Question: My Human Resources department refuse to take me seriously. Instead, it seems like they are doing everything they can to support the bully, and trying to get rid of me, instead. Why is this?
Answer: From dealing with thousands of cases in which this happens - albeit a self-selecting audience which may not scale up nationally - I've identified the following 20 reasons:
1. Human Resources (HR) people are not trained to deal with bullies - it's not in their textbooks, nor in their training.
2. The HR profession seems to attract a number of people who are not people-focused and thus not good at dealing with people problems.
3. HR is not there for employees. The role of HR is to keep the employer out of court.
4. Since HR personnel are human and are just as susceptible to charm, which happens to be one of the bully's main weapons of deception.
5. By the time HR get to hear of the bullying they are faced with an articulate, plausible, convincing, charming "bully" and a gibbering wreck of a "target" who is traumatized and thus unconvincing, inarticulate, incoherent, obsessed, apparently paranoid, tearful, distressed and highly emotional. By this time the bully has already convinced HR that the target has a "mental health problem", is a liability to the organization, and needs to be got rid of.
6. When it's one word against another with no witnesses, HR take the word of the senior employee (almost always the bully).
7. Most employers don't have an anti-bullying policy so it's not a disciplinary issue.
9.
10. The bully is a tough dynamic manager who gets the job done and the high turnover of staff in the bully's department is because they're all wimps who can't meet the demanding standards of performance demanded by this exemplary manager. Yawn.
11. If HR recognizes it has a bully, they're not going to admit it because to do so is tantamount to admitting liability for this - and previous - cases.
12. HR is not going to admit that they've made a mistake recruiting an incompetent individual who bullies to hide his or her inadequacies.
13. When push comes to shove, HR does what they are told to do by management, regardless of the rights and wrongs.
14. HR is often outsourced, thus has little influence to effect change.
15. The constant change, reorganization, restructuring, downsizing, outsourcing, etc means that there is no continuity in treatment of staff and thus the bully is able to hide the fact that he or she has a history of conflict with employees.
16. Bullying cases are so long and complex (a situation the bully fosters) that most HR Managers (and most people) don't have the time, energy or resources to unpick the case.
18. Owners and upper management don't provide resources and training even when HR sees the need.
19. When HR wants to investigate or hire an outside investigator, more often than not, they are overruled.
20. HR (and management) is probably just as frightened of the serial bully - and sometimes more frightened than the employees.
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