What is Workplace Bullying?
Bullying is definitely not restricted to the schoolyard.
Defined as “repeated and unreasonable behaviour directed towards a worker or group of workers that creates a risk to health and safety” by the Australian Human Rights Commission (2020), research attests to the devastating biopsychosocial impacts of workplace bullying (WB) on individuals (Duffy & Brown 2018; O’Rourke & Antoich 2016), with some health impacts extending years after the WB (Lutgen-Sandvik 2008). Up to 40% of targets of WB contemplate suicide (Leach, Poyser & Butterworth 2017) and nearly 50 percent of Australian employees have experienced WB (Butterworth, Leach & Kiely 2013). These figures are consistent with overseas measures for this seemingly growing phenomenon.
Workplace bullying is therefore a core issue faced by too many workers in Australia and overseas (Wilson 2013) and breach basic human rights to a fair and safe workplace (Australian Human Rights Commission, 2020). These rights are protected in Australian law, but high thresholds in establishing WB and prohibitive costs of court action limit accessibility for most victims (O’Rourke & Antoich 2016; Farmer 2011).
Workplace bullying is therefore an important area in my social work, in terms of lobbying organisations to improve prevention strategies, human rights advocacy towards law reforms aiming to increase victim access to justice and health services, and through Employee Assist Counselling Programs, job search programs, crisis line counselling and my private social work practice supporting victim recovery (Farmer 2011). Knowledge of effective treatment and recovery factors is essential to evidence-based practice with WB victims (Farmer 2011).
Examples of Bullying
The Canadian Center for Occupational Health and Safety lists the following examples of bullying:
Spreading malicious rumours, gossip, or innuendo.
Excluding or isolating someone socially.
Intimidating a person.
Undermining or deliberately impeding a person's work.
Physically abusing or threatening abuse.
Removing areas of responsibilities without cause.
Constantly changing work guidelines.
Establishing impossible deadlines that will set up the individual to fail.
Withholding necessary information or purposefully giving the wrong information.
Making jokes that are 'obviously offensive' by spoken word or e-mail.
Intruding on a person's privacy by pestering, spying or stalking.
Assigning unreasonable duties or workload which are unfavourable to one person (in a way that creates unnecessary pressure).
Underwork – creating a feeling of uselessness.
Yelling or using profanity.
Criticising a person persistently or constantly.
Belittling a person's opinions.
Unwarranted (or undeserved) punishment.
Blocking applications for training, leave or promotion.
Tampering with a person's personal belongings or work equipment.
Of key concern is the fact that around 40 percent of targets of workplace bullying don’t seek help, which risks sustaining increasingly severe injury.