One researcher's answers

to 32 questions

about bullying and mobbing

in the workplace

Kenneth Westhues, University of Waterloo, 2007

These questions were handed in at the Workshop on Bullying and Mobbing
held in Toronto on 23 April 2007, for joint employer-employee committees at The Council, the body that oversees Ontario's 24 community colleges.

The questions and answers are provided here as an appendix to the exercise on contrasting policies about bullying, mobbing, and workplace decency. Click here to learn about the exercise or do it yourself.

My answers to these good questions are hardly the last word. I hope they are useful to readers for developing their own thoughts on these important topics.

1. What does research show is the most prevalent source of workplace bullying and mobbing: employee to employer, supervisor to employee?
By far, most reported instances of bullying are from supervisor to subordinate. People formally entrusted with power by the organization are the ones most likely to abuse their power. But peer-to-peer bullying also occurs, and a supervisor can also be bullied by a subordinate. Mobbing usually involves both peers and supervisors.

2. Is the problem increasing?
3. Is bullying on the rise in the workplace or is there just growing awareness of the problem?
Evidence is mixed. Some researchers see an epidemic of bullying and mobbing in workplaces, due to increasing bureaucratization and a breakdown of trust.

4. What recourse do non-unionized employees have when they are being bullied or mobbed in the workplace?
5. How might one address bullying by a supervisor to employees in a non-unionized, manufacturing atmosphere, which tends to bully and mob to weed out certain employees, i. e. females?
Personal aggression occurs in both unionized and non-unionized workplaces, and even in a unionized workplace, the target may be a manager, and thus without union protection. For these reasons, it is important that any anti-bullying, anti-mobbing policy apply to the workplace as a whole.

6. Can an employee sue their employer if they are being bullied or mobbed?
Every case is different, but in light of the Weber decision of the Supreme Court of Canada, an employee who belongs to a union is best advised to seek redress through grievance arbitration.

7. If it’s all about a difficult person that no one wants to confront or deal with….
Little is gained by identifying anybody as a “difficult person.” The better alternative is to focus on the specific problem or issue and look for ways to resolve it.

8. How does a staff union bring an unwilling or insensitive management to the table for discussion of workplace bullying, toward the goal of developing policy to reduce or eliminate it?
9. What are some practical actions that can be taken to bring an unwilling party to the table? How does union get management to jointly seek intervention?
Really good question! Managers are sometimes reluctant even to talk about an anti-bullying policy, for fear of diminishing their own authority and encouraging a whining mentality among subordinates. The way to combat such reluctance is to acknowledge the legitimate exercise of power by management, while at the same time explaining that it is in everybody’s interest to discourage the illegitimate exercise of power. The issue is where and how to draw the line. In a poisonous work environment, management fiercely resists any proposed limit on its power, while the union tries at every turn to tie management’s hands.

10. How do you deal with a passive-aggressive individual without being labeled a bully? How would you go about getting such an individual to fall in line with company policies?
Both “passive-aggressive individual” and “bully” are discrediting labels. So far as possible, it is best to avoid such labels altogether and keep collective attention on solving specific practical problems.

11. What practical things can be done in situations where someone constantly bullies people, but complaints never go anywhere because the complaint never falls under prohibited grounds?
One reason for the increasing popularity of the bullying/mobbing perspective is that it shifts attention away from the grounds for aggression (like sexism, racism, homophobia, prejudice against people with disabilities, and so on) to the fact of aggression, away from motives for doing harm to the harm itself. The goal is to spare the workplace as a whole and individual employees the huge financial and personal costs of hostility, regardless of the mix of motives inside the people involved.

12. What advice would you give to a young adult suffering constant bullying?
13. How can one who is being mobbed get relief?
14. What techniques do you recommend to resolve a bullying situation?
The experience of relentless hostility day after day grinds a person down psychologically and physically. The advice I give to the many targets of such hostility who write to me is to assess the situation as rationally and objectively as possible, compare the resources of aggressor and target, make a list of possible ways out of the mess, and choose the way out most likely to succeed. I know of many mobbing targets who have lost everything – job, health, family, friends – fighting battles they had little chance of winning.

15. What is terror vis-à-vis mobbing and bullying?
Leymann, among others, used the word terror to describe the intense, debilitating fear that comes from being subjected to repeated acts of aggression in the workplace, feeling helpless to defend oneself, wondering when the next attack will come, waiting for the next shoe to drop. It’s an unhappy condition to be in.

16. How do we get the staff to stand up for their rights and let the union help, when they are so afraid of the chairs?
17. How do we assist staff to recognize they’re being subjected to bullying?
It’s hard to state a blanket rule, because situations differ. One employee may humbly accept what another employee considers abuse and dehumanization. When management and union are squared off against one another, an employee can hardly be blamed for keeping his or her head down and trying not to get caught in the crossfire.

18. The college feels because it has a policy on bullying and verbal abuse in the workplace, no one is abused verbally or bullied because it is not allowed. What are your thoughts?
19. How do we get the treatment of bullying to match the commitment shown in our policies to end it? We have some good policies, but this is not our reality.
Policies that are mere window-dressing do more harm than good. I have seen horrible abuse of employees by managers who presented themselves as champions of ethics and integrity. The more attention is focused on the specifics of the situation, the better.

20. How to differentiate between bullying/mobbing and legitimate management functions?
Really important question. Policy Alternative B, as presented in the workshop, is one example of such differentiation.

21. What sort of processes/policies/procedures can be put into place to lessen bullying and mobbing?
22. Is it best to develop joint processes/policies/procedures?
Plans to lessen bullying and mobbing that are jointly supported by management and union must always be preferred. When the two sides of workplace relations are at war with one another, productivity suffers and everybody is miserable.

23. How should we support those people experiencing bullying?
24. How does/can a person stop a bully or mobber without management’s help?
25. What can an individual employee do if they identify a situation of bullying, or to prevent bullying in the workplace?
The short answer is: Be kind, be kind, be kind. Do not stand with aggressors, but with targets of unwarranted aggression.

26. How to effectively deal with senior administrators who bully everyone from support staff, faculty, and administrators – corruption from the top?
An important thing not to do is to provide such administrators with a well-intentioned but ill-written anti-bullying policy that they end up using as a weapon against the targets of their own aggression.

27. How does one begin to address the subtle, veiled, hidden, destructive communication and or comments about co-workers that exist yet are difficult to quantify?
Good question. One criticism that has been made against France’s anti-mobbing law is that it has driven aggression underground, made it more subtle and sneaky. We humans are clever. That is one reason I favour policies that promote healthy workplace relations more than policies aimed at penalizing destructive behaviours. You can’t outlaw malicious gossip, but you can create a workplace culture that discourages it.

28. What are the key values or principles necessary to be accepted by all parties in developing a meaningful anti-bullying/mobbing policy?
If there is any shared value that underlies a sound policy, it is a commitment to a continuing process of open, honest dialogue founded on respect for and allowance of differences of opinion. Keeping the conversation going is prerequisite to everything else.

29. What is the best, most effective, accelerated way to have anti-bullying policies legislated in Ontario? What steps should be followed?
Above all, broad, vigorous, well-informed discussion by management, unions, and everybody concerned with promoting healthy, productive workplace relations. The last thing we need is well-intentioned but half-baked legislation that ends up doing more harm than good.

30. Is legislation the only way that action will be taken to restrict bullying activity?
Obviously not. There have been no laws or formal policies against bullying anywhere until recent decades. Today as in the past, bullying is most commonly stopped by a person with courage, somebody with guts enough to say, “Stop it.”

31. In the case of individuals who are bullied in the workplace and subsequently end up on LTD, how might one assist them in a return to the same work environment, to ensure a successful transition – especially if there is no policy in place?
If an employee has gotten sick as a result of personal aggression by one or more workmates, if the employee has been off work for some period as a result, and if the person is now strong and well enough to return to work, it is silly to place that employee back in the same work environment, with the same workmates, as before. Odds are that the personal aggression will, in one form or another, resume, and the employee is going to get sick again. Some other solution needs to be found.

32. Have you ever worked in the food service or retail industry? Do you still think the private sector is less vulnerable to bullies? Why do people always believe public service workers have more security and feel less responsible to the bottom line or to customer service? Is this attitude part of the problem? Why are their fewer complaints in the private sector? Maybe that’s the question.
A fair response to my inadequate comment at the workshop itself. Complaints of bullying and mobbing arise mainly in workplaces where employees have some kind of job security. Where the target of aggression has an “at will” contract, he or she is more likely simply to quit or be fired. This happens every day in the food service and retail industries.

[Return to the exercise on contrasting policies.]