The Bully-Free Workplace: Stop Jerks, Weasels, and Snakes From Killing Your Organization

Economic Harm

Loss of professional status affects income by way of denied opportunities—promotions given to others, demotions used as punishment, and rejection of earned vacation as well as other forms of paid time off. Bullied targets routinely lose status as they fall out of favor with bullying managers. The ultimate impact is job loss for no cause—an abuse of managerial prerogative.

The 2010 WBI U.S. Workplace Bullying Survey found that 41 percent of bullied women and 36 percent of bullied men quit their jobs. The responses tell us that they had not considered quitting before being bullied. The survey was conducted during one of the toughest economic times for American workers; nearly 10 percent of Americans had registered as unemployed, and approximately 18 percent of included respondents were not working or were underemployed. In other words, it was a time during which no one would want to quit if it was avoidable. Bullying almost always forced targets to choose between two equally unattractive alternatives. Involuntary job loss was the second most frequent result. An additional 25 percent of the women and 13 percent of the men were terminated subsequent to being bullied. In 2010, approximately 2.9 million Americans could blame their job loss on bullying.¹⁷

From a corporate executive's viewpoint, workers have no right to expect job security—a point with which we completely agree. However, when rogue managers arbitrarily displace quality, hard workers simply to prove that they ...