Chapter 12
A New Role for Human Resources
Executives mistakenly believe that like illegal harassment, workplace bullying is a problem for HR to solve. That is a traditional mistake. If your organization is to be successful at implementing our Blueprint system, HR will have a new role—one that involves the following 10 tasks.
1. Gather evidence about the prevalence of bullying by obtaining historical records of unactionable complaints from equal employment opportunity (EEO)/human rights/antidiscrimination officers.
2. Consult with risk management or the chief financial officer (CFO) to gather tangible losses attributable to bullying.
3. Solicit a report from contracted employee assistance program (EAP) counselors about the mental health impact of bullying on staff. Use aggregated stories to protect case anonymity.
4. Assemble all related policies (there will be many) to identify gaps that the new bullying policy will plug, thereby reducing redundancy across the myriad extant policies.
5. Designate the members of the collaborative policy writing group (which will be described in Blueprint Step 2) to be facilitated by the consultants. Coordinate logistics of this step.
6. Coordinate internal education events when it is time to roll out the new policy and procedures.
7. Initiate and finalize the design and production of ancillary materials to support the new policy and team of expert peers.
8. Designate training team participants (preferably with EAP providers) to receive in-depth ...
