Personal Harassment
Personal harassment is behaviour that humiliates, intimidates, excludes, and isolates an individual or group, but is not based on one of the BC Human Rights Code's thirteen grounds of prohibited discrimination.
Management has a responsibility to deal with personal harassment as an employee performance issue. In the case of students, Deans have responsibility to address issues of personal harassment. Administrative Heads, unions and employee associations, the AMS Ombudperson's Office or Human Resources are good sources to contact for help.
The Equity Office can also help. Although personal harassment is not one of the protected grounds under UBC's Policy On Discrimination & Harassment (PDF), we attempt to provide people who approach us with information about available strategies and resources to help deal with the situation.
Personal harassment can include:
- Malicious or intimidating gestures or actions
- Threats, coercion, bullying
- Verbal assault, taunting, or ostracizing
- Threatened or actual physical assault
- Humiliation, insults, rudeness
- Gossip, slander
Information on the Respectful Environment can be found on UBC's Respectful Environment website.
Bullying is a type of personal harassment, and a form of aggression, that may include physical, verbal, or emotional abuse. Bullying poisons the living, working or studying environment of the person it targets. The bully attempts to control, humiliate, denigrate or injure the target. There is no reasonable justification or reason for the bullying.
Bullying usually occurs as a pattern of behaviour that may include acts of verbal or non-verbal aggression, intimidation, social isolation or humiliation. The bully may focus on one person as his/her target or may continually seek new targets. The aim of bullying is to inflict distress and fear on the target and bullies show little or no affect, remorse, regret, or other emotion. People who bully others are not interested in resolving the conflict with the people they target. They are interested in getting their own way.
Bullying often involves an imbalance of power. Those targeted perceive the bully to be stronger or more powerful than they are and feel that they are unable to defend themselves. Bullies silence their targets through fear. Bullying can also take the form of horizontal violence - harmful behaviour directed at a colleague to control, humiliate, or denigrate him/her.
In some cases, bullies may align themselves with managers who will protect them. As a result, the targets of bullying leave the organization and the bully remains.
Bullying usually will not end without intervention. Witnesses or targets of bullying should take steps to end the bullying, if possible, or seek help.
Last reviewed 
2/17/2011 6:39:56 PM
