Is your organization at risk of becoming a bully culture?
Consider this information from a recent 2019 study, A Risk Factor for Exposure to Workplace Bullying:
“Employees reporting a higher degree of imbalance between efforts and rewards (i.e. who are under-rewarded in comparison to their efforts) have a higher likelihood to be a target of bullying.
The perceived injustice may lead employees to engage in norm-breaking behavior and also signal low social standing to others, thereby potentially eliciting negative behaviors from others.”
As a coach, I find this information rather disheartening, but not surprising. I also see evidence of other risk factors, including:
- Major organizational changes (mergers, restructuring, new technology or re-tooling)
- Staff/resource shortages
- Poor communication (silos, fragmentation and one-way communication)
- Lack of policies
- Interpersonal conflicts
- Increased goals/demands
While workplace bullies are likely to target peers, bullying crosses all levels of organizations, from the top down and from the bottom up. Left unchecked, bullying can become status-quo for an organization, creating a bully culture and a spiral of abuse.
Bully Culture
A bully culture is created when bullying becomes accepted as part of the workplace culture. According to author Tim Field and founder of bullyonline.org, there are several different types of workplace bullies, and distinctions between corporate, organizational and institutional bullying:
Organizational bullying: when an organization struggles to adapt to changing markets, reduced income, cuts in budgets, imposed expectations, and other external pressures. [short-term occurrences]
Corporate bullying: when an employer abuses employees with impunity especially where the law is weak and jobs are scarce. Examples include: coercing employees, unfair dismissal, denial of benefits, spying/monitoring, creating competition between employees, encouraging fabrication of colleague complaints, etc.
Institutional bullying: occurs when bullying becomes entrenched and accepted as part of the culture. Examples include: people are moved, permanent roles are replaced by short-term contracts on less favorable terms with little alternative but to accept; workloads increase, schedules change, roles change, career progression paths are blocked or terminated, etc., all without consultation.
In the work I do, I have encountered many reasons (or excuses) for bullying behavior. Bullying is sometimes accepted as poor management style: an overbearing boss or supervisor yells out orders and makes snide remarks to belittle those who do not perform quickly enough. This is a slippery slope, and leaders and managers are smart to avoid this.
What do you think? Are you aware of the risk factors associated with workplace bullies? What about a bully culture?
I’d love to hear from you. You can call me at 561-582-6060, let’s talk. And as always, I can be reached here, or on LinkedIn.
