Bullying in the UK workplace.
Many of us have experienced bullying on one level or another - however people don’t expect to endure bullying once they’ve left the schoolyard and are firmly planted as adults in the workplace progressing their careers. The ugly truth (and often unaddressed truth) is that workplace bullies are as common as their younger playground counterparts.
What is workplace bullying you may ask? It’s been described as the persistent and unwelcome behaviour which is intrusive and prevents the fulfillment of ones duties or tasks. Often people brush off bullying management styles as a disciplinarian or extremely strict supervision. But there is a line that is crossed when your dignity and work begin to suffer. Some to the detriment of their health, families and careers.
How do you go about addressing a bully? In 1994 gentleman by the name of Tim Field experienced bullying in the workplace to such a degree he ended up having a stress induced meltdown. In 1996 a much healthier and wiser person - Tim set up the UK National Workplace Bullying advice line. And in 1997 he began his website Bully Online where people can interact, read advice, and ask questions about their experiences.
UK advice line is a good place to report someone displaying unacceptable behaviour - often the bully would have been listed prior to your incident, as often these people have a history of staff conflict. Also the bullying can often just be the surface of the indiscretions often bullies faults may include misappropriation of budgets, harassment, discrimination, as well as breaches of rules, regulations, professional codes of conduct and health and safety practices. Bullies often project their inadequacies onto others to create a decoy for any attention landing on their own shortcomings.
Bullying in the UK workplace is not a rare occurance either, statistics from surveys indicate that between 12 - 50% of the workforce experience bullying. 20% of cases are from the education sector, 12% are from healthcare, 10% are from social services, and around 6% from the voluntary / charity / not-for-profit sector.
Bullying is one of the major causes of stress, and the cost of stress to UK plc is thought to be between £5-12 billion (US$7-17 billion). When all the direct, indirect and consequential costs of bullying are taken into account, the cost to UK plc (taxpayers and shareholders) could be in excess of £30 billion (US$44 billion), equivalent to around £1,000 hidden tax per working adult per year. However as there are as of yet still no laws defining the act of bullying and citing consequences (except in Sweden) it is difficult for exact figures as to the cost of bullying to the UK to be recorded.
