It’s time HR gets serious about workplace bullying

How many of us encounter or witness incidences of workplace bullying everyday? Not many really …right? Yes this is because, workplace bullying usually goes unnoticed as we fail to identify bullying as form of harassment and count it in routine workplace interaction among employees.

Let me bring some examples you can connect with

• A coworker constantly criticized in public by his Manager
• Someone facing rejection of his leave approval often
• A coworker being subjected to snide remarks or made fun of regularly
• Someone repeatedly assigned to responsibilities out of his work profile
• Someone at your workplace has the habit of yelling or shouting on his subordinates openly
• You hear your colleagues spreading rumors about you at work
• Does your boss insist you to stay late for work often?…. This is a bullying behavior to

Workplace bullying is more common than it seems when we talk about it. According to a survey conducted in 2014 by WBI, America, majority of employees surveyed were direct or indirect witness to bullying at work.

This statistics is not limited to US alone, workplace bullying is becoming increasingly common at work everywhere with rise of diverse workforce.

One of my friends was in a similar situation since past few months. He was constantly criticized and humiliated publicly by his onshore Manager for not performing as per expectation. After taking it for long and losing his sleep and patience over it, he decided to raise the issue with HR but in response, he was informed about his release from the project a few days later.

That’s how most workplace bullying cases are handled, the employee suffers in silence due to fear of being considered incapable to perform and taking work pressure.

Workplace bullying is considered the severest way of stress at work by psychologists, which leads to sever mental, physical and emotional breakdown of employees, affecting their personal and professional conduct too. Yes for sure, what productivity can you expect from someone who has been stressed at work all time?

Workplace stress leads to 10% less productivity at work – Jobvite survey 2014

Why employees do not speak up? Some of the most common reasons are

• They think it is common because they see it happening with others too
• They fail to identify bullying and continue to suffer
• Fear of losing job or position
• Indifferent HR and employer behavior

Criticizing and controlling an employee is no way to better performance and productivity. The best way to stop workplace bullying and encourage employees to speak up is to have

• Empathetic HR
• Strong and positive work culture
• Clear policy and guidelines
• Educative programs of behavioral conduct at work for all

Productivity comes from employees, happy employees 🙂