Has anyone placed a section on being bullied in the workplace? I was thinking of adding it to our antiharassement section of the Employee Handbook.

Thoughts would be much appreciated.

Really? You need a policy for that. Why don't you just fire someone that is a bully for unable to work well with others????

^ Exactly. No need to reinvent the wheel here.

This is the most interesting forum, hands down. From an article Top 10 Essentials to Include in an Employee Handbook:

Workplace Bullying. Workplace bullying involves repeated unreasonable acts toward an employee, either by a peer or supervisor, intended to humiliate or undermine the employee, and creating a risk to his or her health. Workplace bullying is not yet illegal, but employers have significant incentives to prevent it. The costs of bullying to an employer include training new employees to replace employees who leave as a result of bullying; decreased productivity as employees cope with bullying incidents; and harm to an employer’s reputation. Employers should include in their employee handbooks a zero tolerance, anti-bullying policy as part of their commitment to a safe and healthy work environment. Such policies should include a process for reporting bullying, as well as responding to and investigating complaints of bullying.

It never occurred to me to have a policy on this, but I distinctly remember offering to beat the [censored] out of a supervisor who was brilliant, but in the midst of a mean hangover most of the time...

A Google search on - bullying and employee handbook- yields 164,000 hits.

Sometimes it's a member of sr. management doing the bullying.

Sometimes it's a member of sr. management doing the bullying.

In some situations IMHO:

To some of us older folks, I think that is called managing.

To some of the younger crowd, they think it is bullying. However, repeated requests to do your job is not in the bullying category.

I can think of some managers who were just bullies...outride, rude nasty bullies.

Oh I agree and my comment was of course tongue in cheek.

However, HR policy or not, such policies are usually never enforced regarding Sr. Management, especially at smaller, family owned banks.

I'm going to hold on to this and use it in the future, you certainly nailed this one.

We would lump that in with workplace violence, as it covers verbal and physical aspects. Would we enforce it? Depends on who it is

I think the only bullies we have here are in senior management, so likely no.

Maybe it's just me, but I really hate when the word "bully" is used in reference to adult behavior. It is such an overused word today. I think "harassment" is so much more appropriate.

I don't think the words are interchangeable, tango. There are definitely people in the workplace who bully others around be it from a place of superiority in title or just in their own minds. Harassment is picking on someone for a particular attribute they have. Not the same thing, imho, at all.

I think bullying is a type of harassment. I would put any bullying language in a larger harassment policy.

sounds fairly imnterchangable to me. bottom line, be prepared to address either/both if it happens, or be ready to pay the penalties from a lawsuit

I suggested HR adopt a bullying policy and they said they don't focus on negative, they focus on rewarding employees who are postive, well liked, and do a good job. These are all subjective evaluations in my book, because it seems in many cases Sr mangement's "positives" are their friends who they've hired, go to lunch with, leaving others behind and disconnected. In the 80's we called it preferential treatment.

Does HR also hand out participation ribbons too? Good grief - if they don't want to focus on negative situations they need to get out of HR....