Whether you call it bullying, harassing, intimidating, stalking, threatening, tormenting, browbeating, needling, or pushing people around, commonsense calls it bad behavior. What steps need to be taken during your library’s employment cycle and regarding the culture of your library to prevent bullying behavior? To address incidents with staff and library users, particularly young people? If managers and leaders don’t step up in a timely fashion, it’s easy for library personnel to think that the higher ups are intimidated, or, at worse, support bad behaviors.

Topics include establishing enforceable policies that focus on addressing behaviors in a timely fashion, norms for evaluation, preparing for pushback, the “reasonable” test, the role of supervisors and managers, codes of ethics, conflicting cultures regarding workplace and customer behavior, hiring for emotional maturity, and ensuring everyone is subject to the same guidelines and consequences.

Agenda ▪ Introduction: What is Bullying…And Other Forms Of Bad Workplace Behavior? ▪ The Key Idea: Make Your Library Safe From Bad Behavior ▪ Don’t Get Sucked In: The Conflict Triangle ▪ Fix the Foundations: Employment Policies ▪ Start Off Right: Recruitment and Probation ▪ Prevention: Employee and Supervisor Education ▪ When Mistakes are Made: Setting Consequences Outcomes ▪ Create a workplace culture that discourages bullying and harassment. ▪ Review and strengthen orientation of new employees regarding unacceptable behaviors. ▪ Establish ethical, legal, and respectful ways to deal with workplace mistakes. ▪ Provide a bully-free space for young people.

Presenter: Pat Wagner has been a trainer and consultant for libraries for over 40 years. She focuses on personnel, management, and leadership issues, including marketing, project management, and tech services productivity.