A Podchat With Workplace Bullying Expert Suzi Benoit
Update: 2015-09-11
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Update: It's 2018. Suzi and I are now part of a strategic partnership that works with business owners, leaders and HR professionals addressing issues surrounding harassment, sexual and otherwise. Our mission is to help companies create positive, healthy cultures that can consistently thrive. We recently did a webcast on sexual harassment that you may want to check out as well. Click here
In the meantime - this an interesting and revealing podcast.
Below you'll find her site link. She has some good very helpful information on her blog! The podchat is an expanded discussion of this post. Please pass on -- a must listen for all HR professionals, managers and employees in this precarious situation!
Download here
6 Reason Employees Don’t Disclose Workplace Abuse
I recently saw an article called 7 Reasons Children Don’t Disclose Abuse” by Ginger Kadlec (you can follow her @gingerkadlec). In the world of mental health and child protection, this article provides an easy-to-understand summary – a neat list of the forces of silence. Those of us who have worked with abused children know these things instinctually. We know why kidnapped children don’t run away. Perhaps this is how I understand the dynamic of workplace abuse so well.
I’m not saying that workplace abuse is as bad as child abuse. Children are much more vulnerable and in need of our protection. Adults are in a better position to know when something just isn’t right. However, the power dynamics are similar and when the bully is successful, it is because he or she has used these familiar tactics. The same issues are at play and at the center is fear. This fear doesn’t have to have a rational basis for us observers but it has great power over the employee victim. It is the reason employees endure workplace abuse and intimidation for years without approach management with a complaint. Instead of worry about their family’s safety as child victims do, it’s the desperate need for employment and the thought of job loss that keeps many abused employees at work. Here are my counterpart reasons, paralleling the original article noted above.
1. “Keep this a secret.”
There are workplaces where truly evil things go on and about which leadership has no idea. Sure there are clues like turnover, employee absenteeism, etc. But workplace bullies are often skilled at making employees feel as though management agrees with them and sanctions their tactics. Fear of straight-forward confrontation with this manipulative individual keeps employees silent. In addition, sometimes bullies draw coworkers into their confidence and offer full membership into the “power group” cultivating the idea that the bully is right and representing a safe haven from isolation. There have been times when I describe what has gone on in a workplace and senior leadership stares back at me, mouths open, incredulous.
2. Threats and fear
Employees learn very quickly who’s in charge, who calls the shots. An example is when an employee questions the bully and gets punished with rumors, defamation and marginalization. Everyone sees what happens, how the victim of retaliation suffers. No one wants that to happen to them. Most people want to be liked at work. We want to be a part of the group not sit alone at the lunch table. When you add the need for employment and fear of losing one’s livelihood it creates the perfect opportunity for emotional blackmail.
3. Love
Ms. Kadlec notes that children are often abused by persons they love on another level. Perhaps it’s someone they look up to. In a work situation I see employees who love the company and basically love the content of their jobs. They don’t want anything really bad to happen to the company. With this mindset, they have difficulty take a posture they see as “against” the company. Employees wrestle with the question: “Doesn’t management understand we’re suffering? on the one hand and: “This bully must be doing something right for management to keep them on.”
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