The Best Ways To Deal With A Workplace Bully

Most workplaces are peaceful and encourage workers to find common ground to be able to work well together. Unfortunately, there are some places that have a toxic atmosphere where harassment, retaliation, and even bullying are the norm. Working in a place like this is unproductive and can cause things like mental health issues.

One type of workplace harassment comes in the form of a bully. These people generally are tolerated because they are clever enough to make it seem that they are just being aggressive to make sure that work gets done. They have plausible deniability. When you’re faced with a bully at work it doesn’t need to be tolerated. In this article, we will give you some ideas on how to deal with workplace bullies so you can get to work in a positive environment.

Document everything

At a certain point, you will likely need to file a complaint against your bully. It may be that you go to HR with your concerns and they deal with things internally. Or, you may have to take matters to a government regulatory agency if it needs to be escalated.

Whatever the case may be, you will need to have evidence to show them to back up your claims. You should make sure that you have been keeping detailed records that you could even take to a lawyer like the HKM law firm in Las Vegas.

These records should be anything that shows what you are dealing with and can be something like a diary in which you write down the time, date, and incident in a ledger so you can stay organized. Then, make sure you have any emails that were received which had any aggressive language or corroboration of the events you have detailed in your diary.

Screenshot things like text messages so you have a permanent record of any harassing messages you received from your bully. You should also be keeping any performance reviews that are overly negative and use language that is belittling while also showing positive results you have been getting for your work. This shows that you are being treated unfairly since you are actually doing a good job for the company.

Speak up often

It isn’t easy to defend yourself against a workplace bully since they have a way of intimidating you to prevent you from speaking up. However, speaking up often when you are being bullied could be a way of de-escalating the problem. Many bullies count on their victims not to say anything for fear of retaliation.

To successfully speak out, you need to make sure to address the incident and the effect it is not only having on you but your ability to effectively do your job. Since even a bully understands that they are on thin ice if the job doesn’t get done well then they might just back off and leave you alone to work.

If you don’t speak up then the bullying will simply continue since there is no reason for the bully to stop.