Fostering a positive work environment is crucial for productivity, employee satisfaction, and overall success. One of the most damaging factors that can undermine this environment is bullying behavior in the workplace.

As a business owner or manager, you can help to create a working environment where everyone feels respected and valued.

Understanding Bullying Behavior

Bullying is defined as repeated aggressive activity that can be physical, verbal – including the use of mobile phones and social media – or relationship-based such as deliberate exclusion and rumor-mongering.

Some common signs of bullying behavior include:

Constant Criticism

If an employee is repeatedly singled out for criticism, especially in front of others, it may be a sign of bullying. Employee feedback should be constructive and aimed at enlightenment and growth, not humiliation.

Exclusion and Isolation

When employees are frequently left out of or ignored in conversations, meetings, or social gatherings, it can lead to feelings of persecution.

Deliberate interference with an employee’s work, such as hiding documents or spreading false information, is also a clear indication of bullying.

Verbal Abuse

Harsh language, insults, shouting, or belittling comments are used by the bully to remove a colleague’s self-confidence. The perpetrator wants the victim to feel so anxious they’re unable to express strong opinions or propose fresh ideas.

Micromanagement

General supervision at work is obviously necessary but micromanagement is an obsessive behavior that makes people feel powerless, deeply frustrated and undervalued.

What are the Contexts for Workplace Bullying?

• The bully fears they are failing at their job. They target successful or popular colleagues to remove the spotlight from their own shortcomings.
• The bully chooses to work with people who have similar values and feels contempt for anyone who doesn’t appear able, active and confident. The bully feels the victim deserves to be treated unfairly.
• The bully becomes jealous of a someone’s success to so they try to minimize their colleague’s achievements or claim some or all the credit.
• The bully fears that their role may be under threat from a talented colleague, so they target them in an attempt to eliminate competition.
• The bully is envious of a colleague’s conspicuous success. This leads them to doubt their own competence, often for the first time. Their aggressive response is driven by fear.

How to Spot Bullying Behavior

If not checked, bullying can rapidly pivot from isolated behavior to a thoroughly pervasive culture. In such an environment, productivity suffers due to the time and energy wasted on infighting and striving for dominance.

Encourage Open Dialogue

Create an atmosphere where employees feel comfortable expressing their concerns to each other and to you. Conduct regular feedback sessions. A weekly staff meeting is an ideal way to do this and will help you stay informed about the potential for anti-social conduct.

Observe Behavior Changes:

If you believe, as we do, in management by walking around, use your daily contacts with employees to keep an eye out for any abrupt changes in outlook or performance. Increased absenteeism, reduced productivity, or symptoms of anxiety and stress are possible signs that someone is being intimidated.

Establish Anonymous Reporting Channels:

If you have a bully or two at work, it’s likely that everyone else is afraid to expose them. Fear is the bully’s most potent weapon, even though most are themselves cowards.

Introduce anonymous reporting channels, such as suggestion boxes or secure online spaces to allow employees to share their experiences without fear of retaliation.

What Do You do if You Discover Bullying?

As a business owner or manager, your efforts in fostering respect, open communication, and support will contribute to increased productivity, higher employee morale, and long-term success.

By taking a proactive approach to identifying and robustly tackling overt or subtle aggression, you’re not only investing in your employees’ well-being but also in the future of your livelihood.

Precisely how you eliminate bullying depends of a whole slew of circumstances. In some highly specialized fields of science and tech, you’ll find exceptionally talented individuals who are notorious bullies. (Are you listening Silicone Valley?)

Sometimes they can be positioned to work on their own at least for part of the day. Or, if circumstances allow, to work from home or in another part of the building.

Wherever you are in the world, removing habitual bullies will require sufficient legal grounds, so consulting an employment law specialist is your first step.

The word “bully” was first used in the 1530s meaning “sweetheart”. How times have changed!