The Bully-Free Workplace: Stop the Jerks, Weasels & Snakes From Killing Your Organization

Bullies don't have to throw a single punch to do lasting damage to another person's health or your business' fiscal health. Nearly 14 million adults in America are currently being bullied, and millions more are experiencing the degrading effects of witnessing that treatment. Bullying prevents work from getting done and undermines your mission. It only satisfies the perpetrator's personal agenda at the expense of people, productivity, and passion. The simple truth is that businesses need to address bullying to protect the bottom line.

The Bully-Free Workplace delivers a thoughtful and detailed plan to stop weasels, jerks, and snakes from killing your organization. Written by pioneers of workplace bullying research, this book tells you why and how to create an explicit policy against bullying. It appeals to those managers who value people and who are willing to challenge employers to adopt that value. The Bully-Free Workplace outlines a step-by-step program to correct and prevent workplace bullying. You'll get in-depth advice along with information to support your efforts, including:

• Why the personality of the bully pales in comparison to organizational factors that encourage and sustain bullying
• How to justify taking action against bullying for bottom-line fiscal rewards, productivity, employee health, talent retention, and positioning as an employer of choice
• Why you shouldn't leave a bullying issue to HR departments, and why the issue should be handled by an organization's CEO
• Why you should trust the reports from the trenches, and how to cope when a trusted colleague is the culprit
• How managerial and supervisory expectations without the benefit of specific training can lead to disastrous results

The stakes couldn't be higher: bullying can lead to disastrous (even fatal) health effects for individuals and plunging profits for businesses. As the philosopher Edmund Burke once said, "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." The time has come for you to do something, and this book shows you how.

About the Authors

Gary Namie (PhD, Social Psychology) has extensive experience as an instructor and professor in college departments of management and psychology, including the University of Southern California, Scripps College, and other colleges. He has won both national American Psychological Association and University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), campus teaching awards. At Western Washington University, Namie developed and taught the first university course on bullying at work. He was also a corporate manager for two regional hospital systems and served as the expert witness in the nation's first ¡°bullying¡± trial in Indiana.

Ruth Namie (PhD, Clinical Psychology) was training director for Sheraton Hotels before her clinical training led to helping chemically dependent individuals and families. Ruth's personal experience was the impetus for the U.S. workplace bullying movement. She has since become an expert on the devastating effects of bullying on targeted workers.

In 1997, the Namies began the research and education organization that became the Workplace Bullying Institute (WBI) based in Bellingham, Washington. They wrote two previous books (The Bully at Work and BullyProof Yourself at Work). WBI regularly conducts research, including the 2010 and 2007 U.S. surveys of bullying representing all adult Americans. The Namies¡¯ research articles are published in the Journal of Consulting Psychology, International Journal of Communication, Employee Rights and Employment Policy Journal, Ivey Business Journal, and Journal of Employee Assistance. They also have contributed chapters in the books Destructive Organizational Communication: Processes, Consequences, and Constructive Ways of Organizing (Taylor & Francis, 2009) and Workplace Bullying: Development in Theory, Research and Practice (2nd edition, Taylor & Francis, 2010).

Ruth and Gary Namie are the best©\known individuals associated with workplace bullying in the United States, due in large part, to their public websites devoted to different aspects of education about bullying for individuals, lawmakers, unions, and employers. As the U.S. pioneers, their work has been featured in more than 950 media interviews, including on the Today Show, Good Morning America, Early Show, Nightline, CNN, local television news; in the New York Times, Bloomberg Business Week, USA Today, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, Toronto Star, Ivey Business Journal, HR Executive, Globe and Mail, and American Bar Association; and on Marketplace Radio, NPR, and CBC radio.

Gary directs the national network of state coordinators, acting as citizen lobbyists, who work to pass into law the antibullying Healthy Workplace Bill. Since 2003, 21 states have introduced, but not yet passed, the legislation.