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

Step 5: Provide Restorative Justice

The perception of injustice feeds targets' feelings of despair and hopelessness. It is important that the new policy and procedures address healing. Targets are wounded employees, impaired workers, through no fault of their own. Conscientious employers need to make them and the others who witnessed the incidents whole again.

For Bullied Employees

There are several aspects of bullying that are unjust. One of these is the unfair investigations that can lead to perceptions of procedural injustice by targets. Victims of bullying often believe that that system is stacked against them. They are seeking retributive justice when they attempt to identify violators and elicit the punishment they deserve for committing the violation. This type of justice is incorporated in formal policy enforcement procedures.

Ombudsman Tom Sebok at the University of Colorado at Boulder is an advocate for this kind of restorative justice for bullied individuals—something that we agree with entirely.³⁸ Justice depends on identifying (1) who has been harmed, (2) the nature of the harm suffered, and (3) how best to repair the harm. A restorative process looks for a solution that makes the target whole again. Sebok requires offenders to admit responsibility for the harmful conduct and to reflect on the adverse impact they had on bullied targets. Bullies who refuse to admit that they harmed others are not allowed to reharm their targets in any mediated or facilitated discussion ...