Growing plague of Bullying in the Irish workplace

Growing Plague of Bullying in the Irish Workplace

In the current climate with many companies downsizing and cutting costs, bullying is likely to escalate, writes Bill Hobbs

Ireland’s toxic workplaces with their abusive behaviours are about to get a lot worse. And many more people may experience one of modern Irelands’ worst organisational attributes – bullying in the workplace.

Mary was once a senior, well respected and liked manager until she became the target of a bully. Within two years she went from being an outgoing, confident, personable, competent employee to a sullen, withdrawn, depressed individual who was shunned by her colleagues. Mary’s family suffered as she became increasingly irritable and short tempered at home. Losing all interest in her work and family life, she dreaded going to her office each day. Only after confiding in a close friend, an organisational psychologist, did Mary understand what was happening to her. She had become the target of a bully, her boss, whose behaviour towards her escalated from sarcasm, intimidation, exclusion, isolation, denial of meaningful work to eventually refusing her annual salary increase without explanation. While her company had a bullying policy, Mary realised it was a worthless piece of paper as she learned of others who had also been similarly targeted by her boss. On looking into the sudden departures of previous employees, Mary learned of millions paid by her organisation in discreet termination agreements and legal fees.

Management training, including business school educators, emphasise the positive aspects of organisational leadership. But managers do not learn of the dark side of leadership when bullies thrive and are promoted to senior positions. As managers, bullies are skilled at manipulating HR policies and financial resources. Their organisations typically exhibit high levels of sudden staff departures, absenteeism, low morale, intimidation and harassment. More often than not bullying cascades down from one or two senior managers to supervisors and becomes acceptable and unchallenged behaviour. Not only are those targeted by bullies traumatised but others who witness bullying are also affected.

When Mary eventually complained her boss to her HR manager, he responded by instigating disciplinary action accusing Mary of poor performance and making false allegations against him. On her doctor’s and lawyer’s advice she removed herself from her toxic workplace and stayed at home. Her legal action for bullying and harassment was quietly settled, without admission of liability, by her employer. Mary had to sign a gagging clause promising not to talk to anyone, except her family, of her experience. She is not alone, as in the vast majority of cases, the person who is being bullied is left with no option but to leave their job. Mary didn’t get an equivalent position elsewhere and remains deeply affected by her experience.

Mary’s story, whilst fictionalised, illustrates how bullying is known to cause people to suffer long term medical and psychological illness where they develop symptoms similar to post traumatic stress disorder. With over 100 suicides a year linked to bullying in the workplace, employers and their trade organisations fear successful bullying law suits. Cases are settled quietly and bullying remains an insidious aspect of far too many public and private organisations.

Bullying, intimidation and harassment is known to worsen when organisations experience dramatic change, in particular downsizing. Unless an organisations values and management behaviours stress employee integrity and dignity, chances are bullying will feature. It’s not enough to have a bullying policy in place - it must also be rigorously practiced. Unchecked, the bully boss or manager creates an environment in which others adopt the normative behaviours of the bully.

The social manifestation of bullying escalates from sarcasm, threats, verbal abuse, intimidation, bad-mouthing, manipulation, duplicity, unpleasant assignments, demeaning jobs, exclusion, isolation, and in extreme cases physical violence and forced resignation.

At any one time between 10-15% of adults are said to be genetically predisposed to sociopathic type behaviours which sees them consistently bully others. Bullying is also nurtured within certain types of organisations, whose leaders fail to understand what it is and pay lip service to employee rights to be treated with dignity and provided with a safe place to work. And it’s reported as being more prevalent in larger organisations than smaller ones.

Documented behaviours include changing and devaluing work, excessive and unreasonable demands, social isolation, withholding information, excessive monitoring, personal attacks, ridicule, insults, verbal threats, spreading rumours , cyber bullying, undermining, humiliation, intrusion, unreasonable assignments and deadlines, harassment, exclusion and blaming people for things beyond their control.

Bullying usually occurs where there is an imbalance of power. More often than not behind closed doors. The most reported incidents occur amongst middle and senior ranking males in their 30’s and 40’s. But only because they are more aware of what bullying is and correctly identify when they are being bullied. Studies are likely to underreport bullying as many people don’t know when they are being bullied.

When last studied in 2007, a report to Government on workplace bullying, estimated that 160,000 people had been bullied in the previous six months and bullying had increased since 2001. The highest incidence was found in the public administration, education, health, transport, communications and financial service sectors. Close onto nine people in every hundred had experienced bullying which was studied using a set of unwelcome behaviours occurring persistently over a six month period. Seven in ten people bullied, experienced bullying behaviour more than once a month and many several times a week. Having a policy on bullying in place was found to be largely irrelevant. Although 82% of pubic sector bodies had a policy in place they also had the highest incidence of bullying.

Regrettably Irish workplaces seem ripe for the dark side of leadership and abusive behaviour will become far worse. In current economic circumstances with so many organisations downsizing and cutting costs, bullying is likely to escalate. What’s more with people trapped in their jobs, unable to find employment elsewhere, many more may experience the trauma of being a target of bullying. It is a distressing outcome that needs to be understood and robustly dealt with by those whose responsibility it is to govern, oversee and manage organisations.

© Thomas Crosbie Media 2009.