Kicking Bullies Out of the Workplace

For companies, the effects are primarily financial: losses in productivity and profits, and increases in litigation and workers' compensation costs.

What is Workplace Bullying?

The WBI has been educating the American public and researching this phenomenon since 1997. WBI is responsible for the only large, representative scientific surveys of adult bullying in the U.S., first in 2007 and now in 2010.

There were two 2010 surveys: one with several items and 4,210 survey respondents (MOE +/- 1.5 percentage points), and one single-item survey with 2,092 respondents (MOE +/- 2.2 percentage points). Each sample was representative of all American adults in August 2010.

In Survey 1, workplace bullying was defined as "repeated, health harming, abusive conduct committed by bosses and co-workers." In the single-question survey (Survey 2), workplace bullying was defined as "repeated mistreatment: sabotage by others that prevented work from getting done, verbal abuse, threatening conduct, intimidation, and humiliation" to make the direct comparison to the 2007 WBI-Zogby prevalence question.

Key Findings

The study found that both men and women bully, but the majority (68%) of bullying is same-gender harassment, which is mostly legal according to anti-discrimination laws and workplace policies. Other key findings showed that:

• 35% of workers have experienced bullying firsthand (37% in 2007 – given the MOE, essentially equivalent)
• 62% of bullies are men; 58% of targets are women
• Women bullies target women in 80% of cases
• Bullying is four times more prevalent than illegal harassment (2007)

The Healthy Workplace Bill

Despite the emotional and financial consequences of workplace bullying, legislators have been slow to address the problem. Indeed, the United States is lone among the industrialized western democracies in completely ignoring workplace bullying in its vast collection of laws. No state currently has an anti-bullying law for the workplace, although a coalition of state activists seeks to change that. The Healthy Workplace Campaign — a network of volunteer state coordinators — has been lobbying state legislatures to enact anti-bullying bills since 2001, when Suffolk University Professor of Law David Yamada drafted the text of the Healthy Workplace Bill (HWB).

Constituents of both parties appear to want elected officials to act. In the 2010 WBI-Zogby survey, respondents were asked if they supported or opposed workplace bullying legislation to protect workers from "abusive conduct" as contained in the original HWB language. The results showed that support is 2.5 times the level of opposition. Based on selected party affiliation, the strongest support came from Democrats (84%). Also in the majority were Not Specified (60%), followed by Independents (55%) and half of the Republicans.

Additionally, groups that enjoy protected status under current civil rights laws were heavily in favor of the legislation. Support from African Americans (73%) and Hispanics (66%) showed that current laws are inadequate when workplace cruelty is the issue. In 2009, the NAACP endorsed HWB as a necessary law.

The HWB has been introduced in 17 states in over 50 versions sponsored by 250 legislators. The bill has successfully passed committee votes in Illinois, Washington, New York, and Connecticut. Illinois has passed a Joint Resolution establishing funding for a one-year Task Force on Workplace Bullying. State senators in both the New York and Illinois legislatures passed anti-bullying bills this year.

In an effort to highlight the emotional and financial costs to employees and employers alike, the WBI designated Oct. 17-23 as Freedom from Workplace Bullies Week.