Not Enough Action Being Taken Against Workplace Bullying

The Canadian HR Reporter published an article about research done on workplace bullying in Canada. Unfortunately – they didn’t like to the research. But – what they claim is pretty similar to numbers we have seen in school bullying in terms of – number of people effected, action takens etc. Here is the link: https://www.hrreporter.com/workplace-health-and-wellness/38708-only-1-in-3-employers-taking-action-to-end-bullying-survey/

Depressed Businessman Sitting At Outdoors” by stockimages

The Findings:

55% admit that either they or a colleague has been bullied.

50% reported bullying – but apparently only 1 in three employers took any action.

Two-thirds of workers said their organization has policies in place to target bullying, 37% said the policy is ineffective.

How to Fix This

A big part of the problem is that people don’t know how to fix it. They don’t know what works to stop bullying. They aren’t sure that what they are seeing is bullying. It takes a lot of ongoing work to fix it and there are no quick fixes.

The first step – for companies and schools that are serious about stopping bullying and harassment – is learning the science of how to make unwanted behaviors stop. If your policies and actions are not grounded in the science of making unwanted behaviors stop, you probably will fail to make it stop.

Not only will you probably fail – you may make it worse inadvertently. Knowing how to make it stop will help you communicate and coach people through the process more effectively and ensure that your actions are not having unintended consequences.

Good Intentions Aren’t Enough

I talk to companies all the time that mean well – but don’t understand why they are getting the exact opposite result from what they intended. I can answer that for you. The reason you are getting results you aren’t expecting or the opposite of what you were hoping for – is because you are inadvertently rewarding the wrong thing. It happens. All the time. Most of the work I do involves helping people tweak what they are doing so that they get the results they want.

Good intentions aren’t enough. You must learn how to create effective disincentives for bullying bullying behavior and reward collaborative behavior in the workplace. Also, you need to explicitly and actively reward people who report bad behavior.

And then, you need to manage the behavioral change process – which is it’s own topic.

Getting Help and Learning What you Need To Learn

The entire reason I have this blog – is to help people learn these skills. I offer the following courses to help people learn how to stop bullying in schools and in the workplace

Workplace Bullying for HR Professionals

6 hour comprehensive program covers the following topics: What is bullying? The Bullying Dynamic. The cost of Bullying. Bullying Laws. Elements of an effective anti-bullying program

What to do if your child is a bully

This lesson is based on the operant conditioning techniques taught in the book The Bully Vaccine and includes, a video, along with detailed information on how to help your child if they are accused of bullying. This includes detailed information on how you, as their parent, can best support them if they are falsely accused and more importantly, how to get them stop if it turns out they really have been bullying other kids.

Ending Harassment & Retaliation in the Workplace


This 1 hour online course taught by Jennifer Hancock, author of The Bully Vaccine will help you learn the skills you need to protect yourself and others from harassment and retaliation.

The Bully Vaccine Home Vaccination Toolkit

Comprehensive program – pay what you can afford. This program contains 2 1/2 hours of training videos, workbooks and worksheets that will help you and your child create a comprehensive strategy to deal effectively with the bullies and get them to stop.