Bullying in the workplace has often been viewed as a behavioural problem that can flourish given the right conditions such as a power imbalance, rather than a problem rooted in organisational structures and processes. As such, widely used strategies such as antibullying policies, bullying awareness training, incident reporting, and investigating complaints that focus directly on the behaviour that takes place between individuals, overlook the root causes of the behaviour in the organisational system.
Workplace bullying is a form of systematic mistreatment that occurs repeatedly and regularly over time, whereby the target has difficulty defending themselves due to the power imbalance between the parties involved. The persistent and frequent nature of bullying, together with power imbalance as a sustaining factor, helps to distinguish it from other mistreatment concepts such as incivility, abusive supervision, and social undermining.
However new research found the risk of bullying primarily arises from ineffective people management in 11 different contexts and that the risk of employees feeling bullied increases when frontline supervisors implement people management practices in ineffective ways, repeatedly and regularly, in the pursuit of organisational goals.
These 11 contexts are:
Coordinating and administering hours
Rostering, scheduling, arranging and compensating working hours
Administering leave and entitlements
Managing work performance
Clarifying and defining job roles
Guiding, directing and motivating employees
Providing, training, development and personal growth
Appraising and rewarding job performance
Managing tasks and workload
Managing underperformance
Shaping relationships and work environment
Respecting, valuing and involving individual employees
Leading the work unit
Maintaining a safe work environment
Bullying across these different dimensions can present as:
- Not responding to an employee’s attempt to communicate
- Making decisions based on relationships rather than merit
- Pressuring employees to work in unsafe conditions
- Under-rostering employees
- Assigns shifts to employees on days they have indicated they are unavailable
- Reacting negatively towards requests to access leave entitlements
- Expecting employees to complete work outside of work hours
Whereas effective behavioural indicators of good people management practices look like:
Rostering, scheduling, arranging and compensating working hours
Allow employees meaningful input into their rosters
Provide rosters regularly and in advance of shifts
Administering leave and entitlements
Accommodate reasonable leave and break requests
Implement clear and reasonable guidelines or systems for taking leave
Clarifying and defining job roles
Provide clear information about job roles and expectations
Review job descriptions in consultation with employees
Guiding, directing and motivating employees
Provide clear performance objectives and expectations
Support employees to manage difficult work situations
Providing, training, development and personal growth
Accommodate reasonable training requests
Provide sufficient training for job role and duties
Appraising and rewarding job performance
Provide performance feedback privately and respectfully
Provide meaningful performance feedback
Managing tasks and workload
Ensure employees have necessary resources to complete their tasks and workload
Ensure there are sufficient personnel to handle the workload
Managing underperformance
Provide guidance and training to employees regarding how to address underperformance
Address underperformance issues in a clear and legitimate manner
Respecting, valuing and involving individual employees
Treat employees in an honest and upfront way
Treat employees in a warm and friendly way
Leading the work unit
Address and resolve issues of inappropriate and disrespectful behaviour
Hold regular team meetings to solve problems and discuss issues
Maintaining a safe work environment
Promote safety in the workplace
Assess and review safety issues in the workplace
While many organisations have excellent HR policies covering all of these areas, it is the line managers who build the bridge between theses intended HR policies and the perceived HR practices by enacting them through their day-to-day interactions with employees. The effectiveness with which they do this can cause for a very shaky bridge, leading to poor organisational performance as well as poor employee health and wellbeing outcomes.
Inclusive Leadership Training is one key way to support managers in making sure their bridge between intended and perceived HR is a strong bridge indeed.
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Source: Tuckey, M. R., Li, Y., Neall, A. M., Chen, P. Y., Dollard, M. F., McLinton, S. S., Rogers, A., & Mattiske, J. (2022). Workplace bullying as an organizational problem: Spotlight on people management practices. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology.
