Bullying often associated with one kid being cruel to another kid, evolved beyond the playground, and move into adulthood. Unfortunately, bullying has emerged into the workplace, aptly called workplace bullying. Bullying can happen at the same organizational rank (employee to employee) or involve hostility by a supervisor toward an employee (Baack, 2012). Conversely, workplace bullying is the repeated, health-harming mistreatment of one or more persons (the targets) by one or more perpetrators that includes threatening, humiliating, or intimidating behavior, work sabotage and verbal abuse (WBI, 2014). The article, Workplace Bullying: Costly and Preventable by Terry Wiedmer (2011), presents information about workplace bullying including …show more content…
Although, workplace bullying is not obvious as that of grade school, it is just a destructive. As a result, workplace bullying negatively impacts not only the bullied individual, but the organization as well. Unfortunately, workplace bullies consistently find ways to harass colleagues with the intention of sabotaging their work, interpersonal relationships and health. According to Namie (2007), thirty-seven percent of U.S. workforce members report being bullied at work; this amounts to an estimated 54 million Americans, which translates to nearly the entire population of the states of Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Arizona, and Utah (as quoted in Wiedmer, 2011). Consequently, workplace bullying affects an organization by increased health care cost, lower employee productivity, and high employee turnover. As Safety & Health (2011) argues, bullies do not run good organizations; staff turnover and sick leave will be high while morale and productivity will be …show more content…
Subsequently, preventing workplace bullying means identifying and stopping the bully. More importantly, individuals being bullied need to feel as if their issues and concerns matter, and dealt with accordingly. For that reason, management should have policies in place so individual being bullied can have a voice. As Wiedmer (2011) remarks, policies, rules, and practices must be in place to make workplaces safe and conducive for workers producing at peak levels. Furthermore, organization policies should clearly address bullying with procedures for reporting, investigating and administering discipline. As Wiedmer (2011) states, bullying incidents need monitoring and tracking over time to chronicle the incident reports, steps taken, outcomes realized, and effectiveness of strategies employed. At no point, should reported bullying be sugar coated or put off for another time. For that reason, employee must have a person(s) they can go in the organization, whom they trust and who will respond to their matter in a concerned, proactive, and supportive way (Wiedmer,
The article provide five table illustrations. Table one is about the demographic characteristic of the targets of the workplace bullies. The table displays the characteristics of social workers ranging by age, gender, and demographic. Table two is about organizational settings and roles of targets. The table displayed supervisors, colleagues, subordinates, and clients were all identified as bullies. It showed that women were more than twice as likely (67%) to be identified as bullies as were men (33%). Table three is about the most troubling bullying behaviors. It showed that verbally and covertly hostile actions were the most troubling bullying behaviors in the workplace. In addition, being treated with disrespect and having work de-valued as the hardest aspects of being bullied at the workplace. Table four was the summary characteristics of bullies. The study showed the characteristic were either passive or assertive by the Coping Scale. The passive behavior had a ranging score of 24 and assertive was of 60. The median and mean scores were 42.5, and a multiple modal score. Table five was the classification of responses to coping scale as passive or assertive
Bullying which is the intentional act to inflict harm, threaten or abuse of others, can range in many ways. Kathryn Hawkins on the article the Office Bully, outlines various issues of this concept. Kathryn states that sometimes people become overconfidence that they left bullies in their past lives maybe high school, but later found out the bullies have ultimately become their bosses. Secondly, bullying may occur when bullies wants to dominate and gain back their powers if they feel endangered. So they tend to overcome their fear by threatening others. Also Kathryn articulates that even the conditions of the workplace can cause bullies to abuse their targets and workplace bully can be difficult to deal with. Although Kathryn has suggested some solutions about these issues, the claim presented does not put up with the issues, rather an encouragement.
Cleary, M., Hunt, G. E., Walter, G., & Robertson, M. (2009). Dealing with bullying in the workplace. Journal of psychosocial nursing and mental health services, 47(12), 34-41. doi:10.3928/02793695-20091103-03
This paper compares three studies on workplace bullying. The studies were conducted because workplace bullying is an epidemic that needs to be addressed and it needs to be understood to help future organizations prevent workplace bullying.
According to a Workplace Bullying Institute (2014), 27% of adult Americans have experienced abuse, 48% have been affected either directly or indirectly by it, 72% of Americans are aware that workplace bullying happens and 93% support the enactment of a healthy workplace environment law. Bullying is reported across all levels in the health care sector and the cases keep increasing over time and management should intervene to prevent and control the problem. (Dumont, Meisinger, Whitacre, & Corbin, 2012) report in their study of 950 RN respondents that 82% reported experiencing or witnessing bullying behaviors on a weekly or daily basis. In 2008, The Joint Commission (TJC) reported that these behaviors can foster medical errors; and contribute to poor patient satisfaction and to preventable adverse outcomes.
Unfortunately there is not only bullying in schools, there is bullying in the workplace as well. These are unacceptable behaviors that arise within a workplace situation. Bullying the workplace can take many forms and it’s not easy to always identify. The Fair Work Act 2009 made recent amendments that came into effect in January 2014 to define workplace bullying as occurring when an individual; group of individuals; repeatedly behaves unreasonably towards the worker, group of workers of which the worker is a member; and the behavior creates a risk to health and safety (Le Mire & Owens, 2014). This definition focuses on three main elements of bullying behavior, it is repeated, unreasonable, and creates a risk to health and safety. All three elements must be satisfied in order for bullying at the workplace to be found. Bullying behaviors could be things that are victimizing, humiliating, intimidating or threatening, but it is not limited to just those behaviors.
Workplace bullying is a widespread issue in which people need to be educated on in order to put an end to it. Its causes are complex and multi-faceted and yet preventable. Workplace bullying puts unnecessary strain on the employees It is the employer and organizations responsibility to provide a bully free environment for their employees. Employees should have the right to feel safe in their work environment and be free from workplace bullying. Employers need to be held accountable and have a plan in place to protect the employees from this type of violence. Unfortunately that is not always the case, in some instances the employer is the one doing the bullying. Workplace bullying carries many definitions in which will be
The legislation is intended to protect victims of bullying; however, consequences for bullying may be too severe. (Garby, 2013) postulates students who are considered bullies are not criminals, but rather copying learned behaviors (p. 449). (Teisl, Rogosch, Oshri, & Cicchetti, 2012) studied 470 kids growing up in high-risk neighborhoods and approximately half of those kids were exposed to maltreatment. It was more likely that these kids were identified as bullies. Not only is legislation affecting children, but workplace bullying is also being addressed. (Greenwald, 2010) interviews Eric A. Tate who asks the questions, “Do you really want to be the subject of being sued if you lose your temper? If you're on a deadline and somebody screws up royally, how do you discipline people?” The problem is how do we punish a bully? The goal of the bullying problem is to eliminate bullying, but sending someone to jail for assault may not be in the best interest to correct the bullying problem. Consideration needs to be paid attention to those who may have grown up exposed to aggressive behavior ultimately learning that behavior as an acceptable way to deal with
The strength of the evidence for workplace bullying strategies is well passed the emerging stage but has not quite achieved the unequivocal stage. The tools such as state regulations, federal workplace safety policies, and professional nursing association recommendations provide important impetus and support for nurses and hospitals undertaking this transformation. They represent the basis for program development but they fall short of clearly defining the insidiousness of workplace bullying much less restricting the damage it causes. Bullying interventions should be on equal footing with sexual harassment and racial discrimination laws in terms of enforcement. Currently employers do not adequately address workplace bullying as a phenomenal cost to their organization and to the good employees. For example, bullying contributes to excessive turnover, absenteeism, and sometimes excessive legal fees. Why would the employer rationally opt to pay the higher cost of bullying and defend the destructive individual vs. doing what is
Bullying, harassment and discrimination amount to core issues in all workplaces and are an integral connection between employee relations and effective human resource management. Bullying and harassment occurs when an employee is mistreated and victimized by fellow workers or supervisors through repeated negative instances of offensive slurs, detrimental feedback, verbal abuse and intended isolation through social exclusion. These instances correlate to “low satisfaction with leadership, work control, social climate, and particularly the experience of role conflict” (Einarsen et al. 1994). Not all departments within
Workplace harassment and bullying occurs when an employee subjects another employee to degrading behaviour, whether verbal abuse and threats or actual physical violence. It is an inappropriate expression of power that affects workers and their productivity in an unfavourable way (Spry, 1998). Management, and other types of employees, who occupy high-status roles sometimes believe that harassing their subordinates is within their rights and make demands of the lower-status employees (Langton, Robbins, Judge, 2010, p. 313).
Bullying can escalate to violence, discrimination, threats, and threatening actions. These things are illegal, and employees are protected by law from these acts in the workplace. This paper is focused on bullying alone and not the escalating actions bullying can lead to. Bullying is harmful, unproductive, and not good for anybody, but it is a part of life that will never go away. Many people in today’s society will experience some form of bullying in the workplace. Not everyone you meet will be nice to you, like you, care about your feelings and self-esteem, or want you to succeed. Harsh, mean words can only affect you if you allow them to do so. Do not allow yourself to be put down by the negative comments of other
Bullies exist in every work place within any field there is. There are individuals who were bullied as children who grow into ones, others who grow out of being bullies, and some who continue growing as bullies. The focus of this paper will be exploring the bullying dilemma in the work place as well as the various types of bullying one may witness within the work environment. To bring about a more focused image, the topic will be more specific on the occurrence of bullying in the health care industry and the different factors and individuals involved in this intimidating technique.
Workplace bullying can harm the receiver in many ways but certain effects vary due to the unique characteristics and circumstance, for instance if they’re extremely emotional they can experience mental illnesses such as depression and suicidal thoughts or they could experience physical
Thus, bullying is a methodical operation of interpersonal destruction that endangers a person’s health, career, and job. Furthermore, it is a non-physical, non-homicidal manner of violence and abuse, and it causes severe emotional harm. Although workplace bullying is not illegal, it occurs four times more than sexual harassment or racial discrimination in the workplace (Namie, 2015). Additionally, bullying is a destructive, silent epidemic that thoroughly