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August 30, 2021

Workplace bullying: what it is, why does it occur?

Photo by Yan Krukov on Pexels.

Workplace bullying, as one of the main reasons for unnecessary workplace conflicts, disturbs the harmony of a workplace. Nearly four out of ten employees experience bullying at the workplace.

According to a recent survey, 94% out of 2081 employees who took the survey reported workplace bullying. 51.1% experienced bullying from managers or their immediate superiors. 17.8% complained of yelling, 23.3% referred to aggressive emails, and 20.2% faced negative gossip from their coworkers.

We cannot ignore workplace bullying as something common that occurs everywhere. It can disturb the peace, mental health of employees, and finally affect the production target.

What is Workplace Bullying

The Workplace Bullying Institute defines, “Workplace bullying prevents work from getting done by an abusive behavior that humiliates, threatens, and interferes with the routine work.”

When workplace bullying occurs repeatedly, it turns out to be mistreatment of one or more workers by one or more of their coworkers, affecting health and workplace efficiency.

Workplace bullying happens to employees through emails, social media, on the phone, or face-to-face while at work.

What is Not Workplace Bullying

All uncomfortable situations in the workplace cannot be considered workplace bullying. Usually, there will be differences in opinions, personality clashes, and conflicting ideas among employees in a team. But these can escalate into workplace bullying and so cannot be ignored.

In a workplace, managers and supervisors have to monitor and analyze the performance of employees. Taking action regarding the work assigned for showing better performance is not workplace bullying.

Employees must learn to take criticisms positively. Based on the feedback they received, it is their responsibility to show improvement in their performance.

Why Workplace Bullying Occurs

Workplace bullying occurs in workplaces where work-related stress factors combine with personality disorders of employees. Heavy workload, feeling insecure, ambiguous, hostile behavior of coworkers, and difficulty in fulfilling responsibilities linked to the assigned jobs are some reasons to consider.

Employees who experience anxiety, insecurity, anger, and sadness routinely at their workplace often become the targets of workplace bullying. Here is some insight into workplace bullying.

Dealing Gender, Age, Race: Workplace harassment involves humiliating or offending behavior towards a coworker based on gender, age, or race. Universal Declaration of Human Rights protects employees from discrimination in employment because of nationality, social origin, religion, political opinion, criminal records, and medical records.

Handling Workload: Assigning unrealistic work targets to employees who lack relevant skills to complete the job on time or frequently changing deadlines to meet targets. Nagging constantly about the status of the work and sharing remarks that hurt the smooth flow of the job.

Remarks on Appearance: Passing degrading remarks on the physical appearance or threatening gestures may also lessen the morale of employers. Workplace bullies always find it easy to comment on being tall or short, thin or heavy. Learning to ignore such remarks will help to carry on with the assigned work with peace.

Against Skilled Workers: Employers who exhibit exceptional skills also face the risk of workplace bullying. The workplace bullies feel they may surpass their growth and their position is threatened. In some organizations, the manager or the leader of the team takes the credit for the work done or underestimates the work of the talented.

Feeling Insecure: Workplace bullies view their coworkers with better skills as direct threats. It becomes the main reason for their insecurity. When junior employees who joined later in the team enjoy all benefits of success, it will trigger the feeling of jealousy and let the senior employees behave accordingly.

Hesitant to Accept: Employees who are well known in the organization also face workplace bullying. Bullies at the workplace consider them as a threat to their status at work.

Being Vulnerable:Submissive, introverted employees face bullying to a greater extent than employees who are assertive and extroverted. Employees need to build their self-esteem and handle bullying better. Employees who show symptoms of anxiety, depression, and stress-related conditions must get proper treatment because bullying can aggravate such symptoms.

Handling Rumours: Unwanted sharing of voice mails, videos, audio, and images of employees without their knowledge is also workplace bullying. Workplace bullies twist and share the media available on their social media platforms.

Unwanted Disturbance: Workplace bullies interfere with the assigned work and disturb the coworkers, not allowing them to work in peace. Without their permission, bullies use the personal properties of the targets and enjoy looking at their predicament.

Unnecessary Blame: Even if it is not their fault, target individuals are bullied at work with meaningless blame and verbal abuse. The blamers being toxic at the workplace believe everyone is wrong and they are always right.

Humiliating in Public: Public humiliation happens when bullies realize that their coworkers have more potential to do better. Workplace bullies humiliate their target individuals during presentations or meetings by preventing them not to share their ideas or speak on the behalf of the team.  With no purpose, bullies compare and discourage their targets from proving their worth. With a grudge, they utter statements that humiliate individuals deeper at heart.

Conclusion

Workplace bullying can affect the overall workplace performance and it can end in a shortage of efficient employees. It becomes the responsibility of the head of the organization to eliminate workplace bullying and provide a peaceful work environment.

Here are some tips for employees experiencing bullying at the workplace. Timely interference and action by the management will help the business run smoothly.

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