying targets eventually are pushed out of their jobs
- 73% of workplace bullies are supervisors
Common Bullying Behaviors
- False accusations of mistakes and errors
- Yelling, shouting, and screaming
- Exclusion and "the silent treatment"
- Withholding resources and information necessary to the job
- Behind-the-back sabotage and defamation
- Use of put-downs, insults, and excessively harsh criticism
- Unreasonably heavy work demands
Workers Suffer Severe Harm
- Stress disorders of all types
- Clinical depression
- High blood pressure
- Cardiovascular disease
- Impaired immune systems
- Symptoms consistent with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
- Destructive impact on family and personal relationships
Read the article on Oprah.com.
Watch the workplace bullying video from NBC's Today Show.
Read the article from Inc. magazine.
Read The New York Times article.
Watch "Calling A Bully A Bully," produced by the California Healthy Workplace Advocates
Think you're being bullied?
Who gets targeted
Early signs of bullying
Why bullies bully
Employer resistance