Costs of Bullying
The Business Cost of Bullying in the Workplace
By Tamara Parris
- Parris,
Wolfe & Associates
Protect Your Business and Your Employees
from the Serious Costs of Bullying
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Bullying in the workplace has become
a topic of open discussion over the past several years.
This article is a collection of research findings,
personal learning’s from a bullying experience,
and the opinions and insights of business Presidents/COO’s
on the topic. It should provide adequate ammunition
to place this serious issue firmly on any organizational
agenda.
Costs of Bullying:
Large Financial Impact on Business
Bullying in the workplace has a large financial impact
on business; Harrison Psychological Associates reports
the business costs of bullying to employers where
people are being harassed, within a two-year period,
is more than $180 million in lost time and productivity.
I ran my personal experience of being bullied through
“Dana Measure of Financial Cost of Conflict”
and it estimated my bullying event, based only on
a 6-month period of the several years experience,
cost approximately $300,000.00. These numbers show
that tolerating this unprofessional boorish behaviour
results in a very high financial cost for a company.
The business pays in loses of productivity, turn
over, operating cost, and the quality of product/service
deliverables. While the bullying incidents are allowed
to strengthen in their frequency, the loyalties of
your employees weaken. Resulting in businesses loosing
their valuable human resource investments; the loyal,
trained and seasoned employees the employer nurtured
over many years.
Costs of Bullying:
High Staff Turn-Over and Retraining Costs
Gary Namie’s study at The Workplace Bullying
& Trauma Institute (WBTI), (2003 n=1,000) shows
70% of people bullied (targets) leave their current
position of employment after working with the employer
for an average of 6.7 years. According to Namie’s
study, a target endures the bullying for an average
of 23-months before they leave the aggressive environment.
Namie suggests these targets cannot be referred to
as “thin-skinned”, as they stay with the
company for a long time under conditions most individuals
would view as intolerable.
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Speak
Out Now Against Bullying |
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Costs
of Bullying to Your Business:
High
Staff Turnover
Retraining Costs
Damage to Employee Health
Absenteeism & Sick Leave
Workplace Violence
Wrongful Termination Suits
Lowered Productivity
Impact on Bottom Line
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Over the past decade, more people have become aware
of the important role physical and mental well-being
play in our capacity to process and engage in our
social environments. The health impacts from being
subjected to bullying are often visible to employers
but overlooked as indicators of stress. A key observation
I made during my experience is the bullying behavior
emotionally corrodes employees. It strips them of
their capacity to interact and deal with the stresses
in the workplace. Reviewing the health symptoms from
exposure to bulling will help to understanding the
behaviors an employer might observe and interpret
as stress symptoms, and the psychological distress
the person is experiencing.
Costs of Bullying:
Damage to Employee(s) Physical and Mental Health
Below is a chart with the Mental GHQ scores and Physical
OSI scores for those directly bullied and co-workers
witnessing the events from Hoel & Cooper’s
2000 report. The scores clearly show the effects of
bullying extend beyond those directly targeted to
include the witnesses. The findings show “currently”
bullied are well above the need for psychiatric treatment
at 5.6%.
| Bullying
and Health Outcomes |
| |
Not At All |
Currently
Bullied |
Previously |
Witness
Bullying |
Occasionally
Bullied
(Rarely/monthly) |
Regularly
Bullied
(Weekly/Daily) |
Mental
GHQ Score |
2.62 |
5.6 |
3.7 |
2.8 |
5.45 |
6.68 |
Physical
OSI Score |
33.46 |
43.7 |
38.6 |
33.9 |
43.26 |
46.34 |
Note: GHQ score of 4 and above
is the level, which may
imply a need for screening of psychiatric treatment.
Gary Namie suggests that an important defining
characteristic of workplace bullying which distinguishes
the behavior from other routine office politics is
the health endangerment to the individual. In his
study he discusses 33-health symptoms targets experience
during the bullying experience. Below are the seven
most mentioned health symptoms in the study (n% is
percentage of respondents):
- Anxiety, stress, excessive worry (76%)
- Loss of concentration (71%)
- Disrupted sleep (71%)
- Feeling edgy, irritable, easily startled and constantly
on guard (hypervigilance) (60%)
- Stress headaches (55%)
- Obsession over details at work (52%)
- Recurrent memories, nightmares and flashbacks
(49%)
After reviewing and understanding the GHQ scores
and health symptoms list above we can start to have
a clearer understanding what targets might be experiencing.
We can also understand how a person being bullied
for many months would be in a constant state of emotional
distress and have their ‘spiritual being’
battered.
Costs of Bullying:
Dehumanized and Stressed Workers Unable to Focus
Taking insight from my incident, the best description
to explain the bullying experience is someone is ripping
you apart and de-segemetizing your “person”
little by little. By the end of what you can handle,
you find your self to be the shell of who you where
and the world seems surreal. After removing myself
from the situation, I had to work very hard for a
number of years to rebuild my esteem, confidence and
cognitive self-image.
Through my research on the topic I have learned two
important key factors of bullying 1) there is a personality
referred to as a “serial bully”[1] and,
2) bullies recruit others to aid in their objective.
These facts mirror my experience; I often interpreted
that the bully viewed the situations as a game. The
main objective was for them to get the most “team”
members on their side. Meanwhile, my co-workers and
I struggled to stay focused and make project deadlines.
Costs of Bullying:
Company’s Ability to Achieve Business Goals
Impacted
Namie’s study, reports that 77% of the time
bullies recruit other co-workers, by instilling fear
in others. The UNISON 1997 report points out that
73.4% of respondent’s remark that management
knew about the behaviour but did not intervene. In
addition, Hoel and Cooper report 54.9% of the time
groups of workers (3+) are being bullied by one person,
however management never reprimands 87% of the bullies.
As the bullying events increase and engulf groupings
of human resources it will have a direct impact on
the company’s ability to achieve business goals
and their worker’s productivity levels.
If only 13% of bullies are reprimanded and management
knows about the activity then it is clear the bully
is not held accountable for the behavior disturbing
the team. Then to learn 54.9% of the time 3+ people
are being bullied aid in our understanding of why
production declines in these environments. In Hoel
and Coopers study, they found that when a repressive
work culture exists it lowers employee’s self-esteem
and productivity is paralyzed (Helge Hoel & Cary
L Cooper, 2000).
A study by Proudfoot Consulting in 2006 reveals that
the second greatest cause of unproductive time is
‘inadequate supervision’. They report
that the top three barriers to efficiency in a company
are inadequate supervision, insufficient planning
and control, and poor working morale (Proudfoot Productivity
Report, 2006)
Costs of Bullying:
Management's Credibility Eroded and Worker Morale
Destroyed as Victims are Punished Instead of the Bullies
Responsible
From the perspective of employees, part of the role
of management is to evaluate and understand what is
occurring in the work ‘social’ environment
and assertively address inappropriate behaviors effecting
production, processes and employee morale. An important
strength in a leader is the capacity to observe social
elements and accurately identify the key motivators
of destructive behavior. During one case,
I observed that the senior executives who did not
participate in the bulling also did not initiate stopping
the inappropriate behavior. Instead they focused on
the targets and gave them poor performance reviews
due to the ‘stress’ related behavior they
observed. Maybe the executives did not understand
the impact the bullying had on the employee’s
performance. Perhaps also they did not have the propensity
to realize that the performance outcome they where
demanding would not occur until the aggressive boorish
behaviors were removed so the staff could focus on
their work.
In December 2006, I spoke to 40 Senior Executive
respondents (COO/Presidents) in my own blitz of informal
interviews in the Greater Toronto Area (Ontario, Canada).
From the discussions I learned that these leaders
do want employees to disclose that they are being
abused in this fashion in their place of work.
- All stated if you are going to quit anyways you
might as well let the top person know why, as they
are the only person who could do something to help.
- All viewed the act of properly reporting the bullying
as professional conduct and an indicator of leadership
skills.
- Some mentioned that they would look at relocating
the person
These senior leaders believe the only way to make
people accountable is to use the company’s anti-harassment
policies and bring it to the attention of the most
senior person who is willing to intervene. Most of
the respondents stated it is better not to take the
bully on one-on-one. The target will need a person
of higher senior status to diffuse the bully’s
tactics and buffer any emotional manipulation. That
it is their jobs as a leader to help protect their
employees.
Costs of Bullying:
Productivity and Profitability Diminished
In a report by the “Canada’s Safety Council”,
they state that organizations who manage people
properly outperform those who do not by 30 to 40%.
This provides another strong point for the removal
of unprofessional behaviors that disables your work
force and decreases the productivity by a large margin.
The Safety Council’s statement that the “development
of strong interpersonal skills at all levels is fundamental
to good management and a healthy workplace”,
is one that should be taken into considered seriously
when creating strong productive teams.
This paper outlined how bulling behavior impacts
business costs and human resources assets, productivity
and turn-over. It clearly supports the business facts
that bullying is an expense in your organization that
you do not need and it creates others that you do
not want - employee turn over, lost productivity,
litigation and disability cost. A proactive business
decision is to avoid any risk management cost
by simply not allowing the bully to harass other employees
at work. A smarter financial management decision
is to protect these investments and provide your human
assets with alternative recourses to resolve these
issues at work, other than to leaving your company.
Costs of Bullying: Appendix “A”
Some suggestions to handle the situation:
(1) make sure you keep a log of everything;
a. what has happened and what you have done and
where it occurred,
b. include dates, time and people around
(2) keep all communication professional, factual,
non-confrontational and problem resolution oriented.
This will help you maintain your professionalism and
creditability;
a. keep all communication in writing so you have
a paper trail in case you or the company needs to
take legal action.
b. steer away from any emotionally charged conversations
and do not respond to threats or degrading communication,
verbal or e-mail. If the bully approaches you to
harass you walk away immediately saying nothing.
i. always remember you are in a professional
setting and must maintain your creditability at
all times.
ii. you will look more adult to the senior executives
if you walked away and did not engage in the behaviour.
c. keep everything on file; arm your self with
facts and documents.
d. get enough hard evidence that backs up your
position of concern, but make sure you do not strengthen
the Bully’s position.
(3) report to your supervisor/manager the incidents
and request a copy of the companies anti-harassment
policy, you have the legal right to it.
a. if they will not give it to you then go to Human
Resources or to the next level of management. If
the Bully is the next level then go to their supervisor,
after you have gone to your immediate supervisor/manager
and Human Resources. Do not request it from the
Bully.
b. make sure you keep a log of who you spoke to,
when and what you requested, and their actions.
c. make a follow up requested by e-mail, stating
the time and date of your meeting and the outcome.
(4) try NOT to hold any one-to-one conversations
with the Bully in private;
a. have someone else present for meetings, or
b. have them where others can over hear if you
can, i.e. keep doors open
c. ask manager/senior to help resolve issue by
making a work agreement that the two of you must
have a third party present at meetings until the
issues are resolved.
(5) if the person you go to does nothing, keep going
up the company’s seniority levels until you
reach the president or owner.
(6) if no one in the company will resolve the harassing
behaviour, seek legal advise with your notes and communication
file in hand.
You may need to get a new job but you will
leave knowing you did everything to protect yourself
and tried to resolve the issue.
Costs of Bullying: Appendix “B”
To accomplish removing the behavior it is important
to know what you are looking for and accurately identify
it. Gary Namie highlights 5 – points to easily
identify bullying.
- Illegitimate behavior that interferes with other
employee's work production and the employer's business
interest.
- Behavior that escalates from one-on-one harassment,
followed by limited/non-existent employer response
to engulfing an entire work unit in fear and paralyzing
productivity.
- Repeated, health-endangering mistreatment of a
person by a cruel perpetrator.
- Acts of commission and omission, driven by the
bully's need to control other people.
- Initially the bully deciding who is targeted,
when, where and how psychological violence will
be inflicted.
§ At a later period, others may be coerced
to participate in the assaults.
Both Namie’s and Hoel’s research found
some of the same bullying tactics. The most used mentions
are;
- Constant and trivial criticism of others
- Fabrication of errors
- People’s contributions are not recognized
- Some individuals are treated differently from
the rest of the managed group
- Shouts at and threatens other workers
- Marginalizes, belittles, and ignores some employees
- Isolates and excludes people
- Humiliates, abuses and embarrasses others
- Overload certain people with responsibility
- Gives people trivial tasks or no work
- Sets unrealistic or changing goals
- Distorts the actions of others
- Deny individuals of adequate leave
- Coerces people they do not want around into leaving
job
Costs of Bullying: References:
- The Workplace Bullying &
Trauma Institute (WBTI), 2003 Report on Abusive
Workplaces; by Gary Namie, Ph.D.; October, 2003.
- UMIST - Destructive Conflict
and Bullying at Work, Sponsored by the British Occupational
Health Research Foundation (BOHRF); By Helge Hoel
& Cary L Cooper; Manchester School of Management;
April 2000.
- Harrison Psychological Associates;
Workplace bullying's high cost: $180M in lost time,
productivity; Orlando Business Journal - March 15,
2002 by Liz Urbanski Farrell; March 2002
- UNISON (1997) Bullying at work:
Bullying survey report. London; by UNISON.; 1997
- Bullying at work: Epidemiological
findings in private and public organisations. European
Joumal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 5,
185–201.; by Einarsen, S. Skogstad, A.; 1996
- The incidence of workplace bullying.
Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology,
7, 249–255.; by Rayner, C.; 1997
- Bullying in the Workplace; by
Canada’s Safety Council; September 2000; http://www.safety-council.org/info/OSH/bullies.html
- Proudfoot Productivity Report,
An international study of company-level productivity;
by Proudfoot Consulting; 2006
- Workplace bullying's high cost:
$180M in lost time, productivity; Orlando Business
Journal - March 15, 2002 by Liz Urbanski Farrell;
March 20002;
- Dana Measure of Financial Cost
of Conflict; by Dan Dana 2007; http://www.mediationworks.com
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