MY WORK (PRECIOUS) - BULLYING AT WORK

What constitutes harassment and bullying?

The term ‘harassment’ and ‘bullying’ both consists of behaviours that are unwelcome, inappropriate, offensive, unreciprocated and irrelevant o work performance. Bullying is a specific form of harassment and is insidious by nature in the sense that it usually develops gradually, but it has a cumulative, entrapping effect on the victim.

People can be harassed on the ground of race, ethnic origin, nationality or skin colour, sex, sexual orientation, religious or political convictions, membership of trade unions and other apolitical organizations, status within the offender or as someone suffering from HIV/AIDS, education or just being different.

Research on bullying at work

Seyle(1956) – stated that stress is ‘the body’s response to troublesome situations, events or thoughts’.

Effects of Bullying Under Four Main Headings (Leymann-1990)

1. Social­ – social isolation, stigmatizing, voluntary unemployment, social maladjustment.
2. Sociallpsychological – loss or coping resources. Petri (1997) calls this effect ‘breakdown of the mental nerve system’.
3. Psychological ­– desperation and total helplessness, considerable rage about lack of legal remedies, great anxiety and despair.
4. Psychosomatic and psychiatric ­– depression, hyperactivity, compulsion, suicide and psychosomatic illnesses.

Bullies are generally afraid of not being sufficiently in control and are often described by their teams as ‘control freaks’. A bully’s behaviour is over-controlling.

Randall (1997) refers to the ‘noxious stimuli’ received from the bully that result in the persistent re-experiencing of the trauma.

In Austria and Germany, a number of studies on ‘mobbing’ – another term of bullying – were undertaken. Zapf et al. (1995) and  Niedl (1995) investigated separately the mental health effects of mobbing on employees. The findings of the two separate studies were similar in that they showed significant differences between the mobbing samples and the control groups.

Zapf et al. agree that mobbing is an extreme form of work-based social stressor. They report that 54 per cent of cases received medical treatment.

Groeblinghoff and Becker (1996) refer to mobbing as unethical disorder of communication and an extreme psychosocial stressor, the effects of which frequently cause severe symptoms of combined psychological and physical illness. They concluded that these symptoms impair the victims’ vitality, overall potential, creativity and productivity. They put forward the following list of outcomes: depression, obsession, agitation and blockage, a resigned attitude, moderate cognitive disturbances with automatically recurring thoughts, irritability, inner unrest, insomnia, substance abuse and suicidal tendencies.

People who are stressed may continue to turn up for work and perform poorly. Cox (1993) refers to this as ‘presenteeism’ which was defined in a Health and Safety Information Bulletin of May 1996 as ‘being physically present but mentally absent’.

Einarssen and Skogstad’s (1996) research looked at bullying as something tha happens over time and didn’t count one-off instances:

We define bullying as a situation where one or several individuals persistently over a period of time perceive themselves to be on the receiving end of negative actions from one or several persons, in a situation where the target of bullying has difficulty in defending him or herself against these actions. We will not refer to a one-off incident bullying.

This means that even severe one-off instances of behaviour such as threats of, or even actual, physical violence would not be defined as bullying.

            At the 1999 TUC Women’s Conference, the results of a survey regarding sexual harassment and bullying were announced.

            Men and women tended to respond differently to bullying, women being more likely to blame themselves and suffer emotionally. Mean were less able to turn to anyone for support.

            Rayner et al. (2002) concludes that adult bullying was less likely to be physical and could be divided into several categories:

Ø      threat to professional status (e.g., belittling opinions, public professional humiliation, accusations regarding lack of effort),

Ø      threat to personal standing (e.g., name calling, insults, intimidation, devaluing with reference to age),

Ø      isolation (e.g., preventing access to opportunities, physical or social isolation, withholding information),

Ø      overwork (e.g., undue pressure, impossible deadlines, unnecessary disruptions)

Ø      destabilization (e.g., failure to acknowledge good work, allocation of meaningless tasks, removal of responsibility, repeated reminders of blunders, string up to fail).

The bullying culture

While some organizations are facing up to, dealing with, bullying, others do not consider it a priority. This latter attitude is dangerous because it can lead to a bullying culture pervading the organization. The MSF (1995) stated that:

Bullying affects not only the individuals involved but the organization as a whole, since people working in a climate of fear and resentment do not give their best. Where bullying occurs and is not dealt with, sickness absence will increase, staff turnover will rise and morale and performance levels will fall. The organization will suffer loss of production, increased sickness and retraining costs, a threat to its public image as well as the potential for further public exposure through cases taken to Industrial Tribunals.

Wright and Smye (1997) discuss three types of abusive work cultures. First the win/lose culture where everyone is out for themselves. In this type of work culture there is withholding information colleagues, a highly competitive atmosphere and no teamwork. Second is the blame culture. Here, individuals are afraid to step out of line for fear that they will be picked on and blamed for doing something wrong. Third, there is the sacrifice culture, in which people but their jobs before their social and personal lives to such an extent that they eventually become ill. All three of these abuse cultures are not only bad for morate, but bad for business too.

Bullying cultures are unlikely to be led by a management team that sets a good example or is conscious of the importance of being good role models. In the main, bullying is modeled from the Top down, and what is seen lower down reflects what is happening above.

The bullying culture breeds a negative atmosphere, one in which there are only criticisms and no praise for a job well done. There is no recognition of the positive contributions that people make there are often unclear boundaries so that people do not know what is expected.

Smith  and Sharp (1994) in their work on school bullying describe bullying as ‘the systematic abuse of power’. This is equally the case in adult bullying; bullies are usually in positions of some power – but they take more.

Sutton (2001) found that school bullies were no less bright than children who did not bully; in fact, they scored higher than many other groups on social cognition.

Examples of the bullying culture

Ø      Performance-related pay can be used as a way of bullying people. Employees strive to do an ever-increasing volume of work within decreasing time scales and with fewer resources. yet, at pay-review and appraisals time , they are told that their quality of work has deteriorated.

Ø      Micro-management. Constantly monitoring and assessing employees, if taken to extremes, can be interpreted as bullying as job satisfaction is stifled, resulting in employees feeling powerless and out of control.

Ø      Pressure. Pressuring employees with unrealistic workloads under the guise of needing to ‘raise performance levels’ is likely to have the opposite effect by encouraging underperformance

Ø      Mergers. When two businesses combine, a bullying culture can be created when the more powerful organization takes over quashing both the values and the people-culture in the smaller company  

Ø      Reorganizations. Employees can be treated unfairly during reorganization. People can be made redundant when job specifications are redrafted in such a way as to render them ineligible to apply for their own jobs .alternatively, the specification may be change and, even if the individual stays, they will probably fail as they cannot cope with the unrealistic demands being made of them. This leads to a demoralized person leaving a company - or the company having grounds to fire them. I refer to this as a psychological game of ‘I can make you fail’. Sometimes people are redeployed in a lower status job (with their pay reduced accordingly).

Ø      Privately owned businesses. In an actual case. I found that the managing director bullied anyone who came in as his second –in-command. When they eventually succumbed to the pressure the MD made sure that he gave them a large payoff conditional upon a non-litigation clause.

Ø      Jargon. The use of specific language is a way of marginalizing people working within the same organization. Jargon is often developed by the few to create a means of communicating that divides and excludes. 

Ø      Unrealistic working hours. Another case: a certain employee had not seen his small children awake for four days owing to being at his desk from 7 a.m. to 9;00 p.m. on the fourth day he was leaving at 6 p.m. (even though his contracted leaving time was 5 p.m.) and was subjected to comments such as having a half day, john? And someone doesn’t want his bonus…’

Ø      Deadlines. People set timescales or sell services to clients that are totally unrealistic, leaving support staff to struggle to deliver on the promises.

Ø      Maintenance of tradition. Archer (1998), in his study of the fire service, found that part of the cultural norm is the ‘maintenance of tradition’ in that this is the way. The tradition hurts a lot of guys.’

Ø      The right fit. People are recruited to work in an organization because they possess certain wanted characteristics, which are seen to perpetuate the existing culture. One Human Resources recruited ostensibly because they are driven and will get things done.

Ø       Power Play.  Informing people that, say, within the next year10 per cent of them will lose their jobs is certainly going to contribute to a culture based on insecurity and fear.

Ø      Specific industries and functions within them are conducive to bullying behaviour. One magazine aimed at young models asked if I considered whether photographers’ shouting at the young models and telling them to ‘Smile and get your tits out darling’ was bullying. When the models refused, they were subjected to abuse. Of course, this is bullying twice over. Many of these pretty teenage girls went home in tears. Their dreams soured.

Ø      Abuse of personal affiliations. Managers who have special relationships with the senior management team,(e.g.. are golf buddies or personal friends) usually enjoy an added bonus: their questionable behaviours are ignored. We have had many examples of managers using intimidating threats of discipline by saying things like ‘There is no point in complaining –I’m married to the Chairman’s daughter’, or I’am very close friends with the Managing Director.

Ø      Isolation. Team working is fine so long as it works. However, teams have to be managed in such a way that those people with the loudest and strongest opinions do not override the more quiet members. People can feel shut out and isolated if they are not encouraged to participate within the team.

Ø      Unacceptable management style. When those at the top of an organization do not take their leadership role seriously –e.g.,by not demonstrating listening skills, by being quick to act without thinking things through, Showing insensitivity to others’ feeling, making unreasonable demands – a bullying culture trickles down.

Ø      Inaction to complaints. When bullying is reported, either to management or human resources staff, the complainants are sometimes fobbed off with ‘I will have a quiet word with them. The victim frequently believes – not without good reason – that nothing will be done to remedy the problem. By not following a set, transparent procedure, the management creates an environment in which a bullying culture thrives unchecked.

Ø      You asked for it. Attitudes of personnel range widely. Some employees even have the attitude that people who are bullied must have asked for it, or that bullying doesn’t happen to real men. The victims, aside from being bullied, also have to deal with the added burden of shame.

Ø      Management becomes accessory to the behaviour. If employees approach their line managers or Human Resources about the way in which they are being treated and receive comments such as ‘No one has ever complained before’, ‘It’s just a personality clash’ or, even worse, ‘He is more valuable to us than you are’, this reflects management’s implicit collusion with inappropriate, unacceptable and unprofessional behaviour.