A pet trade recruitment specialist says she is concerned about workplace bullying in the pet industry.
“We tend to think of bullying as being encountered at school but it happens in business, too,” said Pet Trade Solutions owner Lynda Ward, “and I’m sad to say in our own pet trade as well.”
“Speaking every day to the industry, I hear good and bad stories and over the years I’ve heard of a number of cases of bullying that have resulted in employees being effectively forced to leave due to stress related illness…and they seem to be on the increase.
“Is the cause pressure on the bully themselves to get results or is it simply that the bully has the type of mentality that seeks the opportunity to boost their faltering ego by exerting pressure on someone else not in a position to fight back?”
Lynda said that in an example she saw first-hand many years ago, her own and her colleagues’ conclusion was that the bully was a weak and inept person, who saw their victim as a threat so sought to gain the upper hand, not by earning respect by example but by extreme micro-managing and making constant unrealistic demands on the ‘perfectly professional and successful person’ they had in their sights.
LEAVE
“Perhaps surprisingly, most of the instances that I now hear of involve men bullied by other men and are always in the past tense and spoken about after the victim has left that environment,” she told Pet Business World.
“In the case of the perpetrator being the owner of the company, probably the only realistic long-term option is to leave but in the case of it being a manager I do think it would be a good idea to keep detailed notes of what is happening and at least bring it to the attention of someone senior before matters reach the point of no return of illness or handing in notice. Something may or may not be done about it but it surely can’t make matters worse.”
Lynda ends on a positive note though: “Thank goodness it’s not all bad news – there are many brilliant companies in the pet trade who treat their staff with empathy and respect and consequently employ managers with the same ethics and grown-up methods of man-management. I’m always happy to recommend those companies to job-seekers.”
