Tara Parker of the New York Times recently wrote an article called “Meet the Office Bully,” which highlighted findings from Dr. Sandy Hershcovis’ and coauthor Julian Barling’s research on the negative effects of workplace aggression.
As found in the authors’ research and clearly evident in the multitude of readers’ responses to Tara Parker’s article, bullying has a very real presence and profoundly negative impact in the workplace today—not only for individual employees, but for companies’ bottom lines as well. The Corporate Leavers Survey, a nationwide study conducted by the Level Playing Field in 2007, found that over 2 million managers and professionals voluntarily leave their jobs every year due solely to workplace unfairness, including bullying. In fact, bullying was one of the most frequently experienced forms of unfairness by survey respondents across all demographic groups that was directly associated with their decision to leave their employers. It is important to note that bullying and inappropriate behaviors appear to be disproportionately directed at people of color, gays and lesbians, and women.
Further jaw dropping is that this exodus of fed-up employees is hitting corporate America with an economic cost of $64 billion dollars annually- that’s almost equivalent to the combined revenues of Google, Goldman Sachs, Starbucks, and Amazon.com! Interestingly, this cost is also equivalent to the settlements for all sex and race based lawsuits reported by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission from 1997 until 2006. This figure does not even include the costs associated with these corporate leavers strongly discouraging others from taking jobs with or purchasing products/services from their employers.
Clearly, bullying and other subtle, inappropriate behaviors in the workplace are not good for anyone, though unfortunately they are not currently considered illegal in the U.S. Companies should eradicate bullying in their organizations, if not just for the sake of “doing the right thing,” then because of the direct and egregious impact to their business. For more information, please visit www.corporateleavers.org
[...] exodus of 2 million workers cost businesses (and our economy) $64 billion, says the Level Playing Field [...]