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Bullying Hurts Everyone and It Also Hurts the Bottom Line

By: Susan Dunn

Susan Dunn, The EQ Coach, coaches individuals and executives in emotional intelligence, and offers workshops, presentations, trainings, Internet courses and ebooks. She is a regular presenter for the Royal Caribbean and Costa cruiselines. Visit her on the web at www.susandunn.cc and mailto:sdunn@susandunn.cc for FREE ezine.

If you own the business, or manage, your mind may be filled with financial reports and marketing data, but underneath it all, you know your people are your most important asset. The success of your business depends upon your ability to attract and keep the best, and to keep them functioning at their best.

It’s hard to function at your best in an unpleasant environment, and more and more employees are complaining of “bullying” in the workplace. While it sounds like a truism to say “happy workers produce more,” it’s plaing common sense that people who aremiserable, afraid and preoccupied do not.

Read these statistics on bullying, and then take a look at your work place. If the numbers are down, and you’re losing good employees, and the best are not applying at your place, it could be you've got bullying going on, and are getting the reputation of being a bad place to work.

As the economy turns around, people are going to have choices.

If you think there's bullying going on, or know there is (get the blinders off), there's something you can do about it. Introduce an Emotional Intelligence program. It’s well-received and it works.

And beyond humanitarian reasons, it’s been shown that having such a program in place before incidents take place is looked upon favorably by juries in lawsuits.

From the US Hostile Workplace Survey, 2000. About mobbing, bullying and harassment, Jim Landgraf, president of Education Testing Service said: "We don't see $8 billion worth of antidepressants in this country for nothing. The corporate culture is so accepting of these kinds of aggressive actions, it’s not going to go away.”

50% of bully bosses are men, 50% women.
75% of the time, women are victims.
But females target other women 84% of the time.
96% of co-workers are aware of the bullying.
The psychological violence lasts 16.5 months on average.

Gary Namie, author of "The Bully at Work," has counseled 4,300 targets of abuse. His research shows that in less than 10% of the abuse cases were the bullies punished, transferred or terminated. “Bullying usually stops when the target leaves their job,” he said. “Companies will never say they have a problem.”

Most bullying isn’t illegal conduct.
In only 8% of cases was victim in legally protected employee classification (disabled or minority).
67% of victims report having no prior history of being bullied.
41% of victims are diagnosed with depression.
31% of women victims experience post-traumatic stress disorder.
Bullies rarely suffer career consequences because in 42 percent of cases the bully's supervisor helped the bad boss or punished the victim.
11% of co-workers side with the bully.

P.S. The longer it goes unchecked, the harder it is to get rid of. Take action NOW.

Other Articles by Susan Dunn

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