How can we all stop workplace bullying?

What do these two have in common?

• The head of regulatory repeatedly interrupts the same employee and actively prevents him/her from speaking in meetings when he/she want to share ideas or make suggestions.
• A team lead ead does not allow a working mother to work from home without any business justification although the company policy offers home office two days a week.

According to American Psychological Association, they are bullies and bullying does not happen "by accident". Work psychologists report that the bullies consciously select their targets with the ultimate goal to make the work conditions so unbearable that the employee feels helpless, powerless and choose to voluntarily quit the job. Occupational research shows that these behaviors are far too often tolerated in the workplace.

Why?

• Companies do not have sufficient strategies in place to prevent and stop workplace bullying.
• Bullies are high performers and have close relationships to the management.
• Companies do not have experienced coaches and psychologists on board who can equipe the employees with methods and techniques to increase the emotional stability to become more resillient to bullying.

Workplace bullying is major contributor to negative mental healthoutcomes

The Workplace Bullying Institute defines workplace bullying is a multi-dimensional phenomena which consist of three types of bullying; work-related bullying, person related bullying and intimidating bullying. Work-related bullying includes behaviors such as withholding information from the employee, assignment of unmanageable work, and micromanagement the employees’ work excessively. Person-related bullying, on the other hand, composes behaviors such as teasing, spreading rumours and gossips about the person. Lastly, intimidating bullying includes verbal aggression, being shouted at and being finger-pointed at. These consistent patterns of maltreatments over a period of at least six months cause serious physical and emotional harm which can take the employee years to recover from. Recent studies show that in a work environement, bullying behaviors are mostly driven by superiors with low emotional intelligence including low empathy and high narcissism and psychopathy.

Targets of bullying who focus on their emotions, tend to personalize the aggressive behaviors of bullies and develop feelings of helplessness. This feeling increases the possibility of being victimized and suffering from short and long-term negative mental health outcomes such as stress followed by anxiety, and depression. Occupational research recognizes the damaging consequences of workplace bullying not only for the employee but also for the whole organization. Psychological complaints resulting from bullying reduce professional performance including quality of daily work and motivation. Furthermore, it increases the absenteeism, loss of qualified personell and decrease of the competitiveness of the company.

How can we all stop workplace bullying?

• By changing the company culture to a "care taking culture" where members of a department/group care about the well-being of their colleagues.
• By evaluating the emotional intelligence of the managers prior hiring or promotion to a managerial role.
• By establishing a coaching department with psychologists and coaches with business experience who can provide personal development including resilience trainings to all employees.