The Detrimental Impacts of Bullying on Workplace Health
A good tree cannot bring forth bad fruit – this old saying is known to many cultures around the world. Stemming from this metaphor of a tree, a healthy organization would have happy, healthy and thriving workers, and would thus be a productive organization.
Health is often thought of as the absence of disease. However, the World Health Organization (1998), states: “health is a state of complete physical, mental, spiritual and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” Healthy people take on numerous challenges and are apt to live happy and productive lives. As with healthy persons who are “vigorous, flourishing, robust, thriving, resilient, and fit,” so are healthy organizations. (Raya & Panneerselvam 2013).
Criteria for a healthy organization include aspects such as optimal workloads, ability to control work, clear work roles, providing a climate of safety, supportive management, and positive social interaction with colleagues. Their ability to foster workplace health is based on empirical research in which they have been linked with indicators of well-being, such as job satisfaction, energised life, and lack of subjective stress symptoms. (Lindstrom, 1994).
However, the ideal of the healthy organization remains elusive if not utopian, and may remain so, until bullying is adequately addressed and countered as a serious psychosocial hazard and among organizations, researchers and practitioners. While workplace bullying has now been internationally recognized, there still remains a culture of silence in many organizations, perpetuating a lack of reporting and inadequate and untested interventions. (Gaffney et al. 2012).
Authors and academics from multiple disciplines have added to the various constructs that give a name to hostile workplace behaviours. (Monks et al, 2009, Keashly & Jagatic 2011).
European researchers have led the way with studies and policy proposals in the field for over thirty years. Leymann, the Swedish psychologist, was a pioneer in scientifically researching workplace bullying. Findings indicate that negative actions happened frequently and over a period of time, resulting in serious social, emotional and physical consequences. (Leymann 1990). Others explore the harmful effects of bullying as “repeated, offensive, abusive, intimidating, or insulting behaviours, abuse of power, or unfair sanctions”. (Randle 2003; Gilmour & Hamlin 2003). According to leading researchers Einarsen, Hoel, Zapf, & Cooper, (2003), these negative social acts, not only occur repeatedly and regularly over time but also worsen and happen between individuals in different power positions. Thus it would appear that the features of intentional negative acts and causing harm are the crucial factors of bullying, thereby resulting in serious psychosocial harm to workers.
The fact that bullying and harassment in the workplace is widespread and endemic, is a serious cause for concern among researchers and practitioners within OHP worldwide. A large number of studies have been devoted to the detrimental effects of workplace bullying on mental and physical health. Empirical research worldwide provide data that underscores the harmful psychosocial effects of bullying. A study in the United States revealed that abused workers manifested lower self-evaluations on their health, and a perception of workplace bullying led to a 42% increase in the estimated number of days absent from work (Asfaw et al. 2014). Research conducted with Turkish employees showed that bullied workers described higher job stress levels, lower levels of job satisfaction, and higher levels of anxiety and depression. (Bilgel et al. 2006).
In The Netherlands, a study revealed that employees who experienced bullying on a weekly basis had increased health problems, low levels of well-being, and were absent more frequently. Furthermore, bullying experiences at work were associated with negative organizational and leadership characteristics (Dehue et al.2012). According to a study by the Netherlands research institute TNO (2014), about 25% of Dutch workers are bullied and employers appear to not be doing enough to protect their staff members. Victims suffer higher stress, experience burnout symptoms and long-term illnesses. The study found that aggression and violence in the workplace leads to 2.9 million sick days per year, costing an estimated 600 million euro in sick leave. On the whole, work stress related absenteeism of 7.5 million sick days per year, costs the Dutch government 1.8 billion euro. (TNO 2014).
Thus, the socioeconomic consequences of bullying include greater sickness absence, higher chance of long-term sickness absence, and rising rates of unemployment through loss of jobs or workers leaving voluntarily. (Voss, Floderus & Diderichsen, 2001; Hauge, Skogstad & Einarsen, 2010)
In Australia, research among working students who experienced bullying was associated with negatively impacted physical health, and desire to resign (Djurkovic et al. 2004).
A Scandinavian study on the consequences of workplace bullying regarding the well-being of targets as well as observers of bullying (Vartia 2001), examined effects of bullying at work. Stress and psychological health were measured, and causes of reported stress were analyzed for 949 municipal workers, 85% women and 15% men; mean age 41 years for men and 40 for women. Targets and observers both reported increased mental and general stress than participants with no bullying. Targets also mentioned low self-confidence more often than those who had not been bullied, and increased levels of psychological problems, depression, anxiety, aggression, burnout and psychosomatic and musculoskeletal health complaints. The targets of bullying used drugs and medications for sleep inducement more often than participants who were not bullied.
Victims of bullying were found to be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety conditions (Bjorkvist et al. 1994; Groeblinghoff and Becker, 1996; Leymann and Gustafsson, 1996). Among types of bullying, violation of a person's privacy or belittling them has shown the strongest relationship to psychological ill-health. (Zapf et al. 1996) Thinking of suicide, and suicides have been expressed by some researchers as the most severe consequences of bullying. (Groeblinghoff and Becker, 1996; Ege 1997; Leymann 1988).
Besides the psychological and emotional effects of bullying at work, researchers have highlighted a number of medical problems such as fibromyalgia and severe pain. (Kivimaki et al 2004) For cardiovascular disease, those bullied had an odds ratio of 2.3 (95% confidence interval (CI) compared to the non-bullied group. (Kivimaki, Virtanen, & Vartia 2003).