45 21ST ANNUAL CRIME PREVENTION GUIDE continued... One in six employees has been bullied, and one in five employees has seen a coworker bullied. Numbers like these are astonishing, but without any legislation in place and increasingly stressful workplaces, incidences are only growing. Currently, there is no occupational health and safety legislation in Canada that specifically deals with bullying in the workplace; that is, no jurisdiction in this country requires employers to have a workplace violence prevention program. Quebec has been the only province to implement some governance in response to bullying – and only recently. Bullying at work is the repeated, health or career endangering mistreatment of one employee, by one or more employees. The mistreatment is a form of psychological violence and is often a mix of verbal and strategic insults preventing the target from performing work well. Being the target of a workplace bully can affect your physical and mental health, it can impact other areas of your life, such as affecting social bonds or your enjoyment of work. Forty-five per cent of targets suffered stress-related health problems, including anxiety, panic attacks, and clinical depression. In a study conducted by the Workplace Bullying Institute, 37 per cent of workers have been bullied, with 57 per cent of the targets being women. The majority of bullies (72 per cent) are people in positions of authority. Whereas peer bullies are less frequent at 18 per cent. Worse, statistics show these bullies don’t pick on the new guy, but long-term, well-established employees. The most common victims are women in their 40s. Tips on how to deal with a bully in your workplace: Understand the bully Knowing the type of person you are dealing with can help determine how best to defend yourself. Often these bullies will recruit others to help. Males tend to favour using other management, while females recruit from the social network. Subtle bullies – torment their targets with quiet but piercing techniques. Is a two-faced, passiveaggressive destroyer of reputations through rumour spreading, controls target’s reputation. Abusive bullies – hound a target employee without mercy, and humiliates target in a public setting. Controlling bullies – control target via withholding resources (e.g. time, budget, autonomy, training) necessary to succeed. Raging bullies – intimidate everyone in the vicinity with their out-of-control anger. Working With A Bully
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