Tuesday, April 2, 2019

Bullying and Harassment as a stress contributor

In the majority of cases, bullying in the workplace is reported as having been by someone who has authority over their victim. However, bullies can also be peers, and occasionally subordinates. Workplace bullying is a persistent pattern of mistreatment from others in the workplace that causes either physical or emotional harm. It can include such tactics as verbal, nonverbal, psychological, physical abuse and humiliation. Research has also investigated the impact of the larger organizational context on bullying as well as the group-level processes that impact on the incidence and maintenance of bullying behavior. Bullying can be covert or overt. It may be missed by superiors; it may be known by many throughout the organization.Bullying and harassment is behavior that makes someone feel intimidated or offended. Harassment is unlawful under the Equality Act 2010.

Bullying and harassment can happen:
  • face-to-face
  • by email
  • by phone
  • by letter
Examples of bullying or harassing behavior include:
  • denying someone’s training or promotion opportunities
  • unfair treatment
  • spreading malicious rumors
  • picking on or regularly undermining someone
Bullying itself is not against the law, but harassment is. This is when the unwanted behavior is related to one of the following:
  • age
  • sex
  • race
  • disability
  • gender reassignment
  • religion or belief
  • sexual orientation
  • marriage and civil partnership
  • pregnancy and maternity
Researchers at the University of Manitoba found workplace bullying inflicts more harm on employees than sexual harassment. (Armstrong, 2008) Compared to victims of sexual harassment in the workplace, bullied employees showed:
  • More job stress
  • Less commitment to the company
  • Higher levels of anxiety and anger

References

Armstrong, N. (2008). Workplace bullying worse than sexual harassment: study. [online] www.reuters.com. Available at: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bullies-work/workplace-bullying-worse-than-sexual-harassment-study-idUSN0622290520080310 [Accessed 2 Apr. 2019].

4 comments:

  1. This is mostly less discussed tropic which effects to organisation performance.this kind of issue can be created from Unsuitable leadership behaviors.Therefore Human resource Manager should keep the lines of communication open,take the all the complain seriously and get investigated deeply.then management can avoid the stress factors like bullying and harassment

    ReplyDelete
  2. Myself understood with this topic. good job prathi,
    Duties that employees could use as a basis for a stress claim against their employer and in particular the law relating to bullying and harassment. This will include an update on the recent changes to the contributor.
    Workplace bullying is also not carried out by supervisors and superiors alone, but also by co-workers.

    Bullying is tricky to define. What it definitely not is a one-off event. That would class as harassment. Bullying on the other hand is deliberately intended to dominate, cause distress and fear in the intended victim.

    ( Dr. Pragya Agarwal
    Creative Strategist, Social Entrepreneur, Mental Health Campaigner )

    ReplyDelete
  3. Bullying prevention efforts in organisations typically treat bullying behaviour as an interpersonal problem. Yet the evidence suggests that job characteristics, such as role ambiguity and organisational constraints, are the primary contributing factors.

    ReplyDelete
  4. A much needed discussion Prathishna. The phenomenon of workplace bullying, first described by Leymann (e.g., 1996),refers to prolonged exposure to frequent hostile behaviors at work, such as excessive criticism of one’s work, withholding of information which affects performance,spreading of rumours, social isolation, etc.

    Reference

    Balducci, Cristian & Fraccaroli, Franco & Schaufeli, Wilmar. (2011). Workplace bullying and its relation with work characteristics, personality, and post-traumatic stress symptoms: An integrated model. Anxiety, stress, and coping.

    ReplyDelete

In Conclusion, the following could be adapted by the HR in order to improve on the identified Stress Contributors. These are merely indicati...