All posts by leahhollis

Fall In Love With Work Again

Discrimination, Diversity Training

Fall In Love With Work Again

Fall In Love With Work Again

Fall In Love With Work Again

 

You will spend more waking hours on the job than you will with family and friends.

It is no surprise that people who have stressful and toxic work environments have higher rates of hypertension, diabetes, depression and other stress related ailments.

In the unsettled economy of the last five years, the workplace has at times become a tense place for employers and employees.  Discrimination and harassment cases remain at heightened levels, with close to 100,000 new complaints with the EEOC each of the last three years.

Various state legislators are striving to pass healthy workplace laws to protect people from harassment/bullying who are not afforded protections under the Title VII Civil Rights Act of 1964.

With all of this strife, how can we get back to loving the thing we do?

How do we create and maintain a healthy workplace as an individual?  Dr. Leah Hollis of Patricia Berkly LLC offers a few strategies to help you fall in love again with the job.

  1. Know the employee manual.  So often employees simply sign off on the employee manual without reading it.  Each company has a different set of policies regarding sick time, lunch, harassment, retaliation or even payroll. Know the rules of your organization and follow them.
  2. Don’t be a bad actor.  Even if you have a case of harassment, discrimination or bullying, the minute you stoop to the level of the bully or harasser you have become a “bad actor.”  The bad actor is categorized as being a ‘hot head,’ unreliable, or simply a colleague who is not behaving in a manner that the organization can support. Just because someone else is acting out, it is not an invitation to drop the “f- bomb” as well. Bad actors seldom prosper.
  3. Do your job.  The reason we are all on the job is to produce for the employer.  Excessive undocumented time off, constant mistakes, fraud, favoritism and other performance issues can be grounds for action.  If there is a group of similarly situated employees who have performance issues, and they are treated differently in response to the same infractions, there can be a legal issue for the employer.  However, doing the job well and being an excellent performer strengthens anyone’s credibility.
  4. Know the structure of your organization.  Be sure to make connections from the janitor all the way through to the vice president.  People should know you and your strengths before there is a problem.  And, you should know how to seek reliable information.
  5. Stay positive.  No one wants to work with “Negative Nelly.”  Stay positive without barking orders, acting out or demeaning people.  Again likeability across the organization is key.  Such positive energy can help you stay focused on your options and also bring you support in the midst of tough transitions.  Grandma was right; you get more flies with honey than vinegar.

These strategies can help an individual employee protect themselves from unwitting mistakes or see changes that can make someone uneasy.  Being a reliable strong performer with a good attitude can make the difference between being targeted at work and loving the job.

Leah Hollis, Ed.D. is a contributing blogger for JenningsWire, a blogging community created by Annie Jennings.

Martin Luther King Day of Service Starts at Work

Uncategorized

Martin Luther King Day of Service Starts at Work

Martin Luther King Day of Service Starts at Work

Martin Luther King Day of Service Starts at Work

 

Did you know that Martin Luther King was only 26 years old when he led the Montgomery Bus Boycott?  At the age of 35 he won the Noble Peace Prize and at 39, he was slain in Memphis, Tennessee. On this day of service, we all can take a look back to the dream for equality for people regardless of race, gender, class, religion etc.

In 1963, he wrote Letter from a Birmingham Jail in which he writes, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.”  While this wisdom at the time was applied to the social inequities across our country, the same philosophy still applies when we find injustice in the workplace.  Harassment, bullying, and retaliation cost organizations hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Did you know that 37% of the general population will face workplace bullying according the Namie and Namie of the Workplace Bullying Institute? The recent book, Bully in the Ivory Tower confirms that workplace bullying is even worse in higher education with 62% of employees facing bullying. In regard to civil rights statutes, retaliation continues to be the largest EEOC complaint area; a complaint status where someone exercises his or her civil rights, yet faces ill will or adverse action as a result. Every day, over 550 NEW workplace discrimination complaints are filed against small business owners. Seeking equity for everyone can minimize these complaints and the cost associated with defending the organization.

The beginning of the year.

It is a great time to have an internal day of service to cultivate a healthy workplace and maintain critical productivity as the year gets under way.

1)      Group training.  When a culture is trained to identify quarantine and eradicate bullying, the workplace is a safer place.  Group training would assist staff members in identifying bullying and empower staff to address it head on.  Further, training would include policy analysis and implementation.  While staff may be trained, the organization also needs to have an early alert system, a sanctuary where targets can report issues, and a clearly defined organizational time line to address the problem.

2)      Individual interventions.  Coaching can work for individuals to create candid interventions for those who exhibit bullying tendencies. Individual interventions would include developing strategic solutions to comply with the organization’s anti-bullying and anti-harassment policies, also establishing a leadership action plan for productive engagement with his or her staff.

Guard against bullying, discrimination and harassment in your work place.  Have proper training and intervention to create a positive, inclusive and productive workplace.

Interview on WUSA9 Workplace bullying in higher education

bullying, cyberbullying, sexual harassment, ,

 

Interview on WUSA9 Workplace bullying in higher education

Interview on WUSA9 Workplace bullying in higher education

Interview on WUSA9 Workplace bullying in higher education

 

 

By Thomas James

http://workplaceviolencenews.com/

 

Bullying among children and teens in schools receive extra attention these days, but experts say bullying takes place in other times in our lives.

In fact, workplace bullying is happening at an alarming rate. Especially in higher education. Leah P. Hollis, Ed.D., Author of the book “Bully In The Ivory Tower” says 62 percent of people who work in higher education have experienced bullying versus 45 percent of the general population.

Dr. Hollis says, “I surveyed 175 schools and what I found in the return was that a number of people, especially in the entry levels and the middle management were talking about how they were the target of bullying either from the boss or the organization in general.

9 News Now’s Anita Brikman interviews Dr. Hollis about her survey and why workplace bullying is more prevalent in higher education than in other professions:

Anita: “What’s going on? Why at college and universities?”

Dr. Hollis: “What’s interesting is at a college or university we are all trained to be experts in our field to go out and do this wonderful research and create excellent knowledge. It also is an isolating experience so now when you have to manage people or collaborate or have team building you’ve already been protected by tenure perhaps or at least in a culture that supports being isolated and also supports a pretty big ego. So that doesn’t always make for the best management skills.”

Anita: “So in these case studies, who was saying they are being bullied? Younger educators bullied by tenured folks?”

Dr. Hollis: “Typically it was somebody at the entry level, your assistant director, it might have even been the director or just the manager of the department. Folks who are reporting up-line to Vice Presidents, Provosts, or even the Presidents. So bullying has to do with power and those with the least amount of power are the ones on the receiving end of bullying.”

To see the entire interview, including how workplace bullying in higher education affects students and how can we deal with workplace bullying across the board, click here.

Source: WUSA9.com

Don’t Be Afraid of the Office Bully Monster

bullying, cyberbullying, Discrimination

Don’t Be Afraid of the Office Bully Monster

Don’t Be Afraid of the Office Bully Monster

Originally posted on JENNINGS WIRE

 

We are entering that cherished time of they year…

Halloween moving through Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years is a time where office parties and progressively bad behavior seem to be overlooked underneath the haze of holiday cheer. There is nothing like spiked apple cider, rum cake and that mysterious red punch at the party to make colleague and supervisor overlook their better senses.

Employees who are new to their career might find this to be an invitation to join in the “reindeer games,” without considering the consequences when they sober up the next day.  Take a page from Lance, the new assistant director who got a bit comfortable with his boss at a party.

With the apple bob at lunch and spicy cider mixture that somehow got spiked, the office staff was at ease in an environment that was typically tense and rigid.  Lance was thrilled with the holiday cheer as his first year under his boss, Artie, was less than something to celebrate.  Lance noticed that the rest of the staff was at ease too, maybe this was the end to the yelling and manipulative behavior that had been the norm for his department.  Maybe Lance could finally relax.

Artie and Lance had a chance to chat over the apple cider.

Artie had let his hair down, discussed his own insecurities with upper management and with a buzz, confided in Lance about fears of losing respect at the top.  Lance felt comfortable and joined in, sharing his own insecurities with his low grade point average in college, feeling unaccomplished with his quest of grad school, and his lack luster relationship with on-again-off-again girlfriend.  For about 90 minutes, though induced by alcohol, they were civil human beings for a change.  As the office party came to an end, the staff took their last nibbles at cookies and caramel corn, then returned to a relatively productive afternoon on the job.  All seemed well.

The next day, Lance reported to work to find that things were “back to normal.”  No one made eye contact with each other.  There was a muffled tirade coming from Artie’s office. As Lance settled in, his cube mate remarked, “ the ogre is back…!”

Artie quickly came around the corner and berated Lance for being 15 minutes late.  He reminded Lance that “this is why he couldn’t make the cut in grad school…” and that “… no woman would stick with him given his tardiness..”  Lance was demoralized.  All the things he had shared over spiced cider was coming back to haunt him publically.  He was powerless to respond, and saw no relief from the terror which returned to the office.

Lance was caught in what he saw as an impossible situation.  Without other support, he couldn’t imagine his next steps, let alone how to get to the end of the day.  Advice to all employees, don’t be afraid of self-advocacy in regard to office bullying, however be careful in your tactics.

1. Keep a diary with dates and clear examples of harassment and bullying.  Keep this diary, supporting emails about your performance and performance appraisals at home. Know however, employees don’t have a right to harbor proprietary information about the job.

2. Find out about the history of bullying in the office.  Had others complained? What was the result? Did HR support the target or the bully? This information will determine next steps.

3. Quietly look for another job.  Keep in mind that announcing a job hunt is actionable and can motivate an organization to terminate you.  Don’t trust anyone in a toxic environment about your own plans to leave.

4. If the evidence supports a complaint, take records to HR about specific instances of bullying.  Consider ways to couch the problem as a “what’s in it for them.” Show HR how the bully is hurting the organization, which is their main concern. Is the bully boss coercing staff to break the rules, overlook policy, or engage in other behavior that can hurt the organization?

5. If the bullying is occurring within a Title VII protected class (target is bullied because of race, gender, religion, pregnancy, genetic information etc) this can be an EEO charge where retaliation from the employer for reporting is against the law.

A few things to remember…

If the boss was a bully before the office party, he or she will continue after the office party once everyone sobers up.  Don’t let your guard down just because it is the holidays.  Further, don’t be afraid to learn your rights and strategize on how to advocate for yourself.  Studies show that people who maintain a spiritual grounding and locus of control for their futures can weather the storm of a bully.

To learn more about her upcoming book on workplace bullying, the costs of higher education and the solutions and recommendations to higher education leadership also revealed through this study, visit Dr. Leah Hollis and Patricia Berkly, LLC at www.diversitytrainingconsultants.com   Bully in the Ivory Tower  is available on Amazon.com.

 

CONGRATULATIONS: Power women, Leah Hollis

bullying, cyberbullying, Discrimination, Diversity Training

CONGRATULATIONS Power Women: Leah Hollis

CONGRATULATIONS Power Women: Leah Hollis

CONGRATULATIONS Power Women: Leah Hollis

 

Feature in Mainline TODAY, OCTOBER 2012

Twenty-one of the Main Line’s most successful and influential women share their secrets to success.

BY TARA BEHAN

“I think you should be treated fairly at work,” says East Fallowfield Township’s Leah Hollis. “You shouldn’t be treated differently because of your gender, race or religion.” These days, that should be a given. It’s not. As founder and president of the Patricia Berkly LLC Group, Hollis has dedicated her career to preventing workplace discrimination. She’s even written books about it. Her first, Unequal Opportunity: Fired Without Cause? Filing with the EEOC, came out last year, and her second, Bully in the Ivory Tower, is due this fall. Advocacy runs in Hollis’ family. Her mom was president of the NAACP in central Pennsylvania, and both parents are civil-rights champions. Once a diversity trainer at Northeastern University, Hollis is hired by companies throughout the country to offer her expertise. She also has an online training series viewed by employees across the country. “You essentially spend more time at work than you do at home with your family on a daily basis,” she says. “So I believe that everyone