No Workplace Bullies

How prevalent is workplace bullying?

Research from around the world indicates that between 53% (Rayner, 1997) and 75% (Einarsen & Raknes, 1997) of the workforce is bullied at some point in their working lives.

A group of American researchers reported that 71% of respondents reported experiencing workplace incivility during the past five years (Cortina, Magely, Williams, & Langhout, 2001).

In the Corporate Leavers Survey conducted by the Level Playing Field Institute, when asked what forms of unfairness were experienced at a former employer, 74.1% of respondents named bullying, 71% named being publicly humiliated, and 65.7% named offensive jokes.

The Employment Alliance Survey of workplaces in the US found that 44% of American workers have been abused by a superior, and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) found that almost 25% of American businesses have some level of bullying happening in their workplace. That study also found that 11% of the bullying incidents were committed against customers!

What are bullying behaviors?

Workplace bullying includes behaviors that can be categorized into three types, aggressive communication, manipulation of work, and acts aimed at humiliation or putting others down. Here are some examples of each, and this list of bully tactics is certainly not exhaustive.

Aggressive Communication

• Insulting or making offensive or belittling remarks

• Shouting, yelling, having angry outbursts

• Intimidating others through finger-pointing, invasion of personal space, shoving, or blocking the way

• Threatening violence, abuse, employment termination, demotions, or removal of bonuses

• Staring others down, giving aggressive facial expressions or dirty looks

• Frequently interrupting peers when they are speaking

• Leaving the work area when certain individuals enter

• Demanding to get their way, forcing others to accept their point of view, conflict resolution means they win

Manipulation of Work

• Withholding information co-workers need to do their jobs well, including excluding peers from memos, meetings and other types of information or functions
• Removing responsibilities or important job tasks in order to threaten job security or humiliate targets
• Avoiding communication with peers by not returning phone calls or responding to emails, for example
• Ordering others to do work below their level of competence in order to humiliate them or hurt their production
• Ordering others to do work above their level of competence to be sure they cannot complete the task and will appear incompetent
• Assigning work that is impossible to do, whether by making it too difficult, purposefully not providing accurate or complete instructions, or giving impossible deadlines
• Persistently criticizing others
• Uber-excessive and unnecessary micromanagement
• Not allowing subordinates to take sick leaves, holidays, days off, or vacations despite entitlement to them
• Failing to give credit for a job well done or taking credit for other people’s work
• Preventing access to opportunities such as a promotion or raise, by telling others the candidate is not qualified or by claiming poor performance on an employee eval
• Frequently changing tasks so as to thwart performance or prevent completion of responsibilities
• Punitive punishment (e.g., writing an employee up for being one minute late) and arbitrary or inconsistent punishment
• Showing up late for meetings and other functions scheduled by specific co-workers to demonstrate they are unimportant
• Sabotaging others by damaging or stealing either their property, or property provided by company that they need to do their work
• Going around co-workers in order to avoid communicating with them

Acts Aimed at Humiliation

• Humiliating or ridiculing co-workers in front of other people, excessively teasing
• Spreading gossip and rumors
• Hinting to peers that they should quit, nobody likes them, or the boss thinks they are incompetent
• Consistently reminding co-workers of mistakes they made in the past, not letting mistakes go, or making a bigger deal out of a mistake than it really is
• Rolling eyes or making snide comments when peers talk or share ideas, consistently ignoring peer ideas and comments all together
• Playing harsh practical jokes on others
• Attacking the integrity of peers or claiming they are unethical
• Talking badly to management about others to make themselves look good

How do bullies come to be?

While it is easy to believe bullies exist simply because there is something wrong with them, in reality many factors contribute to bullying. This includes the simple dynamic between the bully and his or her target, the organizational context and culture, the bully's personality, and the victim's personality. 

In terms of the bully specifically, relatively few studies have addressed perpetrators of workplace bullying; an irony Rayner and Cooper (2003) refer to as the “black hole in bullying at work research.” However, scholars do seem to agree that at the very least, bullies are likely threatened by the people they bully and therefore lash out in an effort to regain the control they perceive to have lost.

Research has come up with the following reasons one might bully others:

• Low levels of empathy

• Inability to handle stress well

• Having positive beliefs about the self and negative beliefs about others

• Immoral imagination (i.e., ability to assign positive value to other’s suffering)

• Desire for revenge

• Inability to communicate frustration, therefore resorting to aggression

• Lack of self-control

• Low self-monitor (i.e., unconcerned with what others think)

• Learned bullying behaviors from parents or other co-workers

• Narcissism

• Motivation for power

• Bureaucratic (i.e., need for strict rules and the desire to enforce them)

• Type A personality

• Jealousy

• Theory X orientation (i.e., belief that others are lazy and will avoid work, therefore requiring close supervision)

• Low self-esteem

• Sociopathic tendencies (i.e., aggressive impulses, gain satisfaction through antisocial behavior, lack remorse)

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Facts About Bullying

53% to 71% of bullies are in management positions.

That means between 29% and 47% of bullies are either peers bullying peers, or subordinates bullying superiors.

81% of victims report being bullied as a group by one single individual.

Oddly, when one individual is bullying a group, the behaviors tend to last longer than when a group is bullying a single individual.

The longer bullying goes on, the more severe and harsh the behaviors become, the more often they occur, and the more detrimental to the victim and witnesses they become.

62% of employers do not take action against the bully to protect the victims. In fact, most victims are fired or transferred and bullies often go unpunished or without reprimand.