Workplace bullying was a problem Robert Laing thought he was ready for. In his 35 years of working in management, he had dealt with harassment issues before and was proud of the policy his organization, the British Columbia Real Estate Association, had adopted.
But when he encountered a situation involving a member of the board of directors a couple of years ago, the association’s own policy and the province’s anti-bullying legislation didn’t provide him with the guidance he needed to determine whether the situation had crossed into the statutory realm of bullying.
“When it actually comes down to apply it, there are a lot of difficulties,” says Laing, chief executive officer of the association, referring to anti-bullying legislation. “Where we thought the behaviour was totally inappropriate—and it was inappropriate on a director level—where do you draw the line between someone being a boor or jerk and [where] we’ve technically crossed over the line into bullying?”
The issues included yelling across the table, throwing pens across the room and texting others to tell them to stop talking. While British Columbia’s bullying legislation covers boards of directors, Laing still found it difficult to figure out how to proceed. If the individual had been a staff member, he says he would have felt comfortable “disciplining them immediately,” starting with verbal warnings.
“If the board is not going to police itself, it makes it very difficult for senior staff to do it,” says Laing.
A lawyer suggested the situation would make a good test case for the legal system. But Laing simply wanted to solve a problem, not set a precedent. He addressed the issue through debriefing sessions and discussions aimed at repairing the damage and, eventually, the person who had been the source of problem left the organization. Laing felt that given the circumstances, the association had done the right thing in protecting the staff.
Diane Rodgers, president of the BullyFreeBC Society, notes that besides harming those in the workplace, having a bully on board can also affect a company’s brand when it comes to issues such as recruitment, turnover and reputation.
“Businesses get badly damaged by this,” she says.
Elements of a plan to deal with the issue include training employees on policies, having reporting procedures in place and laying out sanctions. But simply having a policy in place isn’t good enough, says Laura Williams, founder and principal of Toronto-based Williams HR Law.
Most jurisdictions in Canada require companies to implement violence and harassment policies, including those dealing with bullying, under health and safety legislation.
“Most employers are alive to the fact that they need to have anti-violence, anti-bullying, anti-discrimination policies, even codes of conduct, in the workplace,” says Williams, noting employers may face exposure if they adopt a policy without training their staff. “What’s most important is to properly communicate what appropriate and expected behavioural standards are within the workplace.”
When it comes to the sanctions for bullying, they should be fairly severe, says Jacqueline Power, an assistant professor of management at the University of Windsor’s Odette School of Business. But she warns against going too far, suggesting a demotion, rather than firing a bully. “What you don’t want is zero tolerance,” she says, noting that such a severe consequence could discourage reporting of workplace bullying.
This article originally appeared on BenefitsCanada.com.
