An issue that has recently been under some scrutiny by experts and reporters across North America is bullying in the workplace. Reports, survey results and general concerns have led the province of Quebec to become the first jurisdiction in Canada to create legislation outlawing workplace bullying, modelled after existing laws in France, Sweden and Belgium, and governments in North America are watching Quebec to see whether and how this law will work. Interestingly, a study conducted in the United States, as reported by the Globe and Mail back in March, 2005, concluded that bullying in the workplace is more likely to come from co-workers than from managers. The study found that a quarter of the respondents surveyed experienced some instance of bullying in the workplace, and of them 39% claimed the bullying was done by another employee, as opposed to the 14.7% who said it was by a supervisor (the rest, according to the Globe, reported bullying by external customers or non-employees). But bullying is not the only epidemic in the workplace that is being examined. Rudeness, according to organizational psychologist Dana Law, is also on the rise, and there is often a very fine line between rudeness and bullying. Both social problems are a form of “psychological harassment,” and can have similar detrimental effects on employee productivity, employee motivation, absenteeism, employee dissatisfaction, and even employee retention rates.
