Spot a bully in your workplace[/b][/b]
If you have a serial bully on the staff they will reveal themselves by their department showing excessive rates of
Staff turnover
Sickness absence
Stress breakdowns
Deaths in service
Ill-health retirements
Early retirements
Uses of disciplinary procedures
Grievances initiated
Suspensions
Dismissals
Uses of private security firms to snoop on employees
Litigation including employment tribunals or legal action against employees
Open aggression, threats, shouting, abuse, and obscenities towards their target
Constant humiliation or ridicule, belittling their efforts, often in front of others
Excessive supervision, monitoring everything they do and being excessively critical about minor things
Bullies may ostracize and marginalize their target, dealing with the person only through a third party, excluding the person from discussions, decisions etc
People who are bullied find that they are:[/b]
Constantly criticized and subjected to destructive criticism - explanations and proof of achievement are ridiculed, overruled, dismissed or ignored
Forever subject to nit-picking and trivial fault-finding
Overruled, ignored, sidelined, marginalized, ostracized
Isolated and excluded from what's happening (this makes people more vulnerable and easier to control and subjugate)
Singled out and treated differently (for example everyone else can have long lunch breaks but if they are one minute late it's a disciplinary offence)
Belittled, degraded, demeaned, ridiculed, patronized, subject to disparaging remarks
Regularly the target of offensive language, personal remarks, or inappropriate bad language
The target of unwanted sexual behaviour
Threatened, shouted at and humiliated, especially in front of others
Taunted and teased where the intention is to embarrass and humiliate
Set unrealistic goals and deadlines which are unachievable or which are changed without notice or reason or whenever they get near achieving them
Denied information or knowledge necessary for undertaking work and achieving objectives
Starved of resources, sometimes whilst others often receive more than they need
Denied support by their manager and thus find them working in a management vacuum
Either overloaded with work or have all their work taken away
Have their responsibility increased but their authority removed
Have their work plagiarized, stolen and copied - the bully then presents their target's work as their own
Are given the silent treatment: the bully refuses to communicate and avoids eye contact; often instructions are received only via email, memos, or a succession of yellow stickiest or post-it notes
Subject to excessive monitoring, supervision, micro-management, recording, snooping etc
The subject of written complaints by other members of staff
Forced to work long hours, often without remuneration and under threat of dismissal
Find requests for leave have unacceptable and unnecessary conditions attached, sometimes overturning previous approval. Especially if the person has taken action to address bullying in the meantime
Denied annual leave, sickness leave, or - especially - compassionate leave
When on leave, are harassed by calls at home or on holiday, often at unsocial hours
Do not have a clear job description, or have one that is exceedingly long or vague; the bully often deliberately makes the person's role unclear
Are invited to "informal" meetings which turn out to be disciplinary hearings
Are denied representation at meetings, often under threat of further disciplinary action; sometimes the bully abuses their position of power to exclude any representative who is competent to deal with bullying
Encouraged to feel guilty, and to believe they're always the one at fault
Subjected to unwarranted and unjustified verbal or written warnings
Facing unjustified disciplinary action on trivial or specious or false charges
Facing dismissal on fabricated charges or flimsy excuses, often using a trivial incident from months or years previously
Coerced into reluctant resignation, enforced redundancy, early or ill-health retirement
Denial of the right to earn your livelihood including preventing you getting another job, usually with a bad or misleading reference
