Bullying in the Workplace (2019 Report)

Workplace Bullying is repeated inappropriate behaviour, direct or indirect, whether verbal, physical or otherwise, conducted by one or more persons against another or others, at the place of work and/or in the course of employment, which could reasonably be regarded as undermining the individual’s right to dignity at work. An isolated incident of the behaviour described in this definition may be an affront to dignity at work but, as a once off incident, is not considered to be bullying (Health and Safety Authority – HSA, Code of Practice for Employers and Employees for the Prevention and Resolution of Bullying at Work, 2007).

Research has shown that bullying might constitute an escalating process in the course of which the person confronted ends up in an inferior position and becomes the target of systematic, negative social acts. A conflict cannot be called bullying if the incident is an isolated event or if two parties of approximately equal ‘strength’ are in conflict (Einarsen, Höel, Zapf & Cooper, 2011). The negative actions may be carried out deliberately or unconsciously, but clearly they cause humiliation, offence and distress and may interfere with the job performance and/or cause an unpleasant working environment (Einarsen, et al., 2011).

Previous research (Rayner & Höel, 1997) grouped workplace bullying behaviours into the following types:

• Threats to professional status: Belittling opinion, public professional humiliation and accusation regarding lack of effort.
• Threats to personal standing: Name-calling, insults, intimidation and devaluing personal qualities of the target.
• Isolation: Preventing access to opportunities, physical or social isolation and withholding of information.
• Overwork: Undue pressure, impossible deadlines and unnecessary disruptions.
• Destabilisation: Failure to give credit when due, meaningless tasks, removal of responsibility, repeated reminders of blunders, and setting up to fail.

Some scholars noted that in addition to the aforementioned behaviours, it may be useful to include Relational Bullying, in which the perpetrator damages the target’s friendship network and Indirect Bullying perpetrated by a third party, such as rumour spreading (Cowie, Naylor, Rivers, Smith & Pereira, 2002). Relational bullying and indirect bullying have in common the expression of social manipulation and can often go unnoticed by others.

In recent years, electronic forms of bullying (i.e., cyberbullying) have been included within the subtypes of bullying behaviours. Cyberbullying is defined as repeated and enduring negative behaviour that occurs via technology. Cyberbullying includes written - verbal acts (e.g. abusive emails), visual acts (e.g. posting an embarrassing video on a website), exclusion and impersonation (Vranjes, Baillien, Vandebosch, Erreygers & De Witte, 2018).

Sexual harassment, i.e., unwanted sexual attention, demeaning sexualised gestures and remarks, along with attempts to have sexual interaction could also constitute bullying in other jurisdictions with different systems at state level. In Ireland, bullying and sexual harassment are distinct. More specifically, sexual harassment is regulated by the Irish law (Employment Equality Acts 1998-2015), which means that specific procedures are followed when responding to sexual harassment cases outside the bullying arena.

A number of studies have investigated the phenomenon of bullying in the workplace in Ireland. The findings of a study by O’Connell and Williams (2002) suggested that about 7% of respondents to a national survey reported being bullied, currently or at some point in the past six months, with females more likely being targeted. A subsequent study published in 2007 found that 18% of employees in the public sector and 10% of private sector respondents reported exposure to bullying in the past six months, with the highest rate of bullying reported in the Health and Education sectors (O’Connell, Calvert & Watson, 2007). More recent research findings from the Irish Workplace Behaviour Study (Hodgins, Pursell, Hogan, MacCurtain, Mannix-McNamara, & Lewis, 2017) indicated that 43% of employees in various public and private sectors (e.g., Agriculture; Industry; Construction; Transport; Financial services; Education; Health and Social services) experienced ill treatment at work³ over the previous two years; 17% admitted to be the perpetrators and 48% witnessed ill treatment behaviours at work, using the Negative Acts approach.

Harassment in Ireland is legally distinct from bullying. Harassment is defined in relation to nine specific grounds outlined in the Employment Equality Acts (1998-2015; see Glossary of Terms) and the Equal Status Acts (2000-2015), whereas bullying spans a number of legislative areas including Labour Law and Health and Safety legislation, depending on the context and mechanisms used by respondents.

Victimisation occurs where “dismissal or other penalisation of the claimant was solely or mainly occasioned by the claimant having in good faith” done any of the following:

• A complaint of discrimination
• Any proceedings by a claimant
• An employee having represented or otherwise supported a claimant
• The work of an employee (a comparator) having been compared with the work of another employee
• An employee having been a witness under equality legislation
• An employee having opposed by lawful means an act which is unlawful under equality legislation
• An employee having given notice of an intention to do any of these things (Employment Equality Acts 1998-2015 sec. 14A; Equality Act 2004, sec. 8).

The terms “harassment” and “victimisation” were also included in the search for the present study, because these words were used in the cases referencing bullying, which were taken under the Unfair Dismissal Acts (1977-2015) to the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC).

The first step that employees could take to deal with workplace bullying is reflecting on the unpleasant behaviours, how are they affecting him or her, and when they are occurring. This stage of assessing the behavioural patterns should help the individual gain a sense of control over the events and/or assist them to see clearly what is or is not going on. With this insight, he or she may approach the alleged perpetrator with a solution-focused approach or contact a manager/supervisor informally to have the matter addressed in a non-combative way. After this, or if this is deemed unworkable, he or she may approach the Human Resources management (where applicable) of their organisation.

The case should then be discussed, reflected upon and be dealt with promptly, on an ‘informal’ although recorded way, to avoid any escalation of the bullying. If this attempt fails, mediation may be required. Both parties must agree in order for the mediation to be successful. However, in the event that the outlined attempts to deal with the situation fail, a formal investigation of the facts might be required. This is the final and most robust but taxing method of progressing a bullying complaint, and only ideally to be used where the other or some other methods have first been tried.

If the bullying becomes unbearable, and an employee is forced to leave his or her own job, they may be entitled to claim Constructive Dismissal under the Unfair Dismissal Act (1977-2015). This means that the claimant argues that an employee had to terminate his/her contract of employment with or without notice, due to the conduct of the employer (in not preventing the bullying). Where employees qualify they can make a claim to the Workplace Relations Commission.

The present study is concerned with the profile and outcomes of workplace bullying cases taken under the Unfair Dismissal Acts (1977-2015) to the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) citing bullying, victimisation and harassment as an element in the case.

Workplace bullying represents a cost for targets, in terms of mental health, wellbeing at work, job satisfaction and productivity (Branch & Murray, 2015). Bullying has also a cost for the organisations, as it can damage their image, reputation and systems of work in terms of efficiency and good relations. Moreover, for both targets and organisations, bullying has economic consequences, e.g., medical costs, psychological interventions and/or absenteeism/ recruitment, litigation and early retirement payments.

Given these negative consequences of workplace bullying, it is crucial to investigate how organisations respond to bullying, along with the outcomes of the alleged bullying cases that are taken to the WRC. Findings of this report should inform organisations, employees and researchers about the Commission’s judgements related to alleged workplace bullying cases, and offer suggestions on best practice and intervention programs.

Data was collected through records available on the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) website. The inclusion criteria of the cases in this report were as follows: a) The case was taken to the WRC under the Unfair Dismissal Acts 1977-2015; b) A decision was made between September 2015 and May 2018. The following keywords were used for the search: “bullying”, “harassment” and “victimisation⁴”.

A database was built according to the following features: 1) Breakdown of cases claiming bullying; 2) Breakdown of cases according to gender; 3) Breakdown of cases according to behaviour subtype; 4) Breakdown of cases according to outcome (i.e., awarded or failed); 5) Time between submission of complaint and judgement and 6) The award for each case.

The analysis of the Commission’s determinations related to Unfair Dismissal shows that a consistent portion of cases cited respectively a combination of bullying and harassment or bullying only as the cause for Unfair Dismissal. A considerable number of these cases involved claimants who were constructively dismissed. This finding indicates that employees who feel harassed and/or bullied are more likely to see their condition as unbearable and therefore, are more likely to resign.

Small disparities emerged in terms of male and female employees who took their case to the WRC. Findings suggest that males were more likely to take their alleged bullying, harassment and/or victimisation case to the Commission. This finding is in contrast with a previous report published by ABC (O’Higgins Norman & Kiernan, 2015), which found only small differences in terms of the gender of the claimants (i.e., 47% of males versus 51% of females; 2% were unspecified).

At first glance, these findings seem to be in contrast with previous studies showing that female employees report higher rates of bullying victimisation compared to their male counterpart (Salin & Höel, 2013). In addition, previous research showed that multiple forms of gender inequalities and gender discrimination take place against female employees (Stamarski & Hing, 2015), which increase their risk of being bullied. However, while the findings in this report suggest that males are more likely to take their case to the WRC, they do not indicate that workplace bullying is higher among men. One explanation for this finding is that male and female employees deal with bullying in different ways. Previous research has shown that males use more active coping strategies when dealing with bullying (e.g., confront the perpetrator), while females use avoidance strategies (e.g., do nothing; sick leave; request for transfer; Salin & Höel, 2013). Hence, a tendency to adopt avoidance coping strategies could suggest that females might be more reluctant to take their case to the Commission.

However, findings show that males are consistently more likely to be the alleged perpetrator in a bullying case. Males, more than females occupy managerial positions. Given that bullying is often a downwards rather than an upwards process, it is not surprising to see that more males than females are reported as alleged perpetrators of bullying (Salin & Höel, 2013).

In relation to the type of negative and harming behaviours, the empirical evidence has shown that the behaviours involved in bullying are often of a verbal (e.g., insults; name-calling) and indirect nature (e.g., isolation; Einarsen et al., 2011). In line with previous literature, the findings of this report show that most claimants were subjected to non-contact harming behaviours, while physical assault incidents were coded only in a small minority of cases, and involved one-off incident of abusive physical behaviour. These findings confirm that bullying and other forms of abusive behaviour in the workplace aim at harming the target psychologically (Einarsen et al., 2011).

As to the organisations that followed formal anti-bullying procedures, although data indicated that several organisations (46%), put into place some specific procedures to respond to the bullying complaints, it was also found that a considerable part of them did not adopt any formal anti-bullying procedure (36.8%). Interestingly, most awarded cases belonged to organisations that did not follow any anti-bullying procedures (78.4%), whereas most cases that failed belonged to organisations that had put into place anti-bullying procedures (77.3%). On one hand, these findings could indicate that employees working in organisations lacking clear anti-bullying procedures are more likely to raise a formal complaint involving bullying, harassment and/or victimisation. On the other hand, they show that these forms of negative and harming behaviours could be less likely within organisations that put into place anti-bullying procedures. This is consistent with previous studies highlighting that the presence of clear anti-bullying policies and procedures is associated with lower levels of bullying (O’Connell et al., 2007).

Finally, findings show that several years passed between the time when complaints were raised and the time of the decision issued by the WRC, and that in some instances organisations sustained high costs to refund the awarded cases. However, the average award was lower compared to a previous report published by O’Higgins Norman and Kiernan (2015)

Although the findings presented in this report could be informative for organisations, employees, researchers and practitioners, some limitations should be outlined. First, it did not present any data on the features of the organisations included in this report (e.g., private/ public; size). Second, some of the cases were presented in general terms on the WRC website, which resulted in several missing information (e.g., the reason of the alleged bullying has been specified only in a minority of cases). These limitations should be addressed in future reports and research papers.

Findings of this report outline that bullying at work impacts the targets and the organisation in terms of time and costs. Although not explored in this report, we can advance that workplace bullying has also negative psychological outcomes for the target (Einarsen et al., 2011).

Overall, the findings of this report call for formal anti-bullying policies and procedures that organisations should adopt to prevent and tackle bullying. We suggest that organisations should promote a culture of respect, which in turn would increase employees’ wellbeing at work. Organisations are encouraged to prevent bullying through informative workshops aimed at raising awareness on the features of bullying. Evidence-based intervention programs should also be put into place. More specifically, intervention should be based on theoretical frameworks and previous research findings. Importantly, anti-bullying intervention programs should be part of the ongoing organisation’s anti-bullying efforts, rather than be conceived as one-time programs. Findings of a meta-analyses published in recent years showed that effective intervention programs include several components (e.g., anti-bullying policies; employee trainings) and target the whole organisation (Hodgins, MacCurtain & Mannix-McNamara, 2014). Therefore, it is suggested that when implementing anti-bullying intervention programs, a strong focus should be put into changing the organisational culture, namely the employees’ attitudes, beliefs and values.

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