604 240 6460 ppelletier@telus.net

Workplace Bullying Article Published

I’m delighted to have my article on “Neutralizing the Bully” at work published by the Administrative Assistant’s Update January 2019 issue.

By Jennifer Lewington
AAU Associate Editor
Workplace bullies are no fun to be around, inflicting damage in various forms: snide remarks; intimidating behaviour; harassment; imposition of unachievable job demands; and, in the worst cases, unwanted sexual advances.

For admin professionals, typically influential but lacking formal power, co-existing with the workplace bully (who might also be the boss) can be an emotionally draining experience that erodes on-the-job productivity.

But workplace respect advocates say administrative and executive assistants don’t have to suffer in silence – or fear.

“You are not powerless,” says Paul Pelletier, a Vancouver-based consultant and author of newly published The Workplace Bullying Handbook. “You may feel it but you are not.”

He encourages victims of workplace bullies to adopt strategies for success.

First, find ways to work together, not alone. Take time to document the bad behaviour. Organize as a group to report the accumulated incidents to human resources (or appropriate managers) given their difficulty in responding to a single complaint about possibly hearsay incidents.

“Hopelessness and vulnerability are what kill people,” says Pelletier, who says the power imbalance between a bullying boss and the admin professional changes when a response plan is put in place. “Everything shifts. It is not: ‘I have no power,’” he says. A collaborative approach, he adds, “changes your perspective and that can be game-changing just to manage and cope with stress.”

Even with the global rise of the “Me Too” movement against sexual harassment and assault in recent years, fueled by high-profile scandals, workplace bullying remains an all-too common
phenomenon.

Last fall, a national poll of 1,875 adults over the age of 16 by Forum Research Inc., found that 55 per cent of respondents said they or a co-worker had been bullied on the job. Even
when bullying incidents were reported to management, human resources or others, only 35 per cent of employers took action.

But when employers responded to complaints, they dealt effectively with the bullying problem, according to the respondents.

Lower the reporting barriers
“There needs to be more awareness of how to report bullying in the workplace and more acceptance of [the filing of] those reports,” says Forum president Lorne Bozinoff. “Not enough is being done to make people feel comfortable about reporting it. We have to look at lowering the barriers to reporting it [bullying].”

In November, speaking at Vancouver’s Public Salon speaker series, Pelletier recounted his own experience, early in his career, with a boss who denigrated his staff with intimidating
behaviour and threats to fire them. “I thought it would get better but it didn’t; it got worse,” he says.

Pelletier says he and his co-workers feared reporting the bully’s behaviour, an omission that inspired him to switch careers and become a consultant to individuals and companies on
how to combat workplace bullying.

Addressing the understandable fear of taking on a bully, he identifies several risk-free strategies.

One, he says, is “knowing what to do when,” which could mean delaying a visit to human resources.

Deep documentation essential
If presented with one incident that may or may not be well documented, human resources officials could be understandably reluctant to trigger immediate action against an established
senior manager seen as a major asset to the organization.

However, when presented with well-documented evidence from multiple sources about objectionable behaviour by a top official, the employer may have no choice but to address the problem.

He emphasizes that his strategy to wait and gather evidence does not apply if the admin is a victim of sexual harassment or assault that should be reported immediately to supervisors and legal authorities.

As a preventive measure, Pelletier encourages admins and others in an organization to step up as “workplace respect leaders” who promote company-wide rules and practices that foster a collegial work environment.

‘We don’t do that here’
“Anyone who ignores the rules is told ‘we don’t do that here,’” he says. “Bullies don’t know what to do when they see a wall of consistent respectful behaviour.”

That collegial approach can also be used when one individual becomes the target of a bully. Instead of being a bystander, Pelletier says, “we should support each other and act as a team.”

Standing together, he says, reduces the fear factor.