04/05/2025
The workplace abuse playbook:
1. Workplace abuse typically begins when an insecure employee (the abuser) is threatened by the competence or demeanor of another employee. The abuser targets the unsuspecting employee to minimize and eliminate the perceived threat the employee poses to them. They try to convince the employee and others the target is incompetent and use persistent psychological abuse to control the narrative. Common tactics include false accusations, withholding vital information, exclusion, and sabotage.
2. In toxic work environments, when targeted employees report the psychological abuse to the proper workplace authorities, those authorities disregard complaints and mislead the targeted employee to believe there is a legitimate complaint process to remedy the problem. The institution becomes complicit in the abuse to avoid liability. Employers are not liable for psychological harm. Nor do they want to be.
3. The employer never alters the employee’s work environment. The emboldened abuser continues to mistreat the target without consequence or deterrent, while the employer unnecessarily prolongs the hollow complaint process.
4. After waiting for resolve, the targeted employee succumbs to the silent-killer stress of their work environment and voluntarily leaves due to health harm, is fired due to health harm, or dies. There is significant physical, mental, and emotional injury and long-term economic harm. Game over. The bully wins. Their perceived competition is gone. The employer wins. Their perceived threat of liability is gone.
5. The targeted employee had done nothing other than report inappropriate behavior. When they realize the second level of mistreatment, the institutional complicity of tampering with their life and their livelihood, trauma occurs. Then the employee further realizes there is no legal recourse for any of it. There is nothing they can do about it. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, suicidal ideation, and su***de are highly affiliated with these forms of workplace abuse.
Join us to and :
Who supports the Workplace Psychological Safety Act, the basics of workplace abuse, and how you can take action and connect with other targeted employees