Workplace Bullying: How Performance Management Can Help - Part Two September 28th, 2009

Heather McCulligh

I have to confess - I love daytime TV. Of course, since I work I have to carefully manage my TiVo to catch the best of my fave shows. This week while checking out Oprah’s new season schedule, I came across a big focus on workplace bullying.

Sean recently introduced a conversation about this issue in this post, but one thing he didn’t touch on is the obvious question - how do you know if you are being bullied or part of a toxic workplace? According to Oprah’s site, some of the signs that you are being bullied at work include:

• You feel like throwing up the night before the start of your work week.
• Your frustrated family demands that you to stop obsessing about work at home.
• Your doctor asks what could be causing your skyrocketing blood pressure and recent health problems, and tells you to change jobs.
• You feel too ashamed of being controlled by another person at work to tell your spouse or partner.
• All your paid time off is used for “mental health breaks” from the misery.
• Days off are spent exhausted and lifeless, your desire to do anything is gone.
• Your favorite activities and fun with family are no longer appealing.
• You begin to believe that you provoked the workplace cruelty.

What struck me about this list is that it describes how many people feel about interactions with their managers, not necessarily how they feel about peers. Sean talked about how employee performance management technology can assist with systemic bullying by creating a workplace of accountability and teamwork, and how it can reduce peer bullying with multirater and 360 degree review features.

But in my opinion, the most obvious and basic way it can assist is by creating a consistent structure for difficult manager/employee conversations. With a strong focus on coaching, managers can no longer provide blanket feedback that an employee is “a weak link” or “not engaged” in their work - they have to back up any assertions made with concrete examples from performance journals and the like.

Also, it provides the employees with a required voice at the table. They cannot just take the criticism home and complain to their spouse; as part of the employee performance management process they are required to comment on the feedback, suggest methods for improving the situation, and set goals for the next review.

One of the comments on the site effectively summed up the feeling of being powerless to a manager:

I was bullied at work by a supervisor. No matter how hard I worked, she always acted like nothing I could do was good enough. …there was nothing I could say back to her [because] I did not want to lose my job, so I would sit in her office as she would tell me that with this economy, I should be better at my job or I would lose it. I got yelled at about small things like… where I put a staple, using lowercase letters in email subjects… I was “let go” from that job…

I find it hard to imagine that a situation like this could occur in an organization that puts a focus on talent management. If goals are in place and employees knew how they are being evaluated, a clear path to success is highlighted.

Tags: performance management, talent management