A number of surveys have highlighted the cost of workplace bullying to individuals and to organisations in the UK in the run-up to 'Ban bullying at work day' in November 2005. Trade unions state that much of the problem is managerial abuse of power, though they are joined by managers’ own professional associations in calling for action.
The Trades Union Congress (TUC) has lent its support to 'Ban bullying at work day', to be held on 7 November 2005. The event is organised by the Andrea Adams Trust, the main charity tackling bullying at work. Its 2004 survey for the magazine Personnel Today found that, although 70% of employers had a formal anti-bullying policy, 87% of personnel professionals remained aware of bullying in their organisation, and 33% said there had been a rise in incidents in the past two years. Nearly one-third of victims left the organisation. The TUC said that its own survey of 5,300 public, private and voluntary sector employees suggested that workplace bullying contributes to the loss of 18 million working days every year in the UK, with victims annually taking an average seven extra days off. It also said that in three-quarters of cases a manager was identified as the bully.
Rising union concern
Bullying is increasingly seen as a mainstream industrial relations issue by trade unions. Amicus, the UK’s largest private sector union, declared that it 'will wage war on work place bullying in 2005' with a regional programme to expose employers that tolerate bullying in their workplace. The union said that it 'deals with countless cases of workplace bullying every year and many of them go to [employment tribunals]'. The Amicus initiative follows the launch in 2004 of its anti-bullying campaign, which included a hotline for bullied staff. Mandy Telford, anti-bullying campaign coordinator at Amicus, said: 'The resulting economic damage to UK plc in terms of sick days and lack of productivity is increasingly serious. We believe that the union’s anti bullying project will tackle the problem at both an operational and a policy level.' The union, which is a leading participant in the 'Dignity at Work Partnership', sponsored by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), has signed up major companies such as BT, Legal and General, British Aerospace and Royal Mail to its anti-bullying charter.
The public sector union Unison has also voiced strong concerns that bullying appears to be increasing. Unison national health and safety officer Hope Daley argued that 'the public sector is one of the worst sectors for bullying, especially in the last few years due to the large amount of change - which translates to pressure from above to do more with less'. This is supported by findings from the most recent TUC survey of more than 4,500 safety representatives, in which 30% of those in the public sector identified bullying as a problem linked to employee stress, compared with 20% in the private sector. The Andrea Adams Trust says that it receives up to 70 calls a day from victims of workplace bullying, with most in target-driven organisations such as the National Health Service (NHS), call centres and education. The latter was backed up by a survey of 843 academics and university administrators conducted by the magazine Times Higher Education Supplement in summer 2005, in which three-quarters of respondents said that someone they worked with was being bullied, while over four in 10 said they themselves were being bullied at work. Sally Hunt, general secretary of the Association of University Teachers, said 'it was vital that universities themselves took the problem seriously'.
Management associations support action
Increasing attention has also been given to the issue by the leading bodies representing managers. In August 2005, the Chartered Management Institute (CMI), a management professional association with 74,000 individual and 480 corporate members, published a guidance leaflet for its members. The document aims to help managers carry out their duty of care to staff by: identifying types of bullying behaviour and their contributing factors; setting out policy requirements; and advising on how to communicate and implement a policy and how to handle complaints. An accompanying survey of members showed that 60% of respondents believed the problem was growing, with 39% of managers (54% of women and 35% of men) reporting that they themselves had been bullied. Over half (55%) of respondents reported that their organisation has a formal policy on bullying, but 60% of managers had received no training in the area. Mary Chapman, chief executive of the CMI, said: 'Organisations must create an open, empowering culture and develop the skills of those who enter management positions to ensure that the potential for bullying is minimised.'
Workplace bullying was also reported to be a serious problem in a 2004 survey of 1,190 members of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) (UK0501102F). The CIPD report, Managing conflict at work, found a high incidence of formal policy, covering 83% of UK employers (90% in the public sector), but also discovered that the average employer had had two disciplinary or grievance cases relating to bullying or harassment in the past year, which took 21 working days to deal with. Most cases (77%) were settled internally, but 14% escalated to employment tribunals. Those of accused bullying were line managers in 38% of cases; over one in five (22%) were department heads, and more than one-third (37%) were peer colleagues of the alleged victim. Despite the apparently high level of line management involvement in bullying incidents, only 55% of organisations trained their line managers in tackling bullying and harassment at work, compared with three-quarters for human resources managers. Commenting on the findings, Imogen Haslam, professional adviser at the CIPD, said that as well as 'training managers to recognise the signs and take action', employers should be 'investing time and money to change mindsets' from 'firm autocratic management styles' to 'alternative, more effective, styles concentrating on motivating staff through engaging their commitment and trust'. This view was echoed in the CIPD’s subsequent members’ guide on bullying, Bullying at work: beyond policies to a culture of respect, published in April 2005.
Commentary
The apparent increase in bullying in the workplace seems to be linked to factors both outside and inside organisations. The former refers to the changing context of increased competition and resource constraints, which affects public sector organisations as well as those in the private sector. The second is how employers have often responded to these challenges, by reducing headcount and intensifying workloads on the one hand, and introducing initiatives like performance management schemes that closely monitor individual and group performance and in many cases link these assessments via targets to developmental and financial rewards. All of this adds to the demands on employees and their managers, making fertile ground for peer pressure and authoritarian management.
Recognising the costs to employers associated with lower morale and productivity, and higher employee sickness and turnover, and given that managers may be victims as well as perpetrators, it is not surprising that the leading associations representing managers and human resources professionals have added to trade union calls for improvements. Best practice is not just having a clear anti-bullying policy, but also ensuring that it is well communicated and that managers are trained to back it up. Employees should also ideally have access to a contact point for advice and confidential counselling, and be offered external mediation where appropriate. But this is difficult if it costs time and money, not least since it is often cost-cutting pressures that encourage bullying in the first place. The TUC argues that the best safeguard for employees is a strong workplace trade union, backed up by the threat of legal sanctions. With unions generally in decline, and no specific legislation currently in place dealing with bullying behaviour or, more widely, respect at work (apart from various discrimination and harassment laws), this too is unfortunately something of a forlorn hope. (J Arrowsmith, IRRU)