Two Scandals that Offer Lessons Regarding Workplace Bullying 

Safety at Work

What Hurts a Person Can Hurt a Business 

Public humiliation of an individual is painful, and sometimes traumatic.  Public humiliation of a business or non-profit entity can hurt by loss of public respect or support. Companies and their owners, managers, and staff could be hurt by a public scandal due to abuse of employees. This should concern a lot of readers. Scandals can also affect recruiting and retention.  

The first scandal here involved sexual harassment and bullying of employees. There was wide-spread failure of management to deal with alerts about the problems. This happened in a well-to-do Maryland county.  Residents pay high prices for real estate and high taxes because of the excellent public schools.  The reprehensible conduct certainly affected the county’s reputation.  

The principal at a junior high school had made repeated sexual overtures to women on his staff.  He did this at social gatherings off-site.  He was vulgar and blunt.  There was no misunderstanding.  This is scandalous but it is not THE BIG scandal. Wait.   

The targets of abuse and some witnesses to it complained to HR and officials in the school system.  However, the complainants DID NOT use the form specified for such complaints.  Some of the complaints were anonymous. Perhaps, that was the reason HR and other ranking officials did not respond to or investigate the allegations. But they knew of the complaints. 

Some of the high-ranking officials, who knew of the alleged sexual harassment and bullying but did not investigate, promoted the harasser to be principal of a high school!  Oh, No! That was too much for the targets of, and witnesses to, the abuse. Some alerted the Washington Post.  The Post interviewed many of those involved and published several reports. The matter became a scandal of the first order. 

A Wake-up Call for the School Board 

The elected School Board did not know what was going on until they read it in the Post.  The Board hired a big law firm to investigate.  Immediately, some thought that the law firm might whitewash the story.  Instead, they did their job. 

According to a Washington Post article, “Probe finds ‘failures by senior management’ of Montgomery schools in XXXX case,” the Jackson Lewis law firm’s investigation found “…multiple members of the administration, who were part of the promotion process, knew that Dr. XXXX was under an active investigation at the time of his promotion. Those individuals did not inquire about the specific nature of the allegations against Dr. XXXX, including their disposition.”  

Another Washington Post article on the Jackson Lewis investigation stated, “The law firm concluded that … 'no one involved with XXXX’s promotion violated any MCPS policy or engaged in any intentional misconduct’." I wondered how that could be so.  

The law firm acknowledged that managers knew of numerous incidents of the principal’s verbal intimidation and harassment, many with sexual overtones. Such incidents violated School system’s workplace bullying policy, yet the law firm stated that no one involved with the promotion itself violated any MCPS policy. That was surprising.  

The statement suggested that people in management who knew of the complaints of harassment and bullying had no obligation respond to the complaints.  So, I reviewed the bullying policy.  I did not find a requirement for management and/or HR to act on informal complaints. That is a profound flaw.  

The public damage was already done to the school system’s reputation, but the School Board’s actions earned them credibility.  They removed or demoted some top officials for their failure to act responsibly.  The sexual harassment was also bullying.  The offender treated staff with contempt and intimidation. 

The school management’s failure is why organizations need to adopt a piece of the Nashville and Davidson County Mayor’s Executive Order 39 of Oct. 12, 2017, on workplace conduct. It is: “Supervisory personnel who allow abusive conduct to continue or fail to take appropriate action upon learning of such conduct will also be subject to corrective and/or disciplinary action." (Tennessee, Utah, and some other states use “abusive conduct" instead of “workplace bullying”.)  This is good policy.  Still, I think that E.O. 39 should say “supervisory personnel ‘and HR staff’ who..." It would put everyone on notice of their responsibilities.

The county schools’ workplace bullying policy was decent but missing some subtleties.  I covered key elements in “What to Put into an Anti-Bullying Policy” in Industrial Hygiene in the Workplace, May 2022 <https://industrialhygienepub.com/industrial-hygiene-in-the-workplace/what-to-put-into-an-anti-bullying-policy/>.   

Another Embarrassing Case 

A big East Coast police department (PD) got a lot of bad publicity due to one senior officer.  He sent a very vile video to two, female, middle-ranked officers.  The PD acted promptly to fire the offending officer.  Then his case went to arbitration.  Eventually, the arbitrator ordered the man to be reinstated, but to suffer a 50-day suspension.  

I called the PD for their workplace bullying policy.  They said they had sexual harassment and EEO policies.  They did not have a workplace bullying policy.  To my mind, if the PD had a decent anti-bullying policy, the offender’s conduct would have violated it. That would be one or more additional charges against him.   

I think it very likely that his particularly offensive conduct was preceded by other less obnoxious conduct, which could have been addressed by a bullying policy.  If the senior officer had been straightened out before his worst behavior, he and the city might have avoided a big embarrassment. 

Conclusion 

Public humiliation of your company, non-profit, or government entity can hurt with consequences.  One way to bring about public embarrassment/humiliation is bullying, harassment, and abuse of employees. You can reduce this risk by having a decent workplace bullying policy, AND by enforcing it, AND by reminding all employees about it every two years. 

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