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A nuisance called workplace bullying
April 27, 2015 |
Outline:
Workplace bullying is a universal phenomenon and occurs due to fear not
respect. It is an unavoidable aspect, an outcome of one’s negativity though
sensitive and need to be tackle wisely. Purely an inception of human behavior
which cannot be enforce as it is by one’s own choice. It can come from the
superior in the form of increased workload, late sittings, passing information
top – down only, emancipate on others their aggressions, Peer/s gossiping about
other’s life, passing comments, demotivate people from improvising / working on
their weak area, laughing on others imperfection.
Ideology behind it is to make everyone think superior about the bully.
Bully are the people who are themselves victim of life i.e. Case1: Middle level
manager being informed by the management regarding his team’s performance and
the delivery output is not satisfactory – in return manager targeting the soft
spoken person among the team by offloading his aggressions.
Case2: An employee who is not academically qualified for the assigned
profile. But manages well by developing good networking with his peers and
manager. His nature from being understanding gets transformed to that of
bullying on the entry of a new entrant who is young and possess the skills as
per profile requirement.
Many such more scenarios can lead to workplace bullying.
Definition:
Universally no
prescribed formal definition of Workplace bullying has been defined. However
based on the understanding grasp from the environment it is one of the type of
personality trait which is negative in nature and being practice socially. A
trait which is an outcome of one’s own aggressions that tend to hurt people
around making them feel low about themselves.
Characterized by:
Normally it is repetitive in nature and there is no time duration for
its existence wherein the target lacks to confront the abuser.
Characterized Relationships:
Workplace bullying is not restricted to specific level, age, gender. It
occurs in the following forms:
- Superior – Subordinate:
- among co-peers:
- Employer – Customers
- Organizational System – Employee
It has different forms such as:
a. Groupism – Group of people victimizing one employee or a group of
people
b. Habitual – A person habituated to bully others and get away with it.
c. With Aggression – Superiors offload
their aggression on subordinates
d. Verbal - A peer / peers trying to take hold of other’s life by
interfering as in how to behave?
What to say?
e. Physical - Jokingly punching a
peer.
f. Virtual - Usually done to justify the reason for not doing the work
within the stipulated timeframe.
g. Systematic Procedures –
Organization assigning employees’ with unrealistic targets, justify the
performance of an employee.
h.Gossiping - Tittle – Tattle to malign someone’s image out of anger /
jealousy.
i. Kiss Up, Kick down - It is
a neologism where the middle level people are polite and nice to the management
and not with the lower level.
Reason of its existence:
Its existence purely depends on the
personality traits of people who constitutes to play with their mind flow to
harm / trouble others.
Traits could be:
- Superiority Complex
- Impulsive nature
- Egotism
- Silent Spectators
- Company Strategy
- Manager Informant
a) Superiority Complex: “A superiority complex is a cover up for
an inferiority complex.” – by Alfred Adler
Workplace bullying is a baby of human mind
which is born to overcome one’s inferiority and something that cannot be
taught. It is a type of personality trait which occurs out of fear to be last
in the ‘herd of sheep's’ , with the entry of new entrants, for career
progressions, jealousy with the peer etc.
b) Impulsive nature – A person not able to
handle his / her temperament and spontaneously discharge it on subordinates or
peers.
c) Egotism – Self centered people tend to
move things / people as per their thought process.
d) Silent Spectators – People who don’t
tend to victimise others but support
being silent to the abusers from saving oneself
from becoming another victim of workplace bullying.
e)Company Strategy - Company’s act to
adapt the change as per market trend resulting in delay pay, cut-off in bonus
and downsizing.
f) Manager Informant - People to be in good books of manager pass
information about others’ even the casual
talks projecting as the people are not
being sensitive towards each other.
Impacts:
Workplace bullying does not impact any
individual or only the organization but its effect is overall, which is not a
good sign for the growth of the organization.
- Bullying is run through in the system affecting people’s productivity which distresses the organizations throughput.
- Culture of the organization also gets affected resulting in bitterness making the system unhealthy.
- Deviations in the committed timelines.
- Affects the learning curve of employee.
- Rise in attrition rate.
- Additional cost incurred on hiring & training the new entrants.
- Stress which leads to depression and in worse scenario suicide.
- Claim for health insurances
- Rise in Absenteeism
- Impact on work qualitative as well as quantitative wise.
- Interpersonal communications
- Anxiety
- Self - confidence
- Trust
Measures:
Organization
need to be strong with the in house policies as the weaker authority thrives
such activity in the system. People are the biggest asset for any organization
so the priority needs to be on people connect. However the following measures
will help in controlling the workplace bullying:
- Understand the workplace bullying
- Take an action by saying ‘to stop’ to the bully.
- In severe scenario discuss it with the manager / HR.
- Implement zero tolerance bullying policy in the organization.
- Organization to focus on team building.
- Superiors to observe, understand and hear from the horse’s mouth then call for action rather being weak of ears.
- Design ‘People Project Advocate ’programme to channelize the idle time and energy of the employees’.
- Be courageous to become the witness.
- Strong connect to be developed between Management – HR – People.