By Justin Lafreniere
Shernita Parker
Shernita Rochelle Parker is sometimes called “the Workplace Bully Girl,” but she does so much more for George Mason University’s faculty and staff.
Parker has been at George Mason for a decade, starting in the College of Education and Human Development before moving over to her new role as a human resources consultant in the Office of Human Resources and Payroll. She is one of the members of the Employee Relations team.
“How I got here is a little circuitous,” Parker admits. She received her juris doctor from the University of Maine School of Law and she has worked in higher education for 15 years, including at the College of William and Mary Law School, Georgetown University Law Center and American University. Primarily, she had focused on development roles, but when she was on maternity leave, she found herself with time to think about what she wanted to do. “Development had become rote,” she admits, “and I wanted to do something different.”
Searching the Mason employment listings, she found her current position, where her duties include handling workplace bullying, but also organizing workshops to ensure that the relationships between co-workers and employees and their supervisors run smoothly. Her position now is all about harmony in the workplace.
“When people are unhappy, or uncomfortable, or frustrated, it’s not just affecting them; the organization suffers as well,” Parker says. She notes that academia is a place that is ripe not only for workplace bullying, but for discomfort because of the constant interchange of ideas and the natural dialogue that the university environment creates.
“It’s not only that there’s a hierarchy,” Parker explains, referring to the tensions common between employees and supervisors. “There’s also the horizontal.” With all the departments, programs, groups, divisions and offices at Virginia’s largest university, issues are bound to arise. And they are often complicated by the hallmarks of higher education, such as tenure, an institution that serves to protect professors from outside influence but can also insulate them from criticism or castigation.
Such issues can be troublesome to handle and it can be difficult to keep everyone happy and constructive. In July, Parker attended the First Annual Colloquium on Abrasive Conduct in the Academy, a conference discussing how employee disputes in the workplace can best be handled.
Parker’s job is specifically not to play cop and catch bad behavior, but to help create a productive work environment. “Sometimes people are bullies and sometimes they’re just abrasive, rubbing people the wrong way.” To that end, Parker works on coaching, starting with the person who feels bullied.
“I work with them, but the solution has to be on their own terms, they have to be comfortable,” Parker says.
And the George Mason community does best when people can collaborate freely and feel valued in their roles, and feel comfortable with their co-workers. “There always has to be that balance between civility and debate,” Parker says.
She tries to make everyone mindful of an important, sometimes overlooked fact: “Work relationships are relationships,” she says, with the same problems and constant need for growth and awareness of the other people in them.