Get ready for a new way for employees to get their companies in legal hot water: workplace bullying.  Connecticut is one of eleven states currently considering legislation to address this workplace issue.

So just what constitutes “bullying”? Here are a few examples:

• verbal abuse, including deliberate insults, calling people “stupid” or “idiots”
• slander, such as calling people “sluts,” or otherwise subjecting them to rude and disrespectful behavior
• ostracism, such as saying to someone: “We’re not taking you to lunch”
• subjecting someone to mean pranks
• unwelcome physical contact, or glaring at them
• persecution, such as deliberately withholding info from someone, depriving someone of needed resources or otherwise impeding their work, and/or
• secret supervision, discipline without cause, or being given unreasonable workloads or demands.

It is in the high-pressure workplace environments where making sales targets is the only short-term goal or in the “lean and mean” companies where everyone is doing multiple tasks where this sort of behavior is most commonly found.   The dark side of human nature appears to come out when there is too much pressure on short-term goals and individual performance.  There are other scenarios where it is not hard to imagine that the stress found in today's workplace environment would not develop some form of bullying.

The fighters on the front line of the battle against bullies: your managers. Could be a good time to provide some extra training for supervisors so they can spot the early signals — and maybe save the company from an expensive lawsuit down the road.