Is Your Workplace Culture Broken? The Hidden Toll of Bullying

Have you ever dreaded going to work on Monday morning? Do you find yourself obsessing about work long after you’ve clocked out? If so, you’re not alone. Tolerance has decreased and an insidious threat is continuing to quietly damage American workplaces: workplace bullying.

This form of abuse impacts an estimated 30% of workers—nearly 49-60 million people—at any given time, and over a career, 75% of people are affected. Those scenarios are real. They depict how the impact of bullying shows up in colleagues in the workplace.

At AllProfit HR, we know that a healthy workplace is the foundation of sustainable success. Ignoring bullying isn’t just a failure of leadership; it's a direct threat to your organization's soul, productivity, and bottom line.

What Exactly Is Workplace Bullying?

Workplace bullying is more than just a demanding boss or a single aggressive act. A SHRM report defines it as repeated, unreasonable, and harmful behavior directed at an employee or group of employees, intended to intimidate, degrade, humiliate, or undermine them. This behavior often involves an abuse of power and creates feelings of injustice and defenselessness. Bullying can manifest as verbal abuse, social exclusion, humiliation, or work sabotage, causing severe psychological trauma.

Unlike illegal harassment, which targets individuals based on protected classes like race, gender, or religion, bullying masks itself covertly and can happen to anyone, which is why it remains so prevalent. The consequences are severe, leading to mental health issues like anxiety, depression, PTSD, and in the most tragic cases, suicide.

Why Does Bullying Go Unnoticed and Unchecked?

Despite its devastating impact, workplace bullying is frequently underreported and dismissed. Dr. Jason Walker articulates why bullying flourishes in silence:

• Power Imbalances: Bullies often hold positions of power or are high performers who "bring in results". Organizations may protect these individuals to avoid disrupting the status quo, creating a culture of denial that enables and institutionalizes abuse.

• Subtle and Covert Tactics: Bullying is often subtle. It happens behind closed doors through trivial criticisms, social isolation, or being purposely misled about work duties, making it difficult for targets to prove. Targets are often gaslit or labeled as "difficult" for speaking up.

• Fear of Retaliation: Employees who report bullying fear retaliation, such as demotion, blacklisting, or even termination. When an organization fails to protect its employees, it creates a sense of institutional betrayal that compounds the trauma and erodes all trust.

  
  

  

  Supervisor talking to an employee who absent-mindedly looks away.

  
  

Examples of Workplace Bullying

Bullying can take many forms. Here are just a few examples from Positive Psychology:

1. Work Sabotage: Your manager consistently gives you unrealistic deadlines or withholds vital information needed to complete your tasks, setting you up to fail.

2. Humiliation and Exclusion: A coworker or group of coworkers repeatedly makes demeaning remarks about you in front of others, spreads rumors, and deliberately excludes you from team meetings and social activities.

3. Excessive Monitoring: Your supervisor constantly micromanages your work, subjects you to overly harsh criticism without justification, and monitors you to the point that you begin to doubt your own abilities.

   
   

Building a Better Workplace: The AllProfit HR Approach

At AllProfit HR, we believe that human resources should be about transforming lives, not just checking boxes. We are People-Powered, Purpose-Driven, and dedicated to Profit for All. We use our signature Workplace Empowerment Framework to help leaders build resilient, people-centered cultures where employees don't just survive—they thrive.

Our framework guides organizations through three phases: Define, Evolve, and Inspire. Here’s how we apply it to combat bullying by centering well-being, psychological safety, and trauma-informed principles:

1. 

   Centering Well-Being: A workplace culture that prioritizes well-being recognizes that burnout and stress create environments where bullying thrives. In the Define phase, we conduct "stay interviews" and listening tours to understand what employees truly need, moving beyond assumptions. This allows us to co-create solutions like improved mental health benefits or flexible work arrangements that address root causes of stress, rather than just the symptoms.

   
   

2. Fostering Psychological Safety: Psychological safety is the belief that you can speak up without fear of negative consequences. Without it, bullying flourishes unchecked. During the Evolve phase, we coach leadership in psychological safety and relational leadership, equipping them to build trust and handle conflict with empathy. We help organizations redefine the manager's role from management to leadership, fostering environments where feedback is seen as a tool for growth, not control.

   
   

3. Applying Trauma-Informed Principles: Traditional HR practices often overlook how past trauma—whether from interpersonal bullying or systemic racism—impacts how employees process feedback and conflict. In the Inspire phase, we help organizations implement trauma-informed feedback systems. This means coaching leaders to deliver feedback that is clear, contextual, and collaborative, avoiding language that triggers defensiveness or harm. By doing so, we help activate transformation from the inside out, creating a culture where every employee feels safe, respected, and empowered.

   
   

Take the First Step Towards a Healthier Culture

Ignoring workplace bullying is a cost your organization cannot afford to pay. It’s time to move beyond reactive compliance and intentionally build a culture of accountability, compassion, and true belonging.

Are you ready to transform your workplace into one where everyone can thrive? Schedule a discovery call with AllProfit HR today, and let's build a future where purpose leads the way for all.