Can HR Protect People in the Workplace?

Author: Dave Crisp

2 Sep

Yes… and no. Many HR professionals believe protecting employees is one of their duties. That is true in a large sense, but it is rarely easy to protect individuals in specific situations, at least, not without their help and cooperation, which frequently is lacking.

It will be interesting to see what action Norway’s SAS airlines takes now that public bullying of older pilots by young ones who want them to retire (to reduce possible layoffs) has received world wide attention (example – Canadian HR Reporter). Workplace Violence News quotes a study by the global-oriented Employment Law Alliance which found almost half of all employees at one time or another have been bullied Angry bosses get out of control by a boss. 50% of those bosses and 84% of the victims are women, suggesting bullying is equally distributed, but victimhood belongs to those at least perceived to be in the weaker position.

Fortunately today there are lots of resources for bullied individuals who care to search. I like the Robert Mueller’s BullyingBosses.com for one, but there are lots and it helps to read several before deciding what to do.

The key, inevitably, begins with the victim sad to say. SAS is a relatively typical example – a company alerted months ago, yet to date unwilling or unable to manage effective solutions. In the past they’ve stood out as a good employer with some great HR strategies. But bullying is particularly challenging to address.

Of course it should have started long ago with a Harassment Prevention policy clearly posted and consistently managed. That would make it easy to fire the s.o.b. who posted suggestions for harassing older pilots by freezing them out of social activities. It would also set them on the path of finding and having the police charge those who reportedly are talking about breaking legs and worse. There is no excuse and should be zero tolerance for such outrages – a case where zero tolerance makes total sense.

Most bullying is not so overt, however, or at least it is not so visible to management. Most bullies would likely be happy to bully everyone, but don’t because some people are immune for various reasons and so they settle on those who aren’t and who react. Most tire of persecuting those who shrug and ignore them. Their miserable behaviors are focused in limited areas on specific individuals. If companies have trouble helping victims, that’s even more true of surrounding co-workers who tend to offer advice quietly, but probably correctly want to stay out of the direct line of fire.

If it is so easy to say “just ignore them” why do so many victims suffer repeated torture to the point of quitting or worse? There are as many answers as individuals involved, but first and foremost, people get rattled and don’t recognize the many actions they could take. Bullies, on the other hand, will inevitably apply their nasty side to someone, so the lowest tolerance individual, even if they’re reasonably good at ignoring the bully, will continually be subjected to unacceptable behavior. Ignoring only takes you so far.

The fact is this sort of behavior goes on constantly. HR can’t stamp it out totally any more than they can stamp out office romance. It’s human nature and will creep back in no matter how “zero tolerance” we say the policy is. We need to be careful about what we characterize as zero tolerance because there will always be ways around it, situations that fall through the cracks and individuals we can’t touch who will make a mockery of the concept.

The biggest challenge is we don’t prepare people effectively. Strong employees realize there are things they can do. Weaker ones will be basket cases before they’re discovered or complain loudly enough to be heard. By then it is usually too late to protect them. They have reached the point of quitting and do so either directly or indirectly by falling into long term illnesses, constructive dismissal or human rights retaliation.

What we need is a general sort of protective training that makes everyone, including bullies, aware there are always solutions to disrespect and bullying in all their subtle variations. But those solutions begin with people reaching out and seeking solutions and participating in working with the boss/bully to solve the behavior as opposed to waiting for it to break them down and then lashing out in whatever form they fall into. We need these systems in place long before instances of bullying start coming to our attention or we can’t “protect” individuals. The first defense will always be to help them be strong enough to work through solutions. That is unlikely to take root if they arrive already at wits end.

Bookmark and share this post