Now you are a bully

So-Now you are a bully

Happy?

Great!!

How much are you costing your employer? As I noted in an earlier blog, it is estimated that 20% of sick time is as a consequence of bad management and that 20% is a consequence of mental illness.

Cross reference Bill Wilkerson and the Global Business and Economic Roundtable on Addictions  and  Mental Health, for more information about this.
mentalhealthroundtable.ca/links.html

Or perhaps this is simply chalked up as the cost of doing business?
Wilkerson thinks not. In fact, the Roundtable has proposed a Charter of Mental Health Rights for employees.
mentalhealthroundtable.ca/feb_2004/Charter_February_2004.pdf

Take, as an example, the public health care sector in one of Canada's provinces-being New Brunswick.

Average sick time ranges from 10-12 days/employee/year. (Add to that 11 stat holidays per year and about 4 weeks holiday per year and you find that the average employee gets paid not to be working about 2-2.5 months per year. But that is another story)

Back to bullying and sick time.

There are about 13,000 employees. The math is simple. That means that there are between 130,000 and 150000 sick days taken per year. Using the albeit low income of $20/hr and a 7.5 hour work day, NB's taxpayers are coughing up between $19.5m and $23.4m/year to pay people for being ill.

20% of that is as a consequence of bad (aka bullying) management.

That means that NB's taxpayers (who pay amongst the highest personal taxes in Canada) are paying between $3.9m-$4.68m/year for managers to bully staff and, not be held accountable.
To read more about the impact of management behaviour on sick time, try reading Rhoades and Eisenberger (2002) or Tepper (2000) on this topic.

Oh, by the way, the number of  days lost which might otherwise be used to work are between 26,000 and 31200 days.
To get even more information on this topic, go back to Wilkerson's site and search the report :
Mental Health in the Labour Force
Literature review and Gap Analysis
By Watson Wyatt Canada ULC @
mentalhealthroundtable.ca/jul_07/WW%20GAP%20Report%20-May30_2007.pdf