Workplace bullying

Bullying extends beyond young people and the schoolyard. Adults also experience bullying, and the workplace constitutes one prime venue for its occurrence. Much less research exists on bullying at work, as compared with that in schools, and some of the most developed research on this topic has been done in Scandinavia, based on studies by Ståle Einarsen, Heinz Leymann, and others. Definitions of workplace bullying are more problematic than those of school bullying. Most definitions cover various forms of harassment in the work setting that differ from sexual, racial, and other explicitly illegal variants. Bullying at work consists of behaviours such as belittling the opinions of others, acts of public humiliation and intimidation, insults, isolation, overwork, and unwarranted removal of responsibility.

Estimates of the incidence of workplace bullying vary, but research repeatedly demonstrates that it is a widespread problem in a number of countries. A study of U.S. workers, for example, found that more than 40 percent reported experiencing psychological aggression at work in the past year. Another 13 percent, representing some 15 million workers, encountered psychological aggression on a weekly basis.

In the workplace, bullying often involves a person in power, such as a manager or supervisor, taking advantage of a less powerful employee. Note that this process differs from that of school bullying in that aggressive behaviour among students within an educational setting often results from relatively equal peers vying for informal power and social status. Workplace bullying is more apt to represent an abuse, or misuse, of legitimate power.

Bullying at work yields a host of negative consequences for its victims as well as for bystanders. Consequences include lower job satisfaction and employment commitment, in addition to increased stress, a lowered sense of well-being, and an assortment of negative health outcomes. These effects of workplace bullying can in turn produce ripple effects in which friends and family members who are not part of the victim’s work environment become involved.

Policies and prevention

Since the early 1980s, when Norway enacted the first national anti-bullying program, schools, local communities, and states and provinces have enacted a variety of anti-bullying laws and policies across Canada, Europe, Australia, and the United States. Today most Western industrialized countries have anti-bullying laws enacted or under consideration, as do many local, state, and provincial governments. In addition to defining and prohibiting—even criminalizing—bullying behaviour, these laws often require schools to adopt anti-bullying programs for students and teacher training and to provide victims with protections such as greater freedom to change schools.

Unfortunately, such legislative activity has not yet translated into consistent and enduring reductions in bullying. The Olweus Bullying Prevention Program, a “whole-school” approach involving school- and classroom-level training and monitoring, is among the most widely used school intervention programs, and it has been shown to significantly reduce bullying, primarily in European contexts. Reviews of various prevention programs, however, find that the reductions achieved typically last for only one year without ongoing training and that they often do not apply to all groups of students, pointing to the thorny nature of bullying behaviour. Substantial work remains to be done in the area of prevention.