- QUESTION
Essay topic : Workplace bulling and harassment
Workplace bulling and harassment- Overview of workplace bulling and harassment.
Practical measures to identify ,preventing and managing incidents of bulling and harassment at workplace .
SOLUTION
Workforce bullying is the act of repeatedly and unreasonably humiliating and harassing people at work which threatens the individual’s integrity and self respect. Workforce bullying is an integral part of almost all the organizations which has not been seen from a deep point of view and majority of organizations do nothing to come out of it. Workforce bullying is not severe crime or act of aggression, it is ongoing process of harassing a person for some unreasonable and tepid reasons thereby creating risk to the health or safety of the employee. It may involve misuse of power or an abuse to the individual’s right and dignity at work. There are different types of bullying, it is not necessarily important that supervisors bully their subordinates but sometimes it is also seen that peers bully their co-employees, it can also be a kind of mobbing where a group of mob or people generally lower grade employees or workers who target another group or person and bully them. Bullying or mobbing creates sense of injustice and defenselessness in employees and decrease their passion and zeal for coming at work. There are different types of bullying which needs to be identified, prevented by necessary precautions and action must be taken against it. Corporate or institutional bullying is also a concept of bullying which takes place on larger level of acceptance. This kind of bullying is done by a particular company and its officials as a part of organizational culture. [http://www.lni.wa.gov/, 2011] Those people or the firm consider it a part of getting work done by its employees. There are several examples of organizations following it since longtime and no improvement in HR practice has been felt till date. Workforce bullying hampers the reputation of the firm in the market as well and also increases attrition of employees due to indirect means and reasons. It is a serious issue which must be lighted on.
In a study of U.S. Workers, it was found that nearly 41.4% of workers responded for bullying and similar threats at work and nearly 135 of workers reported psychological bullying on weekly basis. The act of such bullying included invalid criticisms, blame without any proof and factual justification, being treated differently than other people at work, social isolation or humiliation, extra-ordinary work pressure and indecent comments on failure to perform well. Workplace bullying affects the people in different ways like high level of stress resulting in trauma, financial problems due to inability to perform well or indulge fully in work, reduces self-esteem and creates sense of inferiority in individuals, phobias and fear from going at work resulting in low performance, increased depression resulting in lesser sleep, indigestion issues, blood level issues and other health problems. [www.stopbullyingsa.com, 2005]
Thus it becomes very imperative for the corporate cultured people to identify the act of bullying easily and work on it. Normally it is seen that act of bullying is an indirect method of offending employees and therefore it has not yet been realized in most of the firms. [Piper et al, 2003] In order to identify the act of bullying, important things for consideration are:
• To realize that you are not the source of the problem,
• Recognizing soon in initial attempts that you are being bullied,
• Understanding thoroughly the do’s and don’ts of the organization and making full utilization of the compliance cell and grievance handling department,
• Keeping diary reporting the date, time and act of bullying,
• Obtaining copy of bullying paper trails,
• Having a witness with you who could justify your complaint of bullying against the individual.
Though it is a serious issue and employee gets offended by such behavior of co-employees, organization should also consider its inabilities and realize the major reasons which results in act of bullying. If the firm is able to find out the loopholes and major reasons which results in such behavior it will be very easy for it to prevent such disruptive thing happening on the job. In order to prevent bullying being implemented in organization, most important step to be taken is creating awareness among employees about what actually bullying is and the extent of activity which could be considered as bullying, [Ontario, 2009] secondly controlling the risk associated with bullying by means of training sessions and discussing in meeting about the firm’s policies and practices which are strictly against bullying other employees or subordinates. Identifying the factors which may result in bullying which can be done through exit interviews and questionnaires, relative increase in workplace grievance in particular span of time, level of absenteeism in any particular situation or shift, regularly damaged personal tools, uniforms, bags and other belongings, lowered performance or isolation of employee. [http://louisville.edu, 2012] Prevention can be done by informing, instructing and training against such activities. Employees during induction and other training programmes must be told and informed about professional restrictions while on duty and employees must be instructed about strict obligation on them to abide the corporate rules and HR practices of the firm. They must also be told about the consequences of not abiding the rules and practices of the firm. Developing a policy on workplace bullying is also an important step of consideration which will bring awareness and confidence in employees against workplace bullying. “No bullying policy” will not only restrict individuals from doing so but also build a confidence in employees towards its management and will enhance the loyalty and sense of belongingness towards the firm. [Kieseker and Merchant, 1999]
It is very important for management to tackle with bullying activity on the job. To manage with the incidence and give fair justice is equally important as is identifying the loophole and preventing measures for workplace bullying. In order to fairly manage with bullying activity, management must have a separate wing of experts dealing in such issues of HR grievance and compliance. [Yamada, 2008] This will bring dual benefits as management will be free from disturbance in work efficiency and on the same time employees will have faith for justice as the team doing investigation is fair and neutral towards both the parties. A separate wing of people from junior level officials to top officials specialized in bullying and grievance handling can fetch desired outcome for the employee as well as the management. [Moreno et al] The resolution process must be flexible and have a choice of actions to be undertaken which specifically suits the situation reported. In the process of developing workplace bullying procedure, agreement should be prepared for each appropriate step. The resolution approach taken by the employer must suit the seriousness of the matter and the victim employee must feel satisfied and must agree with the proposed approach for resolution. Direct approach of resolution is feasible only in case of bullying of lower threat or allegation, in case of threat of high grade of allegation or disturbance on the victim employee; indirect approach is the best where the case is given to third party of grievance handling to resolve. Prompt and careful investigation can lead to quick resolution and will demonstrate to rest of employees that bullying is serious offence in the respective company. Discussion involving both the parties should also be practice to manage with act of bullying, so that fair and free discussion about what happened could be heard from both the aspects so that unfair decision should be prevented from taking place. Anti-discrimination, workplace bullying, sexual harassment, workplace health and safety legislations must be implemented and addressed. Private and public sector organizations of all kind should prepare and implement code of conduct and educate the employees and managers for appropriate behavior. Long term absence from work, e-mail bully, social media bully(making fake comments about person’s work life on social media) should be monitored and reviewed so that the core problem should be identified even if employee is resistant to complaint or any other action. Senior management should be in direct contact with all employees and their reporting officers either through professional mail networks or personal contact so that any kind of communication should not be a hindrance for the employees. [www.forbes.com, 2012]
At times it has also been seen that people take unfair advantage of the management’s policy to act against bullying, employees threaten or take unnecessary advantage of management’s strict policies to lower the esteem or suppress their senior officials and this is a negative approach which should be avoided. A recent article in Australian weekend magazine discussed false claim of workplace bullying and how negative it can be. At times correct rejections and alarming words of senior officials are taken wrongly and misrepresented in order to claim falsely for bullying thereby deteriorating the career and reputation of the senior official in the corporate world. This is a very serious issue which has not been much seen or realized but at times takes place in organizations. This majorly happens due to inability of the organization to give fairer justice and heard the conversation through bipartite discussion. At times it has been seen that people take advantage of lack of diversity in organization and as minorities and women workforce are lesser, the organization tend to be more inclined towards them in terms of justice. For fairer justice small considerations could fetch good results and minimize false claims of bullying, one of the most important thing to remember is that bullying is a repeated action and not a one time-off. Bullying has necessary to be an unreasonable comment or threat and must lead into health, safety or self esteem hamper. The organization also has to make clear discrimination in policies and rules according to different terms in use like bullying, harassment, discrimination and violence. The large part of this problem is that necessary differentiation in different terms is never met and judgement is given on wrong grounds or false claims. [Mug ford, 2012]
Concluding it can be said that workplace bullying is an offence and threat to integrity of the organization. It has several aspects which must be figured out so as to avoid it from taking place in the firm. Identifying of such malpractices is extremely important; it could be through self realization or may be through organizational awareness. Necessary steps towards preventing the same must be taken because prevention may lead to lesser internal chaos and issues in the firm and healthier work atmosphere. Preventing of workplace bullying can be done by means of various awareness programmes and implementation of training sessions and policy framework as discussed in detail above. Apart from this in order to manage with the act of bullying, organization must have team of expert officials and third party grievance handling cell whose work is to identify the issue, understand the seriousness of the issue and take necessary actions to find out fairly the act of bullying was actually conducted or it was just misunderstood by the other party. Another important duty of the grievance handling team would be to find out if false claim has not been made on the other party to harass and exploit them. All such scrutinization is very crucial for fair justification and judgement to be made by the organization. It becomes the duty of the organization to give fair and suitable justice to the offended employee. By means of these practices workplace bullying can be minimized and employees could be motivated to work in the organization without any unnecessary disturbances and stresses. Importance of avoiding workplace bullying is very high from both organizational and employee’s point of view. It gives higher commitment of employees, brings awareness in people, provides training and counseling of employees and also increases healthy relations among supervisors and subordinates. Since existing research highlights the cases of workplace bullying being practiced in organizations, actions need to be taken in organizations which must also be adequately addressed to the employees. Researches also show that proactive measures like bullying education must be given in schools and colleges as method of earlier prevention because until children will be stopped from doing bullying on other children, adults will continue to implement such tactics. Thus it is being concluded in a hope that human resource practitioners and government will consider these existing issues and work towards making legislations, policies, procedures to ensure that workplace bullying is seriously addressed.
References:
1. Washington state department of labor and industries, 2011. Workplace bullying. retrieved from <http://www.lni.wa.gov/Safety/Research/Files/Bullying.pdf>
2. www.stopbullyingsa.com, 2005. Dealing with workplace bullying. retrieved from <http://www.stopbullyingsa.com.au/documents/bullying_employees.pdf>
3. Timothy Piper,Neil Coulson, Leigh Hubbard, Brian Welch. 2003. Prevention of bullying and violence at work. retrieved from <http://www.asushop.asn.au/files/preventbullying.pdf>
4. Ontario, 2009. Bullying in the workplace. Retrieved from http://www.businessinsurrey.com/storage/Bullying%20in%20the%20Workplace%20Resource.pdf
5. http://louisville.edu/, workplace bullying. Retrieved from http://louisville.edu/ombuds/selfhelp/reading/Workplace%20Bullying.pdf/at_download/file
6. Robyn Kieseker & Teresa Merchant, 1999, Workplace bullying in Australia. Australian Journal of Management & Organizational Behaviors, Vol.2, No.-5, retrieved from <http://www.usq.edu.au/extrafiles/business/journals/HRMJournal/AJMOBarticles/WorkplaceBullyingMainArticle.pdf>
7. David C. Yamada, 2008, Journal of value based leadership, workplace bullying. Vol. – 1, issue- 2. Retrieved from <http://www.valuesbasedleadershipjournal.com/issues/vol1issue2/yamada.php>
8. Bernardo Moreno-Jimenez, Alfredo Rodríguez Munoz, Denise Salin, Maria Eugenia Morante , workplace bullying in southern Europe. International journal of organizational behavior, Vol-13(2). Page no.- 95-109. retrieved from <http://www.uam.es/gruposinv/esalud/Articulos/Salud%20Laboral/WORKPLACE%20BULLYING.pdf>
9. www.forbes.com, 2012. 3 workplace bullies. retrieved from
<http://www.forbes.com/sites/dailymuse/2012/02/27/3-workplace-bullies-and-how-to-stand-up-to-them/ >
10. Stephen Mugford, 2012. False workplace bullying. retrieved from <http://theconversation.edu.au/false-workplace-bullying-claims-were-not-seeing-an-epidemic-4479>
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