Resolving & Preventing Workplace Bullying
By Delilah van Tol
INTRODUCTION
When you hear the word bullying you may first think about bullying in school and the actions of children. However, bullying at the workplace is also increasingly alarming. How can this be resolved and, even better, how can we prevent bullying from happening in the workplace?
WORKPLACE BULLYING
A definition of workplace bullying is ‘persistent negative interpersonal behavior experienced by people at work’.[1] This definition has been written by one of the top researchers of the USA.[2] This definition does include a wide range of experiences as researchers cannot agree on what experiences do or do not include in the bullying definition. Moreover, there are different kinds of bullying. For example, the bullying of ethnicity, sex, authority related bullying, etc.
ADR
In the last couple of decades, we see that anti-discrimination is significantly important in the workplace.[3] ADR is proven to be an effective tool for anti-discrimination.[4] For example, ADR helped to make equal pay discussable between women and men.[5] However, for ADR to be effective, it must embrace disputes between coworkers as well as between employees and employers.[6] The purpose of this broad scope of coverage is to avoid any feeling of discrimination between authority figures and workers. ADR is a great way to solve injustice, but it does not have the magic wand to prevent bullying in the workplace. Companies do need to adapt their statutes to this alarming aspect of the reality in the workplace and focus on specialized training that will make clear for everyone what is acceptable behavior and what is not.[7] Then, ADR provisions should be included to make everyone feel safer and sure that there is a mechanism set up to efficiently resolve any issues arising out of non-compliance.
APOLOGY
Whenever bullying occurred a logical response would be an apology. But does an apology solve the damage that has been done? Research has been done about the attitude towards an apology. The outcomes of the research were diverse. But, the overall conclusion was that apologizing was better than providing no apology at all.[8] People want the fault to be recognized.
CONCLUSION
ADR is a great improvement in the workplace to resolve disputes between coworkers and employees and employers. ADR will provide equality and can provide to the victims of bullying in the workplace with the apology they want and deserve through a flexibly, efficient, and transparent procedure.
[1] Rayner and Keasly “Bullying at Work: A Perspective from Britain and North America.” in Counterproductive Work Behavior: Investigations of Actors and Targets. 271 (S. Fox and P. Spector, eds. APA Press 2005)
[2] ibid.
[3] Stone, Katherine V.W., "Dispute Resolution in the Boundaryless Workplace" (2001). Cornell Law Faculty Publications. 1603. pp 482
https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/facpub/1603
[4] ibid. pp. 482
[5] ibid. pp. 482
[6] ibid. pp. 487
[7] ibid. pp. 488
[8] Scher, Steven J. and Darley, John M., "How effective are the things people say to apologize? Effects of the realization of the apology speech act." (1997). Faculty Research and Creative Activity. 26.