Is bullying reducing productivity?
Workplace bullying and occupational violence can affect employees and organisations in numerous negative ways. The effects can range from actual psychological and physical injuries to individual workers, to reduction in overall employee productivity.
Workplace bullying can be defined as the repeated less favourable treatment of a person by another or others in the workplace, which may be considered unreasonable and inappropriate workplace practice. It includes behaviour that intimidates, offends, degrades or humiliates a worker, possibly in front of co-workers, clients or customers.
Employers throughout Australia have legal responsibilities to do as much as is practicable to eliminate or reduce risks to employee health and safety. Similarly, employees also have legal responsibilities regarding how they act towards others within the workplace.
Like bullying at school or other places, people who bully others at work often have low self-esteem or often they have been victims of violence themselves. They use bullying as a way of making themselves feel more powerful.
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Where individuals in the workplace are experiencing bullying, it is good for managers to remind them that bullies are often not as tough as they make out. Often bullying can become a way of dealing with personal problems. Bullies can also be motivated by jealousy, lack of knowledge, fear or misunderstanding. |
Some of the effects of workplace bullying on employers can include:
- Adverse publicity and poor public image;
- Increased absenteeism;
- High staff turnover;
- Poor morale, erosion of employee loyalty and commitment; and
- Costs associated with counselling, employee assistance, mediation, re-training of new staff, workers’ compensation claims and rehabilitation.
Most organisations do not realise the damage and costs associated with bullying.
Overt damage includes work care costs, because many victims experience physical and psychological health difficulties. In fact, most victims experience a post traumatic stress disorder of one sort or another. There are also legal costs, time lost in preparing or attending court cases and costs associated with the replacement of staff.
Covert costs include costs of internal complaints, mediation, adverse publicity, brain drain, lower morale amongst staff, absenteeism, and reduction in efficiency, productivity and profitability, loss of accumulated wisdom and experience, retaliation and the poor public image which attracts less capable workers.
Bullying behaviour can range from very obvious verbal or physical assault to very subtle psychological abuse. This behaviour may include:
- Physical or verbal abuse;
- Yelling, screaming or offensive language;
- Excluding or isolating employees;
- Psychological harassment and intimidation;
- Assigning meaningless tasks unrelated to the job;
- Giving employees impossible jobs; and
- Undermining work performance by deliberately withholding information vital for effective work performance.
Employers can reduce the likelihood of workplace violence by implementing effective prevention programs. These will reduce the possibility of violence as well as minimise the personal and organisational suffering caused.
For individuals the costs of bullying can be extreme. That’s partly why employers are obliged to take this whole issue very seriously. There are a range of psychological and physical illnesses and injuries that can be caused by exposure to bullying in the workplace, including anxiety disorders, stress, depression and insomnia.
Where workers are victims of bullying, their work almost always suffers. It won’t take long before they are less productive and far less confident in their work. If the bullying continues, workers are likely to feel scared, stressed, anxious and/or depressed. They will want to stay away from work more than usual and they will develop a lack of trust in their employer and the people they work with.
Clearly, bullying can have a profound impact. Apart from the obvious human element, from a narrow business point of view alone, it is important for management to take it seriously.
