Is Workplace Bullying Silently Costing You Your Business?

Workplace bullying has been described as a ‘silent epidemic’. Bullying, like a petty thief silently stealing anything of value in their wake, pilfers the resources, engagement, productivity and wellbeing of the organisation and its’ employees. In times of increasing adversity, layoffs, dwindling resources and continuous budget cuts are fast becoming the norm for most workplaces. This could not be more true in today’s globally impacted COVID-19 economic fallout. Measures that preserve and increase resources need to be prioritised in an increasingly fiscal landscape. Organisations must not only conserve resources, but make the most of those that they do have, such as human resources, to successfully navigate tough times, as well as to operate to maximum efficiency in favourable times. Read here on?Organisational Excellence and Resilience. An engaged workforce is required to successfully navigate daily challenges to meet organisational goals, whilst disengaged employees not only compromise the organisational goals, but also pose increased health and safety risks in increased accidents as psychological factors and empowerment are shown to be directly related to accident occurrence within the workplace. With increasing resourcing and budget constraints and short falls, organisations cannot afford to also lose employee productivity to issues that promote turnover and disengagement losses. Though global economic downturns and losses cannot be controlled by any one organisation, the added cost of disengagement through workplace bullying is one that no organisation can afford to ignore, but has the power to prevent, or at least minimise. Especially as bullying seems to be proliferating and on the increase within workplaces.

Workplace bullying findings typically show findings of demoralised and disengaged targets, and observers, subsequently resulting in two-fold financial losses in direct productivity decline as well as employee health decline contributing further to financial losses incurred. In culmination, bullying leads to preventable financial haemorrhaging through lost productivity, low morale, increased defects, risks, turnover, recruiting, advertising and new training costs, as well as increased health related costs for those effected. One study in the UK found that 1 in 10 workers had bullying stemming stress issues, costing over one million workdays in lost time (Keelan, 2000), another American study estimated that bullying cost the country US$64 billion annually in turnover and employee disengagement costs (Namie & Namie, 2009), whilst in Europe the cost of bullying was reported to be €20 billion annually (ANUAL). Additional costs that are sustained by those employees that are then left to pick up the additional work load in absenteeism, turnover and diminished engagement, leading to longer hours, increased stress and workloads, are further hidden costs in the bullying landscape.

Bullying is then a costly and widespread issue, but also preventable. The predominate anti-bullying workplace initiatives start their focus with a bullying policy, a reactive and systems driven approach. In terms of risk management, proactive, preventive and minimising measures to remove the risk of bullying before it happens would result in truly robust management system, before significant financial, in human or organisational, costs are incurred. An expert forecast on emerging psychosocial risk factors to occupational safety and health also highlighted bullying as a significant work and employment risk some time ago (Milczarek et al., 2007). Even so, the prevalence of bullying has only increased since, despite a growing body of research into trying to manage. Psychological Capital (PsyCap) resilience has been established as an employee means to focus proactive assessments of risks and personal assets in being able to cope with risks and their outcome to employee outcomes, such as bullying.?

An engaged workforce requires the support and care from leadership to foster a sense of safety to be open and collaborate within the workplace. In addition, in New Zealand, bullying is identified as a psychological workplace hazard and comes under the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015, and is therefore a legal requirement to address and manage (Legislation, 2015). Without trust and a safe environment, employees disengage and do not feel safe to offer ideas to develop processes for continuous improvement or innovation to cut costs and be more efficient as an organisation. A healthy workplace can be created when employees are inspired through fairness, autonomy, trust, honest communication and concern shown by leadership. Creating a workplace where employees can then engage with their tasks and organisational goals. Disengagement is described as an uncoupling of employees from their work role, where the individual will withdraw and defend. A disengaged employee simply goes through the motions while mentally drifting, diminishing innovation, collaboration, efficiency, productivity and increasing risk within the workplace. Individuals subjected to bullying, or witnessing it, will make defending themselves, or others, the priority over work objectives. In short, instead of engaging towards organisational goals, beaten down bullying impacted employees disengage and focus their efforts towards defending, developing and prioritising protective strategies for themselves, rather than towards workplace goals. Bullying establishes a hostile work landscape with a disengaged workforce. Isolation and detachment become the survival mode for those impacted by bullying. This is especially true where leadership allows corrosive climates that lead to disengagement, where professionalism and trust are also eroded away with time. Enabling protective and resilience qualities within this workforce, in proactively developing it’s human capital to withstand negative stressors such as bullying, seems the most prudent way to manage bullying, before the costlier, reactive rectifications of bullying impacts are incurred. Read here on?Building Resilience To Workplace Bullying?.

In present day organisations, it is becoming increasingly recognised that focusing on human factor development gives the competitive edge in a fast paced, globally challenging work environment. Most organisations have or are beginning to recognise the need for a self-efficacious, optimistic, resourceful and resilient workforce in today’s economic climate of frequent challenge. The focus of best practise has moved away from just managing deficits to developing psychological resources, or capital, and enabling employee engagement. The advantages capital for competitive edge has evolved from simply economic capital to the knowledge, skills and abilities employees had, human capital. Human capital, due to increasing economic pressures, evolved to resources of trust, relationships and networks, referred to as social capital. Today, psychological capital, the ‘who you are’ in employee-job alignment, is seen as the most valuable capital for economic advantage, to both enhance innovation and productivity, as well as have resilience to negative impacts such as bullying.

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?Ranjeeta has had a career spanning organisational governance, development and risk management. She has worked across industries and sectors in UK, Australia and NZ. She has been an expert panel member for JAS-ANZ Auditor development, been an external Health & Safety, Quality, contracts Compliance & Conformance Lead Auditor, a BSI Executive ISO trainer across several varying Standards, an Executive Coach and is a current Board Director of NZOQ.

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Ranjeeta is founder of EnableOrg? - Psychosocial Risk Management Software for Mentally Healthy Workplaces & High Performance Cultures; Scanning the organisational micro risks to prevent the macro risks. High Performance Enablers & Management System Software, Training & Consulting. Her PhD research focused on High Performance & Culture, in Positive Psychology, Business Management & Organisational Behaviour.