CareerCurve™

I recently posted about the costs of workplace bullying.  As I said, one of the line items in terms of cost to your organization is time.  Once I really thought about the ways bullying wastes time in the workplace, I realized that this subject deserved its own post.   Have you ever really thought about the number of ways time is wasted when one employee feels bullied by another and there are other employees around to witness it?

• Time spent talking about being bullied. 
• Time spent gossiping about the bully.
• Time spent by witnesses calming the victim.
• Time spent filing complaints.
• Time spent by management investigating, disciplining the bully and appeasing the victim.
• Time spent researching solutions.
• Time spent providing training and workshops for both victims and bullies.  
• Time reorganizing departments and teams.
• Time spent recruiting, interviewing, hiring and training replacements.  
• Time spent at work by victims and witnesses looking for new jobs.

Is time the biggest cost when your company has a bully?  Can you think of other examples where time is wasted on workplace bullies?   What do you do to minimize or control the time spent on workplace bullying?

I recently read an article about complaining at work that reminded me of an email that flew around years ago.  It was supposedly a speech given by Bill Gates to graduating college students and it hung on my refrigerator for years.  In fact, it may still be there under our soccer, baseball and gymnastic schedules and fundraiser information.  This was the one that tried to reel in the expectations for a graduate by pointing out things like “Life is not fair – get used to it!” and “Flipping burgers is not beneath you.”   I believe this was back in the day when things were great all around and my generation (I’m dating myself) kind of disgusted me as being spoiled and  ridiculous.  The more I think about it, it probably is buried somewhere on my fridge – I wanted to have it in case I had kids someday.

I think this article is well written and to the point – it names the complaint and possible solutions for the employee recommending that complaining will get you no where.   I am interested in how many of these complaints really cause disruption.  Some of them make sense professionally, such as having too large of a workload, but do your employees really invest a lot of time in complaining about there being a lack of decent restaurants within the vicinity of the office?  Wouldn’t this be something that was known prior to accepting the position?  

Hasn’t there been an attidue adjustment with the economical changes most companies have experienced that would mean an automatic reduction in complaining in general?   I, for one, am grateful to have a job at all so even if I had all kinds of issues, (which luckily, I do not) my attitude would still be one of gratitude.  Of course, my experience with people currently looking for work may be a little too close for objectivity.  How disruptive are these complaints in real life and has there been any reduction in the amount or type of complaints you deal with?