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[eha]

Is there a bully in your workplace?

Published on: Thursday, 10th August, 2006 | Permanent Link | 2 responses
Last week a shudder went down the spine of London�s financial district as a company secretary won massive compensation for years of vicious bullying. The court awarded 36-year-old Helen Green dhs5.6million for the harassment she suffered from four female colleagues at Deutsche Bank who subjected her to �extreme bitchiness�. Their strategy of intimidation included staring, laughter, crude comments and sneaking documents from her desk. Yet she feels this savagery was by no means exceptional.
"In fighting my case I have become more aware of what a big problem bullying is for the City,� Green told the UK�s Daily Telegraph. "My case was not an isolated one. All City businesses will have to do more than pay lip-service to this hidden menace," she said. Her view is shared by many UAE-based human resources experts. They say in almost any Dubai company bullies lurk like unexploded landmines waiting to wreck lives and careers. What�s worse, says one consultant, is that they can be entirely unaware that their behaviour is in any way unacceptable.
�The problem is that there�s a very grey area between bullying and what you might says is a typical management style in the UAE,� says HR consultant Dennis. In the UK workplace bullying has now been clearly defined by the Chartered Institute of Personnel Department. In the UAE even when managers know their behaviour crosses the line they may simply not care. �I think people coming here from the UK can feel the gloves are off, as it were. It�s quite easy for people to shout and fire,� says Dennis. In this, says Peter Wilkinson, another Dubai-based HR consultant, they are not entirely wrong.
�It�s not a cut and dried situation,� he says. �What is bullying? If I swear, is that bullying? If I raise my voice, is that bullying?� Yet there can be no question that Dubai�s aggressive workplaces often lurch spectacularly viciousness that would horrify the queen of a highschool cheerleader squad. �I have personally heard the expression, �If you�re not prepared to work the nightshift then you�re on the next plane out to India�,� says Dennis �There is a company where new employees don�t get a single day off in the first month. This is now so ingrained it is seen as an accepted practice,� he says.
Other cases encountered by experts include violence in a veterinary practice, financial extortion by the manager of a hairdressing salon and systematic sexual harassment by a Dubai-based director.
Yet we should perhaps show some sympathy for the perpetrators of all this stress and misery.
�There are some well-meaning managers who were managed in a certain way and think it�s okay to use the same techniques � techniques that would be classed as bullying in the UK,� says Dennis.
Also, for Lisa Steel, a trainer with a background in human resources, the core of the problem is bad planning not bad intentions. �I don�t think people use aggressive management because it works. It�s a style they practise because they don�t know any better,� she says. �Middle management is the weakest point in all UAE organisations. Most managers are appointed by default. They will mirror the dictatorial behaviour of their managers unless they are taught an alternative,� she says.
Anyway, for now employees often lack the confidence to defend themselves. �Many people think their freedom to complain is limited,� says Dennis.�It is quite a fearsome process to take a complaint to the Department of Labour and Social Affairs.� Worse yet, Peter Wilkinson feels that victims can make a conscious decision to accept bullying. �For a lot of people in the UAE, if they lose their job they lose everything,� he says. �So they stay in their job and accept the bullying side. They allow it - and that�s when it gets really bad.�

2 Responses to �Is there a bully in your workplace?� | Have your say!
1. by syed ali on August 10th, 2006 at 10:50 am
The last paragraph to me is the most interesting as it seems to put the blame on the worker. What�s missing in this article is the word �power�. (Really. Go back and read it.) Managers/companies have it, workers do not. They cannot change jobs, their passports are basically held to ransom , they cannot question anything too strongly for fear of being fired and deported. It�s not, as Peter Wilkinson says, that they allow the bullying, it�s that managers can act that way unchecked. And many (most?) will. Complaining to a gov�t dept won�t change it. We all know what will � holding your own passport, being able to freely change jobs. Ideas not surprisingly absent from this article.

http://www.7days.ae/2006/08/10/is-there-a-bully-in-your-workplace.html

[veiledsentiments]

Not sure what the point is here... what does this have to do with EFL education in the UAE?

VS

[Manny2]

I suppose the point is that teaching institutions are workplaces like any other and bullying occurs in the EFL profession here too !! As the reply noted it is all about power and lack of rights for employees - contracts are not worth the paper they are written on and if they want you out you are on the next plane - people get fired, do not have their contracts renewed for many reasons some valid some not.

Many institutions use student evaluations and while we may be told they mean nothing if you get a bad one and they want you out then that is all they need.

So we shut up and put up , if we lose our jobs we lose our housing and for most that means we have to leave so managers and supervisors have huge power here and do things that would be totally unacceptable were we in our home countries. We see it happen at work - I have seen it happen - and most times we thank God it is not us and we do and say nothing.

[Bindair Dundat]

[veiledsentiments]

There are plenty of managers, supervisors, coordinators and other admin who get away with crap everywhere. As long as there are people who are desperate for jobs, this will go on.

You can see it in American academia too where for so many the pickings are slim. I see ESL teachers putting up with plenty in order to manage to keep that rare job with benefits... Adjuncts who have to scramble between various institutions with no input as to hours or classes for an hourly pittance.

Welcome to the world of education... Welcome to employment in the global economy...

Just be glad if you are a westerner, as this situation becomes a nightmare for those that are not.

VS

[Bindair Dundat]

[stoth1972]

I can say that both of my former employers in the UAE employed incompetent westerners in positions of authority who bullied constantly. My first contract was under an English woman with no qualifications in teaching, who bullied teachers (she worked in a cycle, moving from one teacher to the other) and children. She was rewarded for this behaviour. I recall her singling me out for several months, demanding that I do things that were impossible, shouting at me, belittling me in front of others, and then repeating this behaviour with a 7 year old who would not come to class.

The same institution hired another incompetent twit from the UK (different school location) who decided that myself and 2 other class teachers (in a hall of 3 class teachers and 5 subject teachers) were the root of all evil. She let her friends, the subject teachers, carry on with no criticism, while she very much bullied the three of us professionally. She trumped up complaints that hadn't been made. She focused on small details within our group, but let the rest of them off without a hitch. One might say that being pulled into the director's office (like you're a kid) and being lectured isn't bullying, but I think this was the fabric of this institution. The school doctor would try to bully you back into class, rather than go home sick. He actually suggested to a former colleague that he bring in the director to see if my colleague 'still felt sick' with her in the room.

If it were only this particular school, I would say that this was an isolated incident. I later worked for another company (not western run) where the boss bullied his non-white employees into submission. This involved shouting, threats, pay deduction, and so on. My American manager (also incompetent) used threats of no leaving salary when he said that my questioning his procedure was insubordination. This was all from the man who showed up to work drunk, played video games while he was there, and kept prostitutes in the company-provided flat as 'girlfriends'.

Friends in other industries operated under similar conditions. Incompent manager is a cheap manager. They are given no guidance, and are probably bullied themselves. e.g. When the regional director visited my old school in Sharjah, he told a new director (a man who was to become my boss in cairo a few years later) to "watch this!" He entered the administration building without notice, and the whole of administration ran around like chickens with their heads cut off-all in actual fear of this man.

I think it is relevant to ESL in the UAE because this part of the world can potentially be the hotbed for incompetent foreigners seeking positions of authority. Honestly, I don't know if companies in the UAE seek out this personality type or not. As mentioned, they are usually incompetent in their own country, power hungry, insecure and therefore dictorial in their management style.

Vs is right to say that this can happen anywhere in the world. I just think the UAE, in my experience, was infinitely much worse than other places for this sort of behaviour.

[qas419]

I have already stated in previous postings, and now i am repeating what i have already said: most of UAE universities are controlled by a bunch of racists whose aims are to humilate the westerners as well as the Asians and other Arabs. I am not putting forward a hypothesis but a fact . Human Resources Depts. and the Personnell in these universities are controlled by Shami Arabs; these are insure Arabs who lack confidence and have some kind of inferiority complex; they only wait for their own country people to apply. If they dont get any qualified, they will employ Westerners. Then they will start their own game by putting too much pressure on the employed until he/she resigns. A British friend of mine who was employed by one of the UAE universities was forced to resign because he could no longer bear the situation. Unfortunately, the UAE Ministry of Education & Higher Education totally rely on these people because of the shortage of the locals. But recently, there has been a serious debate in some of the gulf newspapers about the biased recurituing procdures adopted in these universities.

[eha]

Some questions arise re: the concept of relevance:

Is the idea of the development of humanity / emotional intelligence in the workplace relevant to Education?

Is EFL relevant to Education?

Isn't there something incongruous about people who behave in the ways described in the above posts, being IN CHARGE (as they often are) of institutions that purport to have an 'educational' or developmental mission?

Incidentally, the article is just a spin-off from the debate about harassment / bullying in the workplace that arose out of the recent case in England where a woman --at last--- received recognition and compensation for having been bullied intolerably in her workplace. Please don't say this is not relevant because it wasn't an educational institution: similar (and worse) things are happening all around us, in every kind of institution. The article therefore isn't aimed at the UAE or the Gulf; it just happens to mention Dubai. It's aimed at the primitive behaviour of bullies, jocks and abusers everywhere, and at those 'good people who do nothing', who allow the former to get away with it by turning away from (or even turning on) their bullied colleagues.

(The quote: 'All it takes for the triumph of evil is that good people do nothing'. Edmund Burke)

[Bindair Dundat]

[eha]

Yes; it's only in the last few years that teflers seem to have heard of Ivan Illich or Paulo Friere. Or Dewey or Carl Rogers or Socrates, come to that. But that shouldn't be the point: No so-called 'educated' person should behave as these people do; and certainly not in a 'humanistic' profession.

[veiledsentiments]

Having spent my working years appr. 15+ in business and 15+ in education, I have met up with all kinds of managers. Unfortunately most of them were quite bad at it. (not that I would necessarily be any better, but at least I have the good sense to understand my limitations) Yes, now one does have more ability in the "west" to attempt legal recourse, but it is still impossible for most. The reality of no job security in the US has meant that most just take what is dished out. There is an illusion of things being better than it was in the '70s, but the abuse has merely changed its face. Sexual harassment at the office is now much more subtle, but still around.

In the Gulf, what I saw was pretty much complete mis-management. A large number of the people were trained teachers... had absolutely no background in managing anything, but merely wanted a bigger paycheck. (and perhaps found that they were lousy at teaching) The direct managers that were Western often had little or no real freedom to do much else than try to put out departmental fires before the upper managment stuck their noses in. The upper mgmt being Western or Local - who also had NO management training or skills and often no educational background to speak of - were no better. And how often have we seen the few good managers get disciplined by upper management for doing something right? And let's be honest that many of the teachers in this part of the world must be a nightmare to have to manage!! The term 'herding cats' comes to mind.

The key to surviving for a contract or two in the Gulf is usually to avoid all levels of management as much as possible. Teach your classes, do the paperwork, and try not to laugh out loud in meetings. And realize as quickly as possible that you can't change the system... and that it isn't your country or system anyway.

VS

[stoth1972]

If we had only had an HR department in Sharjah or Dubai. If only those people in management actually feared someone who would view their behaviour as unacceptable. It just never happened. There was no one there to check them.

Education in the Middle East is good business, first and foremost. No warm and fuzzies. My former boss promised exam results to his clients (the ministry of education, at one point!) that were COMPLETELY unobtainable. When it fell through, he would rationalise, "But I said UP TO 50%. I didn't say they would all pass!" Needless to say, he continues to bounce from contract to contract, making false promises. He's also still in business.

[eha]

Just in case I might come across as completely negative about Management, I want to say that my most recent boss in the Gulf region, was a humanist and a gentleman. AND highly intelligent with it; no New Age fuzziness or used-car-salesman bonhomie about him. He was sincere; he had integrity. I felt safer and more hopeful while he was in charge. Needless to say, some colleagues didn't like him: probably the ones who would flourish in the kind of environment he was trying to change.

Alas, he left after a year. Same old, same old?

[Sheikh Inal Ovar]

Bullying is rife in UAE TEFL ... my students quite often beat the dinner money out of me ...