Workplace Bullying Resources

This is a follow-up to the post of a few days ago about Quebec's anti-bullying legislation.

Surprisingly, few countries have workplace bullying legislation in place. Only the province of Quebec, the UK and Sweden deal with the issue specifically in legislation.

However, many workplaces now educate their employees to recognize psychological abuse and teach them how to curtail it.

• Targeting Workplace Bullies (Canada Safety Council) - Profiles typical perpetrators and targets of workplace bullying. Outlines the effects of bullying, and the advantages of implementing workplace policies
• Bullying at work (European Agency for Safety and Health at Work)
• What is workplace bullying? (Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety) - Provides examples, and offers suggestions on what can be done if a worker feels bullied, or subjected to any form of harassment. Outlines what the employer can do, and what a workplace violence prevention program involves
• Bully in the boardroom: Workplace aggression takes its toll on employee health and productivity (Centre for Addiction and Mental Health)
• Bullying in the Workplace - From Words to Weapons (Canadian Initiative on Workplace Violence)
• Workplace Bullying and Trauma Institute - Product of psychologists and health workers concerned with employee bullying. Many useful U.S. materials and references. Institute founder Gary Namie published an article in the November/December 2003 issue of the Ivey Business Journal
• Bully Online - UK site created by Tim Field, a pioneer in the field, with psychological profiles of offenders, articles, resources, and suggested reading
• Law can offer some protection against bullies (workopolis.com) - describes how the "employee who is subjected to blatant and outrageous behaviour at work is entitled to treat the employment relationship as having been terminated, by virtue of the breach of the employer's obligation to provide a fair and civil workplace. This is a form of constructive dismissal"
• Turning blind eye to bullies hurts business: Growing disability claims linked to workplace abuse (Business Edge Magazine) - "(E)mployers should know that the targets are often the backbone of the company. A composite sketch of these targets (...) would look like this: They dare to be independent; are technically more competent; are socially skilled, displaying empathy, emotional intelligence and are well liked; and they are ethical whistle-blowers. In short, they are the type of employee human resource departments want to recruit and retain - talented, adaptable, trainable, well balanced and honest. To a person (...) they are people who just want to do a good job. Which begs the question - why do business owners let bullies take them down?"