Managerial abuse in the workplace

We will all say that we are against any kind of abuse. We all want to stand up for those who are being abused. We all want to live in a just world, where neither abuse nor injustice is tolerated.

Unfortunately, we aren't active enough at letting our behavior reflect our words. Both in our daily lives, as well as in the labor market.

This is something we have to change.

When it comes to managerial abuse against general employees, it is in the employees' interest to look the other way. Pointing out the abuse, mentioning the injustice, standing up for the victims; this all calls for possible retaliation against the person who steps forward.

We do our best to remain impartial. We neither condemn the abuser, nor support the victim. Sure, we often sit down in the cafeteria and discuss the abuser's incompetence as a manager and the abusive behavior that person exhibits (let's be completely honest here, a manager who uses abusive behavior is always incompetent as a manager, regardless of knowledge and experience), but we never effectively support the victim to reduce or eradicate the abuse.

We believe that we are secure in our neutrality. We support the victim in silence, but we do not rock the boat and thus do not run the risk of being abused ourselves, or worse; fired for standing up against abuse.

But the fact remains: When it comes to abuse, there is no such thing as neutrality.

Managerial abuse in the workplace

Your colleagues complain of increased pressure, stress, and discomfort at work due to the manager's behavior and the conditions under which people are forced to work. Let's see examples of abusive situations that are set up by manager in the workplace. For convenience, a manager who exhibits abusive behavior will be referred to as ‘abuser’ in the following text.

Meetings

• The abuser repeatedly postpones meetings with little notice, without any reason.
• The abuser schedules meetings with little notice and requires staff to put other duties on hold in order to attend. If the staff is not able to attend on short notices, they are reprimanded.
• The abuser repeatedly shows up late to meetings, both onsite and remotely, and gives little or no explanation. If attending staff gives up on waiting for the abuser and leaves the meeting before the abuser finally arrives, the staff is reprimanded for not attending.
• The abuser takes over meetings, does not discuss necessary issues but only their own ideas and workarounds. The abuser does not allow other staff to chime in, and micromanages who talks, about what, when, why and what wording is acceptable at any given time. Issues or opinions that are not to the liking of the abuser are not addressed. If staff repeatedly insist that a certain issue needs to be discussed, or expresses an opinion that is not to the manager's liking, staff risks being reprimanded after the meeting for unacceptable behavior.
• The abuser drags out meetings, knowing that staff has other responsibilities. If staff members try to leave a meeting early, they are reprimanded.

Employees perceive themselves and their time to be disrespected. This type of managerial abuse affects the organizational management in general, deadlines and tasks are directly affected, and employees experience increased stress due to the entire situation. This also sets up a situation where employees are forced to perform their own duties poorly and hastily, where staff miss or arrive late for other meetings, or cannot discuss issues necessary to complete their tasks. This creates friction between employees and other managers who may indirectly perpetuate the abuse by not creating a barrier between the abusive manager and employees, between co-workers, and even filters out to customers.

Projects

• The abuser gives staff new tasks with little or no notice, but with an already fixed and often difficult to reach deadlines due to little notice. Staff has to deal with angry customers, other managers, and colleagues when tasks are delivered late or poorly due to lack of time.
• The abuser is unable to complete their own tasks and therefore transfers them to other employees without any preparation or explanations.
• The abuser denies employees access to necessary equipment and tools to complete given tasks. Therefore, staff often find it difficult to complete tasks, take longer to complete tasks, and become negative towards certain tasks due to bad experiences.
• The abuser denies staff the necessary training, which makes it difficult for the staff to correctly and efficiently work on assigned tasks.
• The abuser has staff take on tasks that are unrelated to their job title or field. The staff doesn't have the necessary experience, knowledge, or tools to handle the task.
• The abuser gives the staff a task, but the abuser makes all the decisions and demands regarding the task and the staff has to follow those decisions blindly. Staff are held accountable for the task and it's completion and reprimanded for delays and/or faults.

At some point, if an employee refuses to take an assignment from the abuser, the employee is considered to not having complied with their employment contract and is therefore held accountable or at risk of being fired for protesting.

Employees perceive the situation as negative and coercive. By constantly demanding that tasks unrelated to an employee's job title/status be carried out, employees begin to perceive themselves as incompetent in their work due to the difficulty of carrying out tasks for which they do not have the equipment, tools, knowledge, skills, or opportunity to get into properly. This reduces job satisfaction, and begins to result in less activity and productivity from the staff.

Specialists feel that their knowledge and experience is being disrespected. When an abuser demands for another manager to follow their decisions blindly, the affected manager is required to take responsibility for decisions made by the abuser. This creates difficult working conditions for the affected manager, who not only has to do their own job, but also constantly answer for and take responsibility for the incompetence of the abuser.

Frontline staff begins to sense anger and dissatisfaction from customers as tasks are poorly handled or "lost in the system" and deadline aren't properly met.

HR and payroll

• The abuser uses contracts and written agreements to control both staff and situations to their advantage. Deprivation of freedom and threats of loss of job or salary are applied to force staff members to sign aforementioned documents.
• The abuser denies staff permanent employment and keeps them on temporary contracts that are often only a few weeks at a time, but with constant promises of permanent employment (see Icelandic law on temporary employment of workers no. 139/2003).
• The abuser denies a certain group of staff or individuals educational or professional development opportunities. It is common for yes-people and codependent employees to get major career development opportunities.

Employees generally show a lot of mistrust towards HR and payroll. Since all managers in charge of employees deal with HR matters to some extent, the mistrust does not only apply to the abuser, but to all managers in general.

Other managers are often forced to carry out predetermined abusive behavior towards their employees. If complaints are made about actions against employees, these other managers have thusly been set up as scapegoats.

It'll be known between employees in the workplace that showing incompetence is necessary in order to receive opportunities for professional development. Competence of all managers in general is widely ridiculed.

• It is common for signed contracts and agreements to contain clauses where employees forfeit their collective bargaining rights (e.g. overtime payments, holiday pay).
• Staff don't receive adequate payment for overtime worked. The abuser changes time sheets to reduce possible wage claims if staff decide to take the information to their unions. The abuser tells other managers to do this, so if there is a complaint, there is another manager ready as a scapegoat.
• The abuser reduces wages paid to employees, alleging "oral agreements" with the employees. Staff feel unable to take the matter to their unions, as the matter will be reduced to their words against the abuser's.
• Rights that some staff receive, other staff in the same job/department do not receive (e.g. payment of overtime, breaks).
• Salary information is poor or badly set up, it is difficult for general staff to read payslips and therefore it is often difficult to understand what is being paid/not paid for. Information is often simply missing from pay slips, and it is therefore difficult to make sure that wages have been processed correctly each and over time.
• Employees have to know their rights and actively pursue that the abuser follows them, such as paid wages, that tax is correctly deducted and paid to the proper government, that pension funds receive their proper payments, and to trade unions.
• In Iceland, special attention must be paid to the personal discount, as abuser with direct access to payroll are known to overuse it, and staff thus purposefully run into debt with IRS.

Employees discuss among themselves that their wages are generally not right, but often find it difficult to point out how due to ignorance on how to read badly listed payslips.

There are many stories among staff about deprivation of freedom by their managers or threats of dismissal, if the employees don't sign contracts and agreements where they concede to a reduction in their rights or wages.

If the abusive manager is in charge of payroll, other managers have difficulty helping their staff regarding payroll relating issues, and often avoid the issue so they themselves do not have to deal with the abuser. Other managers are often themselves showing the same abusive behavior towards their staff at the request of the abuser, and it is therefore difficult for other managers to address payroll issues without pointing the finger at themselves.

Complaints about salary issues are stifled in house. If employees go to their unions seeking assistance, there are often little or no answers to requests from the unions. The matter is left to drag on for a long time, or there is no resolution to the matter despite the union's intervention.

Work conditions and other employees

• The abuser hires yes-people and codependent people in order to better hide their abusive behavior.
• The abuser holds other managers accountable for the abuser's own decisions and abusive behavior. The higher the status of the abuser, the harder time other managers have escaping being scapegoated. Employees see the entire management team to be the problem of the business, and there is a lot of dissatisfaction among the staff in general.
• In the event of a complaint regarding an issue that the abuser set in motion and managed, another manager will be set up as a scapegoat.

The abuser's team will be known as moody and difficult to get along with, as well as for being the abuser's biggest cheerleaders. At the same time, the abuser's team will show the most avoidance and anger towards their situations and work environment.

Other managers will complain about the abuser, but to a lesser extent than employees, since the abuser has often made other managers complicit in the abusive behavior. Some managers will avoid soliciting the abuser's assistance for HR and payroll matters, risking retaliation from the abuser. Other managers however do start to show codependent behavior with the abuser, in order to lessen abusive behavior directed towards themselves.

Staff in general starts actively avoiding the abuser. Employees are polite towards the abuser, in fear of being singled out, but at the same time avoid being in situations that require close proximity to the abuser.

Absence from work in any shape and form becomes prevalent. This absence is blamed on stress or strain at work, staff's own anxiety, physical illness (related to working conditions), or any reason that can be blamed directly on the staff themselves, never the abuser.

The workplace will be widely known for its difficult conditions and morale.

Understaffing will be a problem, due to the amount of staff on sick leave, staff who have left, and the fact that it is difficult to fill new positions due to how negatively the workplace is viewed.

Passive abusers and victims

But let's come back to ourselves, and the repeated behavior we show towards abuse, which is inaction. This hope of ours that if we show our supposed neutrality then we ourselves won't be targeted. Or our belief that if we don't rock the boat, we won't get fired for pointing out abusive behavior towards ourselves and our colleagues.

Yes.

Towards ourselves.

Because when managers show abusive behavior, no one in the workplace is untouched. And the higher the status of the abuser, the greater the impact on the entire staff.

We as staff often hear our immediate manager discuss how intolerable it is to work with the abuser, we fuss with them about the incompetence the abuser shows, but then we turn around and consider whether there is cocoa left in the coffee machine.

We as managers, we notice when our staff is being abused by the abusive manager, we see their wages being fiddled with, our staff getting overloaded with tasks and overtime hours skyrocketing due to demands from the abuser that we let pass by in our codependency. We hear stories of and possibly participate in restricting the freedom of our employees in order to cut off their rights and payments that the abuser has deemed necessary to take away from them. And then we justify our actions with any excuse we can think of to cover up the discomfort our codependency brings.

We watch our colleagues lose their jobs due to the enormous pressure, stress and sheer discomfort at work, or be fired if they so much as think about tackling the abuser's behavior.

But we tell ourselves that we are not involved, that we are neutral. We aren't rocking the boat, we aren't causing trouble for anyone.

But the fact of the matter is, we are all in the same boat, with an abuser who keeps rocking other individuals with their abusive behavior. And like any other organism that gets away with its behavior, the abuser gradually escalates their behavior, both in severity as well as needing another victim, and another, and another.

We can try to keep our heads down and hope that we won't be picked as their next victim. Until we realize the simple fact:

There is no next victim.

We are all already victims to their abusive behaviors.

The fact of the matter is that abuse always affects everyone involved, whether it be directly or indirectly. Either a person thrives and flourishes in an abusive situation and participates (becomes an abuser), or is a victim.

There is no such thing as neutrality in abusive situations.

In conclusion

I have worked in HR for several years now, and had the honor of experiencing a great workplace culture, to outright horrific settings.

The HR department's work is simple, to support and build up the staff and working conditions so that everyone can excel at their job. We do the best we can because we care about people, and therefore we apply for jobs that allow us to work with people in a constructive and positive way. We do the best we can for our staff because we want to see our workplace grow stronger and become highly acclaimed in its field. We do the best for our staff as we can, because the feeling of seeing our staff flourish at work is what keeps us energized and motivated.

For an individual working in HR, it is therefore painful to come to work and feel powerless to support the staff due to degrading working conditions and a negative workplace culture, where abusive behavior by a manager is accepted by everyone involved.

Sitting through one meeting after another with a box of kleenex in one hand and "sorry, I can't do anything for you" as the only solace we have to offer rips our hearts out and leaves a void that screams for action.

Hearing of our wonderful employees coming to work full of anxiety and fear, needing extended sick leave just to manage facing the need to show up for work, or quitting their jobs due to extreme discomfort and stress which have begun to manifested in physical symptoms makes us feel, at best, incompetent in doing our jobs.

To see the organization we work for running into a repeated deficit, and the service to customers dropping gradually, knowing that there is a simple problem behind it, but not being able to do anything, is an unpleasant place to be in.

Hearing about the dissatisfaction and discomfort of the staff, our staff that the HR department is tasked to take care of, as well as customers who take their dissatisfaction out on the staff, cuts to the bone.

Vinnuhjálp was founded with just that in mind. To promote general staff in terms of HR and payroll issues. So that when the situation is beyond the scope of the HR department, employees know how to deal with the situation themselves. After all, the employees are the biggest part of any organization, the employees are what the organization is based on, the employees are in essence the organization.

Vinnuhjálp seeks to promoting and empowering general staff to take responsibility for their own work conditions, and stand together to demand a positive workplace culture and a constructive work ethic from all employees regardless of status and job title.

Just as the strength of unions drives positive changes in workers' conditions and rights, employees themselves can band together and demand better working conditions.

A group of employees stands stronger together whereas the individual will face retaliation. Our strength is in numbers.

We need to deny any kind of abuse in the workplace, demand a positive workplace culture and a constructive work environment. We need to refuse to put employees and their well-being in second place.

We can do this, if we stand together.

Article first appear on Smartland 15.03.2023 [link].