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Bitter at Work: A Case to Investigate Bullying in the Workplace

But if you love what you do, it (mostly) doesn’t feel like work

—Elon Musk

Work is supposed to be a place of ambition and accomplishment, trial and error, commitment and consistency—but an alarming amount of research shows that work does, in fact, feel like a lot of work; especially when you are a person of color, female, or part of the LGBTQ+ community. 

Workplace bullying involves recurring aggression (verbal or non-verbal) from the perpetrator toward the victim that ultimately creates a toxic workplace environment. This includes a disproportionate power dynamic between the two parties and can be upward (subordinate-initiated) or downward (authority-initiated). These actions may stem from the work culture and perpetrator or victim’s personality. Workplace bullying, like all stressors, can negatively impact the individual in the short and long run. 

Research regarding the processes involved in workplace bullying demonstrates that it hinders the victim’s work engagement while propagating health issues. An important cognitive mechanism found is job insecurity. It entails the perception of threats to one’s job or its features with employees considering workplace bullying a significant threat (possibly losing status, opportunities, or social acceptance). Naturally, victims tend to have appraised prolonged bullying negatively which increases job insecurity and health issues while decreasing their work engagement. High perception of bullying evokes feelings of helplessness and affects their sense of belonging and perception of self-worth in the workplace. Consequently, this heightened arousal prolongs long-term physical symptoms as well (tiredness, lack of sleep and motivation to get out of bed). Consequences of workplace bullying also range from depression and PTSD to even suicide

Moreover, workplace bullying is experienced differently depending on a group’s social status. According to stress theories, one’s status in society affects exposure to stress, thus, implying that individuals belonging to vulnerable groups like women and people of color may suffer more from the effects of stressors. Studies exploring racial and gender dimensions have found that workplace bullying has a greater impact on increasing feelings of anxiety, hopelessness, and other perceived job stressors for women and people of color. Additionally, results regarding these groups aligned with the stress proliferation theory which states that one can perceive new stressors emerging from the original, central stressor of bullying. 

More specifically, men and women appraise and tackle bullying in different ways. Men tend to be more impacted by feelings of anxiety and hopelessness evoked by bullying. It is suggested that this could be due to perceived threats to their role as the family’s provider and the stronger association between joblessness and poor mental health in men. With respect to coping with these feelings, social support from co-workers tends to benefit women more than men. Additionally, research indicates that women tend to place more value on the gravity of bullying and tend to endure it while men are quicker to report and even deal with it confrontationally. Having said that, women report stronger associations between depression, anxiety symptoms, and exposure to negative actions in the workplace as well.

Similarly, bullying is experienced uniquely by minority groups and even groups within this category. Studies indicate that a greater percentage of Ethnic minority employees are more exposed to bullying from both co-workers and managers as opposed to White employees. Interestingly, while bullying Ethnic minority employees, managers tend to use tactics of personalized bullying first followed by professional remarks while the opposite is true for White employees. Findings also indicate that black employees are less protected from the social support of co-workers than white employees. With respect to groups within minority communities, in studies containing three races (white, black, and other race) in the sample, the “other race” had the greatest perceived job stressors while black participants had the lowest. 

Unsurprisingly, workplace bullying also affects people from the LGBTQ+ community differently. It is found that compared to heterosexual people, LGB people are 3.32 times more likely to be victims of bullying. Additionally, they are more vulnerable to invasive and sexualized remarks and behavior like groping. Researchers' belief that employees think this behavior is more acceptable towards LGB people can be attributed to the self-categorization theory. Here, the ingroup (people who are heterosexual) perceives the outgroup (LGB people) as inferior and wishes to increase the perception of their superiority, thus, making the outgroup likelier targets of bullying. Other studies indicate that only one in eight people report such harassment to HR. Nevertheless, more research is required on gender and bullying as most research tends to focus on binary male/female genders, leaving other genders understudied.  

Unfortunately, most workplaces resort to ignoring perpetrators' actions as a solution to bullying. Not only is this detrimental to the individual, but also the organization as consequences include decreased productivity, increased absenteeism, and higher turnover rates with a tarnished public image. The individual’s organizational goals are displaced wherein protecting oneself becomes the main goal. This hypervigilance spreads to bystanders of bullying (second targets) as well; their perception of the workplace is also altered which increases intentions to leave the organization. This eventually is woven into the organization’s work culture where bullying behavior is modeled and adopted by other employees. Evidently, unaddressed bullying becomes an epidemic in the workplace. 

Bullying can “bleed into” other sectors of the victim’s life and can even taint it permanently. One of the most crucial steps to reducing bullying is educating employees about negative behaviors in the workplace as research reveals that most of them are unaware that they are being bullied. If bullying is dealt with systemically, employees’ time, energy, and psychological resources can be used healthily and productively. A change in the organization itself can mitigate bullying as it is a characteristic of toxic ones.

Paranshi Zaveri