What is the impact of bullying and harassment in the workplace?
“Bullying & harassment is any unwanted behaviour that makes someone feel intimidated, degraded, humiliated or offended. It is not always obvious or apparent to others, and may happen in the workplace without an employer’s awareness” (acas.org.uk)
Examples of bullying or harassing behaviour include:
Spreading rumours
Insulting behaviour, including unwanted jokes
Exclusion, isolation or victimisation
Unfair treatment
Deliberately undermining a competent worker by constant criticism
Withholding information or removing responsibility without justification
Setting impossible deadlines with the intention of undermining
According to the Health and Safety Executive, 13% of workplace mental health issues come from violence, threats or bullying. It fair to say however, that this is from reported statistics, there are many incidents which go unreported. A study by the TUC in 2015 suggested nearly a third of people are bullied at work and in 72% of cases the bullying was carried out by a manager.
For the individual being bullied it can be a harrowing experience. This is the account of an individual in working in financial services in Edinburgh.
It starts with denial “this isn’t really happening”, if I just ignore it, it’ll go away”.
Then the reality that there's a problem sets in your mind. Once it lingers for a while it’s starts to gnaw.
Before you know it, it’s there every day, when you get up you think about it, then before you get into work you wonder what’s going to happen that day. What are you going to have to deflect? How much are you going to have to defend yourself? How humiliated are you going to be in front of your peers? But you carry on, brave face and all that.
You then realise you must do something, so you try to talk sensibly to the individual(s) about the problem, how you feel about it and what it’s doing to you.
When there’s no response, there’s confusion about how to deal with the situation. You question yourself and challenge your own thoughts about it. You speak to HR and they advise you on the internal process to follow for grievances at work. They don't help you realise your mental health is declining because they're not trained to do that.
A formal grievance is probably going to ruin your career surely, nobody actually raises these things do they? You try again and again to have a conversation with those involved as the harassment continues every day. It’s been six months, it’s confusing and painful to deal with, your mental health is declining further. There is no one at work to help you deal with what you're going through.
It’s now affecting your personal life. You are withdrawn, constantly thinking about why this issue can’t be resolved. You argue with your loved ones, or just ignore them as the weight of this gets heavier and heavier. You are starting to realise this is impacting in a major way.
The final straw, your manager suggests you are demoted.
Going to work is now so difficult and sickening you can’t face it. You get signed off by your GP who diagnoses work related stress.
This is not an isolated story. Unfair treatment such as this goes on every day. Being bullied or harassed at work can feel very isolating especially in hierarchical organisations without adequate support for the individuals involved. All too often the process of resolution ends up with a high performing individual leaving.
The impact is not just on the individual though. By not addressing bullying or harassment, the perpetrators remain at large. This sounds dramatic perhaps overly so, however you cannot downplay the impact this can have on the future prospects of your organisation.
Word will get out and you are then at risk of condoning a workplace in which bullying and/or harassment exists. This will create an unhappy and unproductive workplace where you will have:
Poor morale and poor employee scores
Loss of respect not only for those implicated but those in senior positions who allow it to happen
Poor productivity
The cost of absence and ultimately high staff turnover
Worst case scenario, tribunals and payment of unlimited compensation
It’s an unfortunate reality that organisations don’t tend to consider the employee when setting policies or creating procedures to deal with this issue. This will always lead to the loss of good people. The minute an organisation only looks out for themselves the respect of the employee affected and those remaining will be lost, therefore:
Have a policy which considers and involves the employee
Be a good role model, the behaviour of senior leadership is as important as the policy
Maintain procedures which deal promptly with complaints and have independent support for the employee.
Set standards of behaviour and ensure these are widely communicated.