Abusive Behavior

Abusive or intimidating behavior is one of the most common ethical problems encountered by employees. Bullying is a kind of abusive behavior that can cause serious disruptions to an employee’s life and to productivity. Many employees feel they have no recourse against the bully because the majority of workplace bullies are in superior positions.

Recognizing abuse

What is considered abusive varies from person to person. Abusive behavior can mean anything from physical threats, false accusations, profanity, insults, yelling, or harshness, to ignoring someone and unreasonableness. In today’s business environment, where working with different cultural groups is the norm, definitions are further complicated by varied meanings of words across ages and cultures. Therefore, a key consideration when analyzing a potential abuse case is intent—was the person concerned striving to harm, or merely clumsy in their communication?

Dealing with abuse

In the past, employees have often been afraid to report abuse because they feared repercussions, such as being fired, but today many organizations are devising safe ways for employees to come forward. Some businesses use suggestion boxes or have telephone hotlines where an employee can report instances of abuse anonymously; others have set up ethics committees, staffed with people trained to deal with situations of employer misconduct. It is important to make employees feel safe so that they will be willing to report workplace misconduct.

Identifying bullies

Bullying is a kind of abusive behavior where a person or a group is targeted, threatened, harassed, belittled, verbally abused, or heavily criticized. It can use a mix of verbal, nonverbal, and manipulative or threatening expressions that damage workplace productivity. The bully’s motive is usually to conceal or divert from his or her own incompetence, and they will often project their inadequacies on to their staff.

Bullying is often a serial behavior and frequently results in serious psychological damage to the target and poor performance of the team. The presence of a bully is often betrayed by symptoms in a team such as a high turnover of staff, above average absenteeism, high stress levels, and the spread of bullying behavior to other members as they attempt to meet the bully’s requirements. Bullying can occur on an organizational level, where a company forces employees to agree to unreasonable terms or imposes intrusive controls, such as spot checks and monitoring of emails and phone conversations. Companies may also be guilty of bullying by, for example, making unreasonable demands of suppliers in an abusive or threatening manner.

Do you have a workplace bully?

• Does he/she spread rumors to damage the reputation of others?

• Does he/she flaunt status or authority to take advantage of others?

• Does he/she discredit others’ ideas and opinions?

• Does he/she fail to communicate or return communications from others?

• Does he/she use insults and shout?

• Does he/she take credit for others’ work or ideas?