Workplace Bullying ‘Epidemic’ Worse Than Sexual Harassment

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Workplace bullying could cause more harm to employees than sexual harassment, researchers say.

Belittling comments, exclusion from outings and criticism of work may seem relatively benign and get brushed off by business higher-ups as “kid’s stuff.” But the consequences to employees and even the bottom line are far from child’s play.

“Organizations don’t realize that just rude behaviors, ongoing discourteous types of behaviors, have such negative effects on employees,” said Sandy Hershcovis, assistant professor of business at the University of Manitoba, who is presenting research here today at the Seventh International Conference on Work, Stress and Health.

The meeting was co-sponsored by the American Psychological Association, the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, and the Society for Occupational Health Psychology.

“Unless you’re in the situation you just don’t understand,” Hershcovis told LiveScience. “A lot of people say, ‘Oh it’s just a personality conflict, they don’t really mean it.’ But when you’re in the situation – and many of us have been – it’s pretty horrible.”

Bully prevalence

The Workplace Bullying Institute found in a nationally representative poll last year that 37 percent of the U.S. workforce, or 54 million employees, have been bullied now or some time during their work life.

“Anything that affects 37 percent of the public is an epidemic. But it’s a silent epidemic,” said Gary Namie, Director of the Workplace Bullying Institute in Bellingham, Wash.

Evidence from several research fields, including law, communications, business management and psychology, are revealing the hardships that targets of bullying face, and they ain’t pretty.

“Targets of severe workplace bullying are suffering from physical and psychological conditions that would just drive even the strongest of us into the ground,” said David Yamada, of Suffolk University Law School in Boston. Yamada chaired a presentation session here on workplace bullying.

Bully consequences

Hershcovis and Julian Barling of Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada, reviewed 110 studies conducted over 21 years and involving the consequences of workplace aggression and sexual harassment. The research duo focused on 12 consequences, including: job satisfaction, co-worker and supervisor satisfaction, job stress, intent to quit, psychological and physical well-being, anger and anxiety levels, withdrawal from work and level of commitment.

Bullying is just one form of so-called workplace aggression, which the researchers divided into categories:

• Incivility: rudeness and discourteous verbal and non-verbal behaviors.
• Bullying: persistently criticizing employees’ work; yelling; repeatedly reminding employees of mistakes; spreading gossip or lies; ignoring or excluding workers; and insulting employees’ habits, attitudes or private life.
• Interpersonal conflict: behaviors of hostility, verbal aggression and angry exchanges.

Compared with sexually harassed workers, employees on the receiving end of raging-boss behaviors and other forms of workplace aggression reported lower overall well-being, less job satisfaction and less satisfaction with their bosses; they were also more likely to quit their jobs.

Specifically the bullied employees reported more job stress, less job commitment and higher levels of anger and anxiety than did sexually harassed employees.

The upshot

The review results by Hershcovis and Barling suggest that bullies can wreak more havoc on a company than can sexual harassment.

“I want to make sure that’s not misinterpreted to mean that sexual harassment didn’t also have negative outcomes; it did,” Hershcovis said. “It’s just that bullying was worse.”

Some explanations for the findings include the fact that sexual harassment is illegal.

“There is a legal outlet to victims of sexual harassment,” Hershcovis said. “Organizations have policies in place to prevent and deal with it. That ability to voice may give employees who experience sexual harassment some kind of hope.”

In addition, since sexual aggression is illegal, the victims may be more likely to blame the perpetrator and not themselves, as can happen with workplace bullying, Hershcovis said.

Bully ban?

Beating up the bully may succeed on playgrounds, but inside the business world success is not so clear-cut. For one, often the bully is the boss or other manager, and so fighting back could cost a job.

While some countries, such as Sweden, and places like Quebec and Saskatchewan have implemented some form of anti-bullying workplace legislation, researchers here agree the United States has done little in the form of anti-bullying laws. Corporations in the United States also lack policies for preventing or dealing with workplace aggression.

“Employers ignore bullying because they can. Its legality is what gives them the license to ignore it,” Namie said during his presentation at the conference.

Following in the footsteps of sexual harassment, however, bullying could gain enough awareness for legal action.

“Where we are now with workplace bullying is where we were with sexual harassment maybe 15 years ago,” said Suzy Fox of Loyola University in Chicago, “before we had key court cases, before we had the major Anita Hill blow-up.”

In 1991, Hill, a law professor at the time, came forward with accusations that Supreme Court justice nominee Clarence Thomas had sexually harassed her. And like sexual harassment, workplace bullying needs a clear definition, Fox noted.

“Bullying is often more subtle, and may include behaviors that do not appear obvious to others,” Hershcovis said. “For instance, how does an employee report to their boss that they have been excluded from lunch? Or that they are being ignored by a coworker? The insidious nature of these behaviors makes them difficult to deal with and sanction.”

From: http://sutterjobs.wordpress.com

Mobbing as a factor in faculty work life - Composite Story of a Mobbing

...But despite your hopes, things do not improve. You are no longer chosen for committees. The department chair neglects to call on you when your hand is raised in meetings. And when you attempt to offer comments without raising your hand, you are called out of order. When you offer suggestions, your colleagues roll their eyes. If you disagree with the prevailing departmental view, even politely, you are shouted down. This explains why, during department meetings, your heart pounds, your hands tremble, and sweat runs down your back...

Read the complete story.

Immigration whistleblower was unfairly dismissed

An academic registrar at the UK branch of an Iranian university was unfairly dismissed for blowing the whistle on alleged immigration irregularities, the Employment Appeal Tribunal has found.

An earlier tribunal had already judged that the process under which Heidi El-Megrisi was made redundant from her post at the Islamic Azad University was "essentially a sham".

In November 2006, Ms El-Megrisi sent a memo to Ahad Bagherzadeh, pro vice-chancellor of the Oxford-based branch and now its vice-chancellor, expressing concerns over the immigration status of some members of staff. The memo led to a meeting with Alireza Assareh, at that time the institution's vice-chancellor, on 5 December. Some weeks later, Ms El-Megrisi was made redundant.

A tribunal held in 2008 said: "We have come to the clear and unanimous conclusion that the reason for the claimant's dismissal was not due to redundancy and, indeed, that the professed 'redundancy situation' was a manufactured means to disguise the real reason for the claimant's dismissal."

The university had dismissed Ms El-Megrisi because it saw her as a nuisance who would not "willingly undertake the questionable tasks ... that were assigned to her", it said.

However, last year's tribunal did not uphold Ms El-Megrisi's claim that she was unfairly dismissed for making a "protected disclosure" - in effect, whistleblowing.

It said that although the memo of November 2006 was a protected disclosure, it was not the principal reason for the dismissal as she had a history of difficulties with Azad. But in a judgment handed down earlier this year, the appeal tribunal criticised the earlier decision for failing to take into account the fact that this history "largely consisted of other protected disclosures".

In correspondence with senior staff during 2005 and 2006, the registrar claimed she had been asked to write a letter to the immigration authorities falsely stating that Dr Assareh's son was a student at the university. She refused to write the letter, she said, which led to her being viewed as "unhelpful".

In another exchange with a senior colleague, she alleged that there were "irregularities" surrounding the issue of a work permit for a senior manager, which caused her "great concern". In later correspondence, Ms El-Megrisi also referred to concerns over Dr Assareh's work permit.

The first tribunal should have considered whether the cumulative impact of these allegations resulted in the dismissal, the appeal tribunal said. It concluded that this was the case. However, it did not alter the £16,000 award made to Ms El-Megrisi in 2008.

A university spokeswoman said: "At the culmination of a long hearing of the issues, the employment tribunal (in 2008) found the vast majority of the claims to be unfounded, including claims for sex and race discrimination and equal pay."

The spokeswoman added that the university "felt that the (initial) tribunal's judgment that there had been no protected disclosure by Ms El-Megrisi was correct".

From: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk

7th International Conference on Workplace Bullying and Harassment

The streams are not meant to be prescriptive or limiting in any way and if you consider that you have an abstract that does not fit within any of these streams, you are very welcome to submit the abstract and suggest a more relevant stream.

* Bullying and Harassment
* Corporate Social Responsibility / Morality / Ethics
* Dignity at Work
* Discrimination
* Emotions
* Health and Wellbeing
* Interventions
* Industrial Relations
* Law
* Leadership
* Management
* Mediation / Counselling / Conflict
* Methodology
* Organisational Culture
* Power
* Role of Practitioners
* Whistleblowing
* Workplace bullying / Mobbing
* Workplace Cyber-bullying

More info at: http://www.bullying2010.com/

A sad day...

A workplace bullying charity has shut down after 15 years because of a lack of funding.

The Andrea Adams Trust, which was established in 1997, closed on Friday (31 July) after its funding arrangements became unsustainable.

In May, the charity was forced to scrap a £65,000-per-year national awarness campaign to ban bullying at work after some of the UK's largest companies ignored pleas to provide funding.

Lyn Witheridge, founder and chief executive of the trust said: "It is time for the Andrea Adams Trust to pass on the baton, and I urge other organisations who share our passion in the fight against workplace bullying to continue with our work.

"Recognition of the effects of bullying in the workplace is essential if it is to be legitimately challenged, which can only be achieved through persistent effort to raise awareness of this insidious practice."

Lead partners for the 2008 National Ban Bullying at Work Day, which had run for six years, were Royal Mail and Amnesty International.

Witheridge said Royal Mail had pleaded poverty when approached for funding, and accused other firms of "jumping on the bandwagon" and treating the tackling of workplace bullying as a box-ticking exercise.

Research last year estimated that workplace bullying costs employers almost £14bn a year and leads to 33.5 million working days lost.

http://www.andreaadamstrust.org/

City University vice-chancellor Professor Malcolm Gillies forced out

The Vice-Chancellor of City University London was forced to resign because of “differing views on matters of governance” with the university council.

University sources said that Professor Malcolm Gillies had been keen to secure more resources for frontline teaching and research but that his plans had been hampered by a university board made up mainly of business figures and lawyers.

Professor Gillies, who was appointed Vice-Chancellor less than two years ago, will continue as Professor of Music until January.

The university council said it had "mutually agreed" with Professor Gillies that he should step down with immediate effect.

He became vice-chancellor less than two years ago and sources at the university indicated that disagreements over how to tackle a deficit in its finances, thought to be worth several million pounds, were at the heart of his departure.

They said that the board was staffed mostly by business figures and lawyers, while Professor Gillies came from an academic background.

In the past ten years the number of employees at the university has rocketed but the proportion of teaching staff has fallen. Professor Gillies was apparently keen to secure more resources for frontline teaching and research.

One member of staff said: “We’re devastated by the news. He was always keen to hear people’s opinions - both staff and students. Many of the academics will be deeply disappointed and upset. He was universally felt to be good for the university.”

Apurv Bagri, the acting chairman of the university council, said: “Malcolm has played an important role in the growing success of the university and, together with council, he has ensured a strong focus on the core activities of education and research.

“We thank Malcolm for his hard work and wish him well for the future.”

Professor Gillies said in a statement: “City University London has proven a model for several other institutions. It has a great body of staff and students and virtually every indicator is now pointing upwards. Long may that continue."

From: http://www.timesonline.co.uk

MPs single out whistleblower case for scrutiny - UK

A cross-party committee of MPs will highlight the plight of an academic whistleblower in a major report on higher education to be published this weekend.

Walter Cairns, a law lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University, claimed that he was scapegoated by the institution after giving evidence about alleged grade inflation to the Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills (IUSS) Committee.

He was ejected from Manchester Met’s academic board after he wrote to tell the committee that marks on a course he taught were raised because its failure rate, 85 per cent, was too high.

His case will come under detailed scrutiny when the committee publishes the findings of its nine-month inquiry on students and universities this weekend.

Speaking to Times Higher Education before the report’s publication, Phil Willis, chairman of the committee, said the way Manchester Met handled Mr Cairns’ revelations “took the whole committee by surprise”.

“Because of the range of issues that were brought to our attention, the case at Manchester Met was of sufficient gravity that it required us to investigate it as a specific issue in our report,” he said.

In his written submission to MPs, which concerns a course he taught in 2004-05, Mr Cairns states that marks were changed without his consent despite initial indications from an external examiner that his marking was appropriate.

The university issued a robust defence, saying that it had followed correct procedures and that the abnormally high failure rate reflected poor teaching.

Following coverage of his evidence in Times Higher Education, Mr Cairns was in March dismissed from Manchester Met’s academic board after a vote of no confidence instigated by John Brooks, the vice-chancellor.

The university said Mr Cairns had failed to use the appropriate procedures to raise his concerns.

Mr Cairns has since been re-elected and will attend board meetings again from October.

Mr Willis said: “Academic freedom is a very important principle, which the committee has considered very carefully during the inquiry, and indeed will be making specific recommendations about when it reports.

“Our main concern is to have the highest possible quality of higher education that we can afford and deliver. Part of that is preserving the right of academics to whistleblow when they wish to question standards in individual institutions. Our concern was that when whistleblowers gave evidence to the committee, their evidence should be protected. They should not be punished.”

The select committee report will be published in full on Sunday, when analysis of its findings and recommendations will be made available on Times Higher Education’s website.

Mr Cairns said the select committee had informed him that the report would cover the issues he had raised, as well as the “ructions” that followed. He said he welcomed the report and hoped it would be hard-hitting.

“I will be extremely disappointed if the IUSS committee takes no concrete action on my dismissal from Manchester Met’s academic board,” he said.

Mr Cairns added that he hoped the issue would be referred to the Parliamentary Committee on Standards and Privileges.

From: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk