As part of my degree (Psychology) I studied a module on Workplace Psychology and my dissertation looked at perceptions of bullying behaviours.
What I discovered is that the higher up the hierarchy people climb the less severe they consider bullying behaviours. For example, a junior member of the team would usually rank micro-managing or name calling as severe bulling behaviours but senior managers would rank them both as low-level bullying behaviours.
And therein lies a significant issue. If the people in a position to deal with bullying perceive the behaviours being complained about as minor issues while the focus of the behaviour see it as bullying then where is the impetus to deal with it?
The people responding to my survey were not HR professionals - they were all employees at varying levels within the banking industry and the common denominator was their membership of a couple of banking unions (the unions distributed my questionnaire for me). I should also add that this was about 20 years ago.
I would be the first to admit that attitudes and behaviours have changed immensely over the last 20 years but could my findings still hold true? Could this still be at the root of why we find it so hard to deal with bullying?

In reply to Deborah:

That's very interesting, Deborah. Behaviour that is pernicious can have just as devastating an impact as a single, gross act.

In reply to Deborah:

a junior member of the team would usually rank micro-managing or name calling as severe bulling behaviours but senior managers would rank them both as low-level bullying behaviours.

My first question must be about the methodology in this, which is whether all participants were given the same definition for what the researchers considered "bullying" to be before being asked the question.

The second is about accounting for the availability heuristic. A junior level employee is likely to observe bullying very rarely and therefore perceive any example as significant. Senior employees, dealing regularly with grievances and discipline issues, are likely to have exposure to far more examples and therefore use a wider sample to judge the level of seriousness.

Third is the question of what context was offered. Without supporting context, a junior-level employee presented with an example of bullying is more likely to assume that they are the victim of bullying and therefore to ascribe it greater significance. A senior-level employee is more likely to assume that the victim is someone else.

If the people in a position to deal with bullying perceive the behaviours being complained about as minor issues while the focus of the behaviour see it as bullying then where is the impetus to deal with it?

You portray this bias yourself, here, by assuming that the junior-level employee is the victim of bullying, whilst the senior-level one is responsible for addressing it.

Bullying is poorly defined in academia, much as it is in law, and we all know that bullying is often in the eye of the beholder. If they have make a coherent and logical case that they felt bullied, then the intentions of the perpetrator are largely irrelevant. A consequence is that it is exceptionally difficult to wipe out bullying because the benchmark for what constitutes bullying is going to be continually pushed down in organizations that take productive steps to eliminate it. I cannot be the only HR practitioner who regularly receives allegations of bullying that, even in the account of the alleged victim, just read like a manager doing their job and holding team members to account for actually achieving targets. Not that long ago I saw a manager accused of bullying for the dreadful sin of inviting me to join a meeting.

Oh, and me for... accepting the invitation, I think?

Bullying emerges, in my entirely inexpert opinion, from two major sources: stimulated bullying and unstimulated bullying.

Stimulated bullying is behaviour intended in pursuit of an objective and logical purpose: in order to ensure that someone completes a task, I micromanage them; or in order to discourage someone from showing up late again, I yell at them. Stimulated bullying is used as a tactic to achieve a notionally-valuable outcome.

Unstimulated bullying serves only the bully: to prop up their own sense of self-worth and to sustain the status quo in which they exercise control over others.

Stimulated bullying is, in my experience, the most common kind and also the kind we stand some chance of addressing. If we provide managers with the right tools and training and select and appoint the right employees with the right skills, in conditions that support them, then the need for stimulated bullying diminishes. In this picture, we see bullying not as the fault of the bully, but as a failure of the organization to provide the bully with more adequate resources and the knowledge to use them. There are no perfect organizations, so stimulated bullying will still occur, but we can reduce its incidence *and* incidentally, reasonably treat it differently from unstimulated bullying in the disciplinary process. A stimulated bully can be retained and supported and never bully again.

Unstimulated bullying, meanwhile, is a fundamental feature of human society and cannot be eliminated except, in organizations, by identifying the perpetrators and removing them. But they will never go away and it is futile to imagine that they will.

I was tweeting about this only this morning Steve. It's a regular topic of my tweets. I think HR professionals have a large part to play in the culture of organisations we work for and with. Our specialism is about people and culture is partly about how collectively the individuals within an organisation show up. HR are the custodians of culture but only in that we should have a particular interest in it and support what behaviours we tolerate organisationally. That said, HR are people and I've worked for some bullying bosses and withint toxis teams where bad behaviour is left unchecked and tolerated within and outside of the team.

What can we do about it?
*Well it's good that it's talked about, uncovered, dealt with and we should expect a strong culture, that lives by espoused values we often see on the wall or in the handbook or constitution, to deal with behaviour that transgresses those values. We shouldn't be afraid of increased numbers of grievances, complaints etc necessarily, if we are serious about rooting this out and dealing with it numbers could go up.
*Create safe spaces. Psychological safety to state when we are unhappy and know where to go to confidentially speak about it is critical. This could be HR or an employee assistance line or any number of other sources of support and not always a manager.
*Train our people well. To spot behaviours in themselves and others. I tend to see less and less cohesive and coordinated training and learning across the employee lifecycle these days in favour of specific programes and self service, self directed learning. I think it needs to be strategic and systemic approach to development.
*Tackle transgressors. This isn't always about firing them, it depends on the allegations and the case to answer for but leaving things unaddressed allows transgressors to believe they are doing nothing wrong and then, when they do get caught perhaps later on in their career, they have a hard time dealing with it, taking accountability for their own behaviour and making the changes they need in order to be effective in the workplace. That's when we see the apology / non-apology strategy coming out which is very, publicly in evidence these days.

It's a complex issue that starts way back before people even get to work. It requires a systemic approach and HR have to walk the walk and deal with poor behaviours in their own team as well as support tackling that across the organisations and clients we work with.

In reply to Sharon:

That's great, Sharon. Thanks for sharing.

What counts as workplace bullying? - BBC