Workplace bullying is a tenacious behavior of mistreatment or exploitation from other employees or employers in the organization which leads to emotional or physical harm. The action of bullying may involve some tactics such as nonverbal, verbal, physical abuse, psychological or even humiliation. Unlike the issue of school bullying, workplace bullying is somehow difficult since workplace bullies who are involved in the action usually operate within the policies and rules which are established by the organization as well as their society (Carden and Boyd, 2011, p. 72).Most of the cases of workplace bullying are reported to occur from individuals who have authority over others. Nonetheless, the issue of bullying coming from the seniors in the workplace does not limit the action from coming from other colleagues, occasionally subordinates as well as peers (Bartlett and Bartlett, 2011, p. 81).
Research shows that one of the major reasons of workplace bullying is an organization which has a general culture which condones behaviors like harassment, use of abusive language to other employees, intimidation, among others. If the organization permits such behaviors among employees, the possibility of bullying is high in such an institution. Most people take advantage of others especially those employers in higher positions than others and bully them since they know that nothing can happen to them especially if the organization tolerates such behaviors to happen without taking any action. If there are no actions taken for bad behaviors in the organization, it means that even bullying is tolerated without taking action to the bullies (Dzurec and Bromley, 2012, p. 253).
Changes in the workplace: If there are changes in the organization and employees are not comfortable with the change since it might be oppressive to them, bullying might happen so as to make them adhere to the changes. Since bullying comes from employers, they are likely to use strength to force employees to adhere to the changes in the organization even if the changes may lead to oppressing them (Namie, 2003, p. 3). Even though change is good in an organization, every employee should be consulted in the process of trying to bring change in the workplace for them to make an agreement together whether the change is beneficial or not. If the change is not beneficial, it means that they should do away with the changes but employers bully and threaten employees who do not want to adhere to the changes particularly if the change is likely to benefit them alone and oppress the employees (Georgakopoulos, Wilkin and Kent, 2011, p. 19).
One of the main consequences of workplace bullying is a decrease in productivity and employee morale. When employees are bullied by their seniors, productivity reduces to the point that targets are never met in the organization. Most employees may fail to work in the right way because of bullying where their morale is reduced. Employees should be given a chance to express their feelings about a certain issue because when they are denied the chance, they work in a bad way which may lead to the closure of the organization. Additionally, they should feel motivated to work and feel that they are part of the organization with the way the seniors involve them in organization’s activities. Evidently, when this fails, productivity reduces, and some employees may even quit the job (Hutchinson, 2012, p. 638).
Bullying costs a lot to the victims regarding their wellbeing and health. It is clear that bullying leads to depression as well as trauma. When an employee is bullied, he or she might develop some health problems which might cost her a lot of money to treat and have some time away from work which might mean no income earned during that time for those organization which does not permit sick leaves. The victim might suffer from depression and other conditions meaning that she might take some time to recover and start working normally in the organization. Trauma might be caused by bullying which forces the victim to go for some therapy so as to start working in a normal way. Additionally, fear might develop between the victim and the person bullying her, and it may take some time to build the relationship again (Mckay, Ciocirlan and Chung, 2010, p. 82).
Employers can prevent workplace bullying by examining the emotional intelligence of a worker. People with high level of emotional intelligent have a way of understanding their emotions as well as other people’s emotions which may help prevent bullying. When an employee has a way of controlling her or his emotions the possibility of hurting others is rare because they know how to prevent bullying from occurring. When the human resource manager is recruiting individuals, visible rules and policies should be included which explain the issue of holidays, overtime, holidays, doctor’s appointment so as to avoid misunderstandings in the workplace which might lead to bullying. Additionally, clear description of the job should be provided to all employees being recruited for the first time (Olive and Cangemi, 2015, p. 30).
Having a policy which indicates the rules and regulations regarding the issue of bullying which is supposed to guide the employers and ensure that every employer adheres to them. When employers fail to adhere to the rules, there are consequences which are listed on the policy (Ramsey, 2013, p. 4).
Having a meeting with employees once in a while may save the company from various issues. Evidently, most of the bullying in the organization happens because of lack of involving employees in decision making and treating them as if they are not part of the organization. It is important for employers to create sometime with workers and listen to their concerns if there is any and also allow them to give feedbacks regarding a certain issue (Rhodes, 2010, p. 110).
The effectiveness of the strategies has been proved to work in a minimum way because very few people who follow the strategies to prevent workplace bullying. For example, looking at the rules and regulations set by the organization on the issue of bullying, no actions are taken when an employer is a bully which makes the rules meaningless. Research shows that the strategy IS 4.7% effective (Stagg, 2011, p. 337). Additionally, very few employers want to hold a meeting with employees to address their concerns in the workplace meaning that the strategy is not effective enough. On the issue of testing the emotional intelligence of the employees before hiring them, again very few employers do the same (Hogh, Mikkelsen and Hansen, 2011, p. 124).
Clearly, there is need of refining the strategies time and again. For example, the rules which are made by the organization about bullying should be refined, and they should be made harder and also include the issue of fining bullies who are got bullying others. Additionally, the strategies should be refined in a way that the organization should put a rule of holding a meeting at least once per week to ensure that the employees communicate any issue that they feel they are not feeling comfortable with it. The rule of testing emotional intelligence should be refined, and both the employees and the employers should undergo the test (Galanaki and Papalexandris, 2013, p. 2109).
In order to answer the proposed research problem, the sampling frame included 30 employees who were from two different organizations where each organization had fifteen representatives both men and women. These individuals were between the ages of 40-50 and had worked for that organization for more than 10 years. To select the sample, systematic sampling was used in this case. There was picking of numbers from a box, and all the employees who selected number “5” were involved in the study.
HO: Organizations reduce workplace bullying since it reduces the productivity and the morale of the employees.
HA: Organizations do not reduce workplace bullying since it does not reduce the productivity and the morale of the employees.
To begin with the study, workplace bullying was measured using Negative Acts Questionnaire-Revises (NAQ-R) which would measure workplace bullying in two ways. First, it would do it using a checklist of manners, and the second way it would measure by using every single question which inquires from the participants whether they have ever been bullied or not (Branch, Ramsay and Barker, 2013, p. 281). The question about bullying, therefore, helped the researcher to go ahead and ask the participants about the experience of bullying if any had reported cases of being bullied.
The checklist would ask participants to rate how often they had been exposed to 22 various negative activities in the workplace during the past 8 months. The negative activities would be identified by the researcher as being the most often faced instances of workplace bullying. If the participants reported that they had encountered negative behavior twice or more on every day or weekly basis, then they would meet the operational meaning for being bullied in their workplace. After the participants had been done with the checklist regarding negative behaviors, the research would ask them whether they believed in bullying in the workplace. In the study, the participants who reported that they were bullied in their workplace during the last 8 months were asked to mention the individuals who bullied them. Additionally, they were asked to state the period of time they were bullied and the number of employees in their department who were also bullied by others.
As in the NAQ-R, every item which described a behavior of bullying provided five response options. In order to form a better interval-kind item response scale, instead of just an ordinary one, in the case of multivariate analyses, comebacks were measured according to the projected occurrence of the actions in the last 8 months. The values were founded on the approximations of the typical value of days at work in a period of 8 months. The values which were allocated were: Never, 0; Now and Then, 2; Monthly, 8; weekly, 32; and Daily, 180. Some of the questions involved were: “Have you ever been bullied? How often are you bullied? Who bullied you? Did the organization do anything about it?
I would transform and sort the data into a form which is analyzable. In this case, I would use the process of coding and find themes and patterns in the data. In the process of coding, data is usually labeled and categorized with the aim of forming it to be more manageable not only for the purposes of the display but also to give needed research answers. In this case, I would use descriptive coding where I would use MI and W2 for men and women respectively who were the participants in the study. It would be significant in upholding the concealment of the participants while still developing a technique of analyzing the data correctly. The importance of coherence, the replies was analyzed as the first ones based on groups or categories. Additionally, I would like to call on a quantitative method of data analysis in order to provide the results in numerical forms.
Most of the participants reported the issue of bullying in their workplace after the definition of bullying was made clear to them during data collection. Most women were the victims of bullying in the workplace according to the data collected. For men, there were only three of them who reported the case to the organization. The victims also stated that the issue of bullying is from their managers and those individuals who are in authority in the organization. Additionally, most reported the case applying more than once in a week and bullying occurs as a result of seeing some employees as inferior than others thus bullying them since those bullies are in authority.
Bullying is very clear that it occurs in the workplace and the most affected individuals are women who are working in those organizations. Evidently, workplace bullying is somehow difficult since workplace bullies who are involved in the action usually operate within the policies and rules which are established by the organization as well as their society (McAvoy and Murtagh, 2003, p. 777). Most of the cases of workplace bullying are reported to occur from individuals who have authority over others. Controlling bullying when employers are involved in it may be difficult, and organizations should come up with ways of reducing these cases of bullying because productivity and morale of employees are affected. By using different techniques, organizations should look for ways of reducing the issue of bullying in the workplace so as to increase the productivity in the organization and prevent employees from resigning from their jobs (McKay, 2008, p. 88).
References
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Branch, S., Ramsay, S. and Barker, M. (2013) ‘Workplace bullying, mobbing and general harassment: A review’, International Journal of Management Reviews, 15(3), pp. 280–299. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-2370.2012.00339.x.
Carden, L. L. and Boyd, R. O. (2011) ‘WORKPLACE BULLYING: PROJECT STRATEGY’, Journal of Business and Educational Leadership, 3(1), pp. 71–82. Available at: https://search.proquest.com.library.capella.edu/docview/1458266645.
Dzurec, L. C. and Bromley, G. E. (2012) ‘Speaking of Workplace Bullying’, Journal of Professional Nursing, 28(4), pp. 247–254. doi: 10.1016/j.profnurs.2012.01.004.
Galanaki, E. and Papalexandris, N. (2013) ‘Measuring workplace bullying in organisations’, The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 24(11), pp. 2107–2130. doi: 10.1080/09585192.2012.725084.
Georgakopoulos, A., Wilkin, L. and Kent, B. (2011) ‘Workplace Bullying?: A Complex Problem in Contemporary Organizations’, International Journal of Business and Social Science, 2(3), pp. 1–20. Available at: https://ijbssnet.com/journals/Vol._2_No._3_[Special_Issue_-_January_2011]/1.pdf.
Hogh, A., Mikkelsen, E. and Hansen, Å. (2011) Individual Consequences of Workplace Bullying/Mobbing, Bullying and Harassment in the Workplace.
Hutchinson, J. (2012) ‘Rethinking Workplace Bullying as an Employment Relations Problem’, Journal of Industrial Relations, 54, pp. 637–652. doi: 10.1177/0022185612454955.
McAvoy, B. R. and Murtagh, J. (2003) ‘Workplace bullying’, BMJ?: British Medical Journal, pp. 776–777.
Mckay, R.?;, Ciocirlan, C. E. and Chung, E. (2010) ‘Thinking Strategically about Workplace Bullying in Organizations’, Journal of Applied Management and Entrepreneurship, 15(4), pp. 73–93. Available at: https://search.proquest.com.library.capella.edu/docview/848439923.
McKay, R., Arnold, D. H., Fratzl, J. and Thomas, R. (2008) ‘Workplace bullying in academia: A Canadian study’, Employee Responsibilities and Rights Journal, 20(2), pp. 77–100. doi: 10.1007/s10672-008-9073-3.
Namie, G. (2003) ‘Workplace bullying?: Escalated incivility Workplace bullying?: Escalated incivility’, Environment, 68(December), pp. 1–6. doi: 10.1107/S0108767307043930.
Olive, K. and Cangemi, J. (2015) ‘Workplace Bullies: Why they are successful and what can be done about it?’, Organization Development Journal, 33(2), pp. 19–31. Available at: https://search.proquest.com.library.capella.edu/docview/1692916283.
Ramsey, R. D. (2013) ‘what to do about bullying in the workplace.’, Supervision, 74(2), pp. 3–5. Available at: https://search.ebscohost.com.subzero.lib.uoguelph.ca/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=85020487&site=ehost-live&scope=site.
Rhodes, C., Pullen, A., Vickers, M. H., Clegg, S. R. and Pitsis, A. (2010) ‘Violence and Workplace Bullying’, Administrative Theory & Praxis, 32(1), pp. 96–115. doi: 10.2753/ATP1084-1806320105.
Stagg, S. J., Sheridan, D. J., Jones, R. A. and Speroni, K. G. (2013) ‘Workplace Bullying: The Effectiveness of a Workplace Program’, Workplace Health & Safety, 61(8), pp. 333–338. doi: 10.3928/21650799-20130716-03.
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