UNDERSTANDING WORKPLACE BULLYING

1. What is workplace bullying?

Acas defines workplace bullying as "unwanted behaviour from a person or group that is either offensive, intimidating, malicious or insulting, or an abuse or misuse of power that undermines, humiliates, or causes physical or emotional harm to someone". 

Bullying is closely related to harassment: the two often go together and the terms are often used interchangeably. However, there are important differences.

Unlike bullying, harassment is a legal concept. The Equality Act 2010 defines harassment as unwanted conduct related to a relevant protected characteristic that has the purpose or effect of violating an individual's dignity or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for that individual.

The Act also includes separate definitions of sex-based harassment and sexual harassment. Where an employee experiences harassment, they can make a harassment claim in the employment tribunal. Employers have a legal duty to proactively prevent sexual harassment of their employees in the course of employment.

In many cases, harassment is linked to discrimination, either conscious or unconscious, and is defined as conduct that is "unwanted"; even if the perpetrator did not do it on purpose, it needs only to have the required effect for liability to be established.

Bullying, on the other hand, while it can be unwitting, is generally motivated by issues linked to power or status.

Bullying can be characterised as aggressive behaviour or intentional harmdoing based on an imbalance of power in the interpersonal relationship.

Bullying may involve individual against individual or involve groups of people. In around three-quarters of cases the bully will be the victim's supervisor or manager; less commonly it will be a colleague, a subordinate or a third party, for example a customer, patient or student and it may be limited to isolated instances in a workplace, or it may be widespread, even endemic.

Bullying is usually based on the misuse of power. This power may be:

• positional, (i.e., linked to the bully's more senior role or position);

• relational, (i.e., linked to the bully's relationship with certain individuals or groups);

• resource based, (i.e., linked to the bully's power to withhold resources or knowledge that are essential to another person's role); or

• psychological, (i.e., linked to the bully's knowledge of another person's vulnerability).

2. Types of bullying

There are many different types of bullying. An employee who is bullied may experience one, or a combination of, different kinds of bullying:

• Serial bullying: This is where the bully targets people one at a time, covering their tracks and moving on when there is a danger of being held accountable.

• Pressure bullying: This is where personal or work-related stress/pressure causes a person to become short tempered, irritable or oppressive at work towards others, perhaps unwittingly, and this behaviour deteriorates into bullying. Similar to secondary bullying.

• Secondary bullying: This is where people under pressure from a bully start to behave in a similar way towards others, sometimes unwittingly. It is similar to pressure bullying.

• Corporate bullying: This is where an employer uses coercive methods, for example the threat of dismissal or an inappropriate amount of surveillance, to oppress employees and impose draconian work conditions.

• Cyberbullying: This is misuse of the internet, email or mobile phones to send aggressive messages and threats. The impersonal nature of these tools makes them ideal for bullying.

• Predatory bullying: This is where the bully picks on a victim to demonstrate power to others.

• Dispute-related bullying: This is where bullying develops out of a conflict that has festered and gone unmanaged, and it has "got out of hand".

• Merry-go-round bullying: This is where the bully chooses different people to bully on a regular basis, leaving everyone on edge wondering when it will be their turn.

• Good-cop/bad-cop bullying: This is where people work in tandem, one of them appearing friendly to elicit the person's "weak points” and then passing this information on to another person to enable them to target the bullying.

• Vicarious bullying: This is where someone is deceived and/or manipulated by another person into carrying out aggressive behaviour on their behalf.

• Gang bullying: This is where the victim is bullied by a group, often with a ringleader who co-opts others through manipulation, fear or coercion.

3. Behaviours that constitute bullying

Different types of behaviour can amount to bullying. Bullying can be:

• physical, verbal or mental, or a mix of all three;

• passive, for example exclusion, silent treatment or withdrawal, or aggressive, for example intimidation, threats or humiliation;

• obvious and public, or subtle and hidden; and

• face to face, or via telephone, email, text or social networking.

A range of behaviours may qualify as bullying, depending on the context. There is often a fine line between bullying behaviours and what might be described as "strong" or "robust" management styles. The test is generally: would a reasonable person find this behaviour acceptable in the circumstances?

The employer should ask:

• Is the behaviour excessive, for example in tone or frequency?

• Is it applied across the board or are certain individuals singled out?

• Is it broadly fair or without justification or a sense of proportion?

• Is there any attempt to involve or support individuals, or is pressure imposed unilaterally?

• Does the behaviour seem motivated by passion, or by a desire to demonstrate superiority and power?

Bullying at work may attack victims at a personal or work level. Evidence suggests that bullying often starts with an attack on the victim's work and progresses to more personal forms of bullying.

Employers should concern themselves with any bullying that takes place in the workplace, even if the content of the bullying has nothing to do with work issues and bullying by or of employees that takes place outside the workplace but in a connected setting, for example during after-work drinks or at work-related events.

4. Personal bullying

Personal bullying includes (but is not limited to):

• ignoring, excluding, isolating or marginalising someone;

• spreading rumours or gossip, or manipulating other people's opinions about the target;

• making belittling or undermining remarks, questioning a person's judgment, or mocking someone or ignoring their opinion;

• public humiliation, for example making someone look stupid or posting demeaning pictures of them on social media sites;

• ridiculing, insulting or teasing someone, or verbal or practical jokes or sarcasm;

• physical intimidation, such as shouting, finger pointing or standing too close to someone;

• physical attacks or inappropriate physical contact;

• verbal abuse or using obscene or offensive language;

• making offensive gestures or giving someone dirty looks;

• making threats;

• making unfounded accusations;

• tampering with a person's personal effects, or theft or destruction of property;

• making insulting or derisive comments about a person's private life, beliefs, attitudes, lifestyle, appearance or mental health;

• ganging up with others against someone or encouraging others to criticise the target;

• spying on someone or instructing others to do so;

• making the target feel guilty without foundation; and

• accusations of weakness, a lack of sense of humour or oversensitivity following complaints of unfair treatment.

5. Work-related bullying

Work-related bullying includes (but is not limited to):

• setting up someone to fail by giving them unachievable tasks, an unmanageable workload or impossible deadlines, or making unreasonable demands of the target;

• singling out someone for meaningless or trivial tasks or unpleasant jobs;

• negative attacks on someone or questioning a person's ability without justification;

• inappropriate monitoring of work or overbearing supervision;

• persistent criticism or nitpicking not commensurate with competence or performance;

• giving someone too little work or work that is below their competence;

• removing or reassigning a person's responsibilities, or demoting them without justification;

• withholding information, deliberately "losing" information, failing to pass on messages or deliberately supplying incorrect or unclear information;

• undervaluing a person's contributions, giving no credit where due or taking credit for someone else's work;

• sabotage of someone's work, or refusing to cooperate or accept authority;

• applying offensive or unreasonable sanctions;

• unfairly changing goalposts or targets;

• deliberately withholding training or resources from someone that are necessary for them to perform the role, or opportunities for advancement or promotion;

• reducing or denying opportunities for someone to express their views, interrupting a person when they are speaking or shutting down discussion;

• making inappropriate threats or hints about job security;

• withdrawing or refusing reasonable support; and

• unjustified disciplinary hearings.