Workplace bullying — don’t suffer in silence

Workplace bullying can be difficult to talk about. If bullying unfortunately must exist at all, it feels like it’s something that should be confined to the playgrounds of our youth. People often feel shame that they are being bullied. I did. I have unfortunately been bullied a few times in my career. I’ve also seen people being bullied and suffer in silence, not wanting to ‘make a fuss’ or be worried that speaking up will make it worse. I wanted to share a few thoughts on why it’s important not to be silent; both points might seem obvious, but I’m going to point them out anyway:

• Your personal wellbeing. Suffering bullying has a detrimental impact on personal wellbeing, mental, emotional and ultimately physical — it’s all connected
• Changing the culture. We’re more likely to change the culture if unacceptable behaviour is pointed out and dealt with

Obviously there are toxic workplaces where speaking up will make things worse, but I hope that most workplaces are reasonable enough to work to support people in these difficult situations and help resolve it. I’m certainly not here to shame you if you are being bullied but don’t feel able to speak up, my heart goes out to you. I hope this will help in some way, even if it’s to know that you are not alone.

Bullying can be difficult to define

I’ve had some training in bullying, harassment and discrimination (BHD) and what they are, but they continue to be difficult to define. Sometimes its overt and sometimes it’s very subtle. Sometimes you may not even be sure that you are being bullied. But if someone’s behaviour is having a negative impact on you, seriously reflect on if its bullying or something similar.

More obvious forms of BHD include personal attacks on your ethnicity, sexuality, religion, discrimination based on sex or gender, for example. Less ‘obvious’ bullying can be a wide range of things, but here are a few that I have personally experienced:

• Regularly being undermined and humiliated in a group setting or 1 to 1 situations
• My expertise and knowledge regularly being dismissed
• My work e.g. research data not being taken seriously or incorporated it into iterations without significant intervention
• An unwillingness to collaborate when it’s necessary
• Having progress of my work actively disrupted
• Questions being directed to male colleagues that should be directed to me

Some of these on the face of it may not be obvious but imagine how these things made me feel, how they would make you feel.

Some people will be intentionally bullying others, some people will not have the self awareness to know their behaviour is bullying and having a negative impact on others. Let’s be clear, neither is acceptable. Sometimes such behaviours are dismissed as someone being an alpha male or a difficult personality. That’s not acceptable. If people have needs that need accommodating e.g. neurodiversity, mental health factors, they’re dealing with a difficult situation — then there needs to be an open discussion about it and how it can be accommodated and how they can be supported to cope between. I appreciate that is also difficult. But a ‘that’s just the way it is’ attitude is not a solution.

What to do if you are being bullied

If you can advocate for yourself, or ask a trusted person to advocate for your:

• Talk to the person in question directly
• Talk to their manager
• Talk to programme / team / department leads
• Talk to HR
• Talk to a mental health first aider at work
• There is excellent mental health and wellbeing and resilience training available too

Be persistent. If you feel that you aren’t being heard about your experiences and how they are making you feel, don’t give up, you’ll find someone who will listen and take you seriously.

Document what is happening as close to the time of any incident as you can, save emails etc. When documenting be as factual as possible in terms of what happened and who was there in neutral but descriptive language, also record how you felt at the time.

What to do if you manage someone being bullied

First let people tell you how they are feeling and what they are experiencing without interruption, without judgement.

When the time is right, ask if they feel able to talk to or email the person question or their manager themselves. If they feel they can, strategise together on what to say, the language to use, when and how this contact should be made. Also think about the outcomes that the person wants — will this help them get there?

Be realistic, it is perhaps unlikely that there will be significant change after one interaction, it’ll probably need to be an ongoing dialogue. Sometimes a written ‘contract’ of ways of working and expected behaviours between two people can be useful.

If they feel they can’t talk to the bully themselves, I will always ask for permission to intervene on someone’s behalf whether it’s with the bully or the bully’s manager. So that your direct report will know what I’m going to say and do, and when. If I am asked not to intervene then I won’t unless there are signs of immediate danger. I will check in with them regularly to understand the situation and the emotions involved to help them decide if intervention is needed at some point. It’s a difficult decision to not intervene when someone is suffering, but they need your trust and support, it’s important not to undermine that. If I were to intervene without their permission it’s important that they are aware that I’m going to do that.

It’s important to not have use accusatory or adversarial tone or language when you speak to the person. But calmly lay out the facts of what has been shared with you — in terms of the person’s experience and what it made them feel. You don’t know the context of the bully and you can’t assume anything. Sometimes people behave badly because they are stressed or feel under threat themselves, because they have a difficult home situation or they may just enjoy making others feel bad.

I’ve worked in places that have excellent HR processes and others that have made up HR policy and procedures as situations arise and everything in between. If HR processes are not what you should, this shouldn’t be accepted as the way it is, but challenged and raising to the head of HR.

It can also be useful to consider getting mental health first aider training or something similar, facilitation and mediation training, for example.

Things to consider

It’s a shame that we have to think about these things at all. Hopefully if bullying behaviour is pointed out there will be various informal and formal processes to deal with and resolve it. Sometimes you don’t get the resolution or outcome you wanted, but by making others aware of the behaviour, hopefully there will be more accountability for people’s actions and steps are taken towards cultural change, even if you personally don’t get exactly what you need.

I’m not an expert in any of this, but some thoughts based on what I have experienced and learned, both as someone who has been bullied and as a manager supporting people who are trying to put a stop to being bullied. I hope this has been useful in some way. If you think I have missed something or got something wrong please leave a comment, I want to learn.