Following
on from last week’s post where a journalist in the Guardian laid the blame for workplace
bullying at the target’s door, I’ve been surprised by a related matter. I came
across one of those ‘Dear Jeremy’ columns in the Guardian, published in late
October, related to bullying.
The
question to Jeremy involved whether someone who was just about to leave a
company should blow the whistle on their vindictive bully. What really grabbed
my attention were the comments from readers. There were almost 100 of them and the
majority of them were along the lines of:
‘Yes,
of course you should!’
‘It
will make life easier for your colleagues’.
‘If
no-one does anything, nothing will change’.
‘It
will be really helpful [for remaining colleagues] to place your experience on
record’.
‘Fill
in your exit questionnaire!’
‘Tell
them please, you’ll feel so better for it [sic].’
But
as anyone with experience knows, workplace bullying is more complicated than
that. HR will read the truthful, tell-it-like it is questionnaire and think: ‘Holy
crap! I bet they told their colleagues this before they left’. In what we’ll call Operation Damage Limitation,
they’ll rubbish their former employee to their colleagues the minute they’re
gone. They’ll say they had mental issues. They’ll say they couldn’t cope with
the job. They’ll discredit that person - and they won’t be around to defend
themselves. They may even go as far as not being particularly helpful when
asked for a reference in the future by this particular employee.
As Anti-Bullying Week came to a close yesterday, it
made me think that we’re not going far enough. We need to go beyond simply
telling people it’s wrong to bully. It’s a stickier situation than that. In the
workplace, bullies are often protected by a management structure, or the money they
bring in. Stating that it’s wrong or encouraging the target to
‘man-up’ and do the right thing isn’t particularly helpful.
Bullying is wrong, but we have to deal with it
carefully.
We should start by pointing targets of
workplace bullying in the direction of those who
have been through it already. The good news is there is a growing number of us
out there ready to listen and understand.
Very best
BBTB
2 comments:
Hi BBTB,
If you recall my experiances, some really want to tell the truth in the exit interview but are to scared because if one spends years with that employer and wishes for them to be a future referee the manager will rubbish the former employee behind there back, jeopardising there future dream. It's a complicated situation. Perhaps there should be an anomonyous site where an employee can report a bully from the current or previous employer.
I agree with Mr. Fan. Also, there is a good chance HR already knows that person is a bully and is already actively protecting them. Speaking to HR in the exit interview will insure no one other than HR will ever see the write-up. HR's job is to protect the company from lawsuits, and they do that by squashing such reports.
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