Anti-bullying advocacy: an unrealized EAP opportunity: educating executives about the impact of workplace bullying can help EAPs define their role as productivity tools

Journal of Employee Assistance, The,  June, 2003  by Gary Namie,  Ruth Namie

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Despite bullying's prevalence, severity, and impact on workers and work organizations, internal investigations nearly always conclude that it is merely a clash in personalities between bully and target. Apologists for bullying mouth a variety of glib justifications--e.g., "that's why they call it 'work'" and "it's just tough management." Remarkably, the targets alone bear the costs of their unsolicited misery by experiencing stress-related complications. In 75 percent of bullying cases, targets either leave their jobs to stop the bullying or are "constructively discharged" as part of the bullying.

EMPLOYEE PERCEPTIONS OF EAPS

EAPs can play a major role in alleviating the distress of bullied individuals. What's more, by leveraging workplace bullying in organizations, EA professionals can attain the strategic influence the EA field is seeking. EA professionals are uniquely able to work with targeted individuals to restore their health and productivity, which are at the core of employee assistance. Others in the work organization cannot do this. Unless the EA profession's roots are an undesirable anachronism, the bullied person is your client.

Unfortunately, a few EA professionals seem to have difficulty believing that work can traumatize individuals. We receive hundreds of anecdotal reports at the Workplace Bullying & Trauma Institute of EA professionals belittling self-referred individuals seeking relief from workplace trauma. It is disappointing when we hear of EAPs refusing to listen to targets' experiences, insisting instead that sessions be devoted to discovering what attributes the targets possess that could have led to their mistreatment. This practice of victim denigration harkens back to the unenlightened days when battered wives were seen as provoking and being responsible for the abuse they suffered from their husbands.

In August 2000, an independent panel that had spent two years assessing the incidence of violence toward and by U.S. Postal Service workers released a report that included results of a survey of employee perceptions of EAP services. The survey results showed that Postal Service managers were more likely to be satisfied with the organization's EAP than non-supervisory workers (83 percent vs. 62 percent). Perhaps the most disturbing finding was that roughly one in five mail handlers and carriers did not trust the EAP, seeing it as a management tool to punish employees.

Gaining employees' trust depends on consistently demonstrating impartiality as well as maintaining clinical confidentiality. Programs that allow sharing of any clinical information in supervisor-referred cases obviously become tools for management. The seeds of some EAPs' roles in sowing confusion have been planted for some time. According to the USPS report and our anecdotal evidence, employee clients sense the ambiguity.

It seems to us that the EA profession is at a crossroads. Some fear becoming obsolete or irrelevant if employee assistance remains in its counseling, healthcare-related role. EA professionals should be consulted by management, but the domain of their expertise should remain psychological health, which others in the workplace cannot call their niche.