Can any Good Ever come of Reporting Bullying?

takman

My organisation is very much against bullying and people have been fired for bullying after being reported. A couple of people also got suspended pending investigation after raising their voices at each other in anger.

So it seems like it depends on how much the organisation is against bullying. I have never known anyone to feel bullied where I work. There was a case of a supervisor being too strict with employees but I wouldn't consider it bullying. He had to attend a few weeks of training.

Callie22

My experience is that if the organisation wants to get rid of someone, then they'll support an accusation of bullying. If it's someone influential, or if they'll be too expensive to get rid of, then there's no point reporting the bullying as the 'victim' will be the one who is 'managed out'.

I left a job a few years ago because of bullying. The organisation were well aware that two particular people were a problem, but it was easier to 'encourage' people to leave before they'd been there long enough to go to a tribunal than it was to address the more fundamental problems. In fact, the bullies used the high staff turnover to their advantage because the sense of crisis that it created hid a lot of their behaviours - they were the loyal staff who stayed and 'helped the company through a bad patch' and everyone else was just incompetent.

I've never really known an organisation that manages bullying well. I've worked in places where HR have instituted anti-bullying training following problems, but if the culture of the organisation is to reward, ignore or downplay certain kinds of behaviour then all of the training in the world won't make much of a difference. Having undergone various kinds of mandatory 'anti-bullying' training (not because I'm a bully, I hasten to add!), I also think that in a lot of cases it tends not to cover the kind of insidious 'nastiness' that you tend to get in offices. I've sat through anti-bullying sessions that give blatant examples of disability discrimination and sexual harassment but nothing that's ever really dealt with the more subtle kinds of adult bullying that can make your working life a misery - exclusion, undermining, rumour-spreading, bullying behaviours viewed as 'strong management' etc.

andygb

glentoran99 wrote: »

depends on the exact situation, and im struggling to find any situation, and no-one can give me one were the actions of the perpertrator of the bullying wouldn't fall foul of existing laws,

Where the victim of the bullying worked for the company for less than two years.
As long as you are not discriminating against the employee, regarding gender, age, religion or race, then you could probably get away with bullying.
I have seen it done more times than I would care for:(

http://www.masonbullock.co.uk/two-years/

PaulSmenis

Cotta wrote: »

With reference to the workforce I've never seen any bullying cases end well. Either the person making the case usually against a Manager etc leaves or the case is dismissed and then they have to go on working with their Manager is a more extreme situation.

Is it a sensible decision to report bullying? I have never seen anything positive come from it.

I had this problem around 5 years ago - a bullying manager who did all sorts of underhanded things to undermine me. I stuck it about 6 months and then pulled together a 36 page report of situations, what he had done, how it had made me feel, the impact on my work, and the impact on the company. I included email trails, and the names of witnesses.

It was heard by senior management, an "investigation" done and it wasnt upheld on the basis that they had found he treated other people equally badly therefore he wasnt bullying me specifically. They suggested i approach him to see how we could build a better relationship (i kid you not). Needless to say he went into a rage when i approached him about it (i think they hauled him over the coals for it but didnt uphold bullying as it was a dismissable offence and he had key system skills). The bullying continued and at a worse level. The company did nothing to enforce any recommendations from the outcome report, and i eventually went off with stress and depression. Interestingly within 3 days the HR Director came to my home wanting to resolve the situation. We ended up with a Compromise agreement amounting to £10,000 (3 months pay). I could probably have pushed it by appeal (which was the next level) or by tribunal but the whole thing had worn me down so much i hadnt the energy.

I should just have left when it started and i saw it wasnt getting any better while i still had my dignity, self esteem and good mental health.

The only positive i can take from it is that i think that was the beginning of the end for him, with others both putting in complaints and a friend of mine who worked there learning the "key skills" this guy held the company over a barrel with. Within a year he was gone from the organisation and i know for a fact hes now in another job role for another company for half the pay.

PaulSmenis

Tigsteroonie wrote: »

Doesn't seem to work in a large, office based organisation with policies supposedly against this ... I know of at least four people who have raised a grievance against one particular bully. All of them felt as though senior managers and HR were completely unhelpful (the bully was friends with the senior managers),

Exactly the situation i found. Plus the bully was the only person with specific legacy system skills so they were crapping themselves in case he ever left.

Gingernutty

I started under one Team Manager who, for a variety of reasons, quickly left and was replaced with a new Team Manager who, before even starting the role, had acquired a 'reputation'.

A reputation so poor that one NHS trust here, in the Midlands, have a ban on hiring her.

New to Team Management, she promptly put everyones' backs up but crucially, we had no proof.

She was a nailed on, balls out narcissist with a passive aggressive streak so well developed she could have given lessons.

We were there to make her look good and what little she did was worthy of the highest praise.

No one dared criticize her, not even when she misspelled the PowerPoint slides in a presentation talk about our department in front of the senior management at the Team Managers' monthly meeting....

She left no email trails, spoke to people individually without witnesses and seemed to have a rota of people she would routinely pick on.

She picked on people by 'helping them with their development'.

This meant overloading individuals with more work picked from other peoples' in trays and special cases, until they failed to complete it which then gave her grounds to have soul destroying one to one discussions about their under performance.

Her behaviour was outrageous, but there was no united front against her as people were terrified they'd be picked on next.

She somehow got a cash strapped NHS Trust to pay us all a band above what any other trust were paying for the same roles but, after filling every vacant post, managed to lose five of those hired within 18 months.

Months after promising senior management that she'd stop paying for contract temporary workers, she had to start hiring them again as no one would or could stay in post.

One couldn't count on her being in the office as she seemed to pick and choose the days she'd 'work from home' entirely at random, she did the bare minimum when she did show up and her mother (part of the HR function) seems to have given her the ammunition she needed to stay in the role long after anyone else would have been fired.

She has now gone 'by mutual agreement', the staff are under a Team Manager who covered for her maternity leave and the place is still horrendously busy but a damn sight less stressful.

The team have to clock in and out via email now to prove their timesheets are correctly filled in...

There are currently only a small handful working there that I recognize, everyone else has left in an industry which has no real promotion prospects.

That means people have left to work at other NHS trusts, at lower rates, simply to get away from her.

The behaviour of the NHS is woeful when it comes to claims of bullying, harrassment and their treatment of people who blow the whistle is shameful.

http://www.expressandstar.com/news/2016/01/18/cleared-after-four-year-fight-victory-for-nhs-whistle-blower/

So to answer the OP, no.

It's best to leave because bullying is hard to prove and if reported will simply cause a whole heap of trouble for you.

It took about a year before I could find another job as that b!tch either failed to provide references or quoted an email I sent her out of context which resulted in job offers being withdrawn.