I’m reading a fiction book that touches lightly on harassment in the workplace. I can’t get away from HR issues even in my favorite escape. It has me thinking though, how often does harassment happen in the workplace?
I’m not referring to sexual harassment, but other forms of harassment such as physical threats, actual physical harm, verbal abuse, emotional abuse etc. Even outside abuse that is brought into the workplace.
Harassment makes its difficult to come to work, it makes it difficult to get excited about an otherwise fulfilling job. Employees should not be subjected to the violent behaviors of a crazy boss or coworker. There is no excuse for verbal or physical harassment/violence in the workplace and as an HR Professional I do not tolerate it. To those that get their jollies from harassing staff or coworkers, I have one thing to say: see a counselor.
When harassment trickles into the workplace from the outside I find scares employees a little more. Maybe that’s because they have procedures they can follow to report the harassment and going home can be an escape from the aforementioned crazy person. The main concern from most of these employees is Am I going to lose my job over this. How do you escape harassment when it comes from your personal life into your work life?
From an HR perspective I always tell employees dealing with this type of harassment to forward those call to me. If the harasser shows up at the office, we’ll call the police and slip the employee out the back door. Calls get reported to the police if they become a serious problem. Often it only takes one stern conversation with these people and they stop calling the workplace. But either way, employees are encouraged to report it to the proper authorities.
Harassment in the workplace, be it verbal or physical, from a coworker or boss, or something that trickles in from an employees personal life, is scary. Employees need a person they can trust and someone they know will help them take care of a scary situation. In my office, that’s part of why HR is around.
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Bad economic times increase abuse and harassment, so this a sadly timely bit of wisdom.
That being said, it’s also a part of HR that I think many people forget…including many people in HR. Thanks for the reminder and heads up! Sharing this with some others — hopefully it will be a wake up call.
Thanks Lindsay.
Strange that bosses are always are at the receiving end- today anything and everything can be termed as harrassment- even castgation on extreme provocation can be construed as harrassment.So who is to draw the line?
Who ensures employee discipline? What is the position of the line manger? If HR tries to be the arbiter for all such cases, how does the line manager get hold of his line/dept- is line not competent enough to handle issues within the dept- we need to think these things thru
I was the HR Manager for a small public agency. The executive director was and remains an absolute lunatic with an outrageous temper and a deep hatred for people unless they are of some devious benefit to her. She only values those who behave like her. I never had behaved like her before this job and I wasn’t about to start. My integrity and high standards drove her over the edge. She cut me out of everything work-related that even remotely related to HR and therefore tied my hands when it came to doing the work I love so much. When I blew the whistle on her, rightfully and with clear evidence, that she was giving huge raises to her “pets” and giving contractor jobs to incompetent friends who gave her kickbacks, the retaliation was swift and ugly. I suffered a horrible performance review the likes of which I had never received in my 30 years of working. My supervisor was changed from just a stupid man to an evil one. I was humiliated, blocked from doing my work, blamed for things I had no control over, and finally “laid off” which was their fancy way of not firing me. I have not been able to find work in well over two years (age is an issue), they destroyed my retirement plans, and my self-esteem and joy in life couldn’t be lower.
This executive director reports to a Board of Trustees made up of lawyers and judges. They received so many letters from other now-former employees while I was there and many from a number of people since I left describing the insanity that we dealt with every single day. They have done NOTHING and they do not report to anyone so they are the farthest we could go. Her reign of terror continues and despite what she’s done to dozens of employees, her retirement is secure.
When HR is blamed for not stopping a bullying environment, don’t be so quick to blame us. There are many instances where we are bullied at least as badly by the highest level of the organization and our choice is stay and die a little each day or leave. I stayed as long as I could, naive enough to believe that someone would help us. Bullying has to be addressed by Boards, peers, and courts – and the sooner the better…