Survey and Research Data

Workplace Bullying Common at all Management Levels

The Chartered Management Institute in the United Kingdom surveyed 512 executives in public and private sector organisations on workplace bullying. The following reported being bullied in the past three years:

• 39% of all managers
• 49% of middle managers
• 29% of directors, and
• 42% of junior managers.

Women appeared to be more frequent victims of bullying than men, with 54% of women as opposed to 35% of men reporting having suffered from bullying. The most common forms of bullying were:

• Misuse of power/position (70%)
• Verbal insults (69%), and
• Undermining by overloading or criticism (68%).

For those having workplace conflict policies, training was particularly effective for deterring bullying:

• 83% of managers from organisations whose policies included training rated their organisations as quite or very effective at deterring bullying. Effective policies for deterring bullying included, a contact point for advice (82%), internal confidential counselling (82%), and external mediation (81%). [16]

The Cost of Unresolved Workplace Conflict

In 2006, Total Conflict Management, a UK consulting organisation, conducted studies that revealed a growing awareness of the human and financial costs associated with unresolved workplace conflict:

• According to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), the average UK employer is involved in 30 formal disciplinary cases and 9 formal grievance cases per year, spending approximately 12 days managing them.
• The average employer receives 3 employment tribunal applications per year and spends 16.4 days preparing for them.
• Bullying costs employers 18 million lost working days and £2 billion in lost revenues per year.
• 10% of employees have experienced bullying in the last six months.
• Research into 16 bullying cases in one organisation arrived at costs of £20,000 per case. [17]

Workplace Discipline Bosses Too Soft

 In the United States, the Wyatt Company surveyed 3,500 employees covering a wide range of geographic areas, industries and job levels. Approximately 50% of the respondents stated that management was “too soft” on employee performance. 30% of the participants stated that their managers did not know how to adequately solve people problems in the workplace. Similarly 30% of the employees thought that supervisors failed to give regular performance feedback. [10]

Ethics and Organisational Cultures

A Watson Wyatt survey of American worker attitudes by Work USA 2004 found that hypocrisy and favouritism were considered the most important ethical lapses in the US workplace. A sizeable proportion of managers received low marks, with 16% of respondents either disagreeing or disagreeing strongly with the statement: “Top management in our organisation behaves with honesty/integrity in their business activities”. Co-workers were also seen as showing disrespect and knowingly violating company policies. Employee commitment to their organisation had dropped approximately 5% on the last survey (conducted two years previously) and 33% said they would leave their company if they could. 9% of workers reported that the demands of work almost always put pressure on them to do things that conflicted with what they thought was right. 77% said their company had clear codes of conduct or ethics policies that were clearly communicated to employees, but 19% worried that employees reporting unethical behaviour would be considered troublemakers. [18]

Employers Use Employee Electronic Surveillance

In 2001, a survey of 1,600 large American employers revealed that employees were being monitored in the work place in the following ways (see Figure 4, below):

• Monitoring Internet connections (62.8%)
• Storage and review of email messages (46.5%)
• Telephone use - numbers called, time spent (43.3%)
• Video Surveillance for security purposes (37.7%)
• Storage and review of computer files (36.1%)
• Computer use - time logged on, keystroke counts (18.9%)
• Video recording of job performance (15.2%)
• Recording and review of telephone conversations (11.9%)
• Storage and review of voice mail messages (7.8%).

It was reported that 77.7 % of employers used some form of employee surveillance in 2001. In another survey involving 600 remote workers, a web-enabled camera was set up at each workstation. The stated aim was to ease communication between team members; however, participants reported feelings of humiliation and indicated that they had no sense of privacy. [19]

_________________________________________________________

You are reading a Management Brief Report in html-format. Become a member of the BPIR to receive a new report in PDF-format every month (see examples: Benchmarking & Business Excellence). PDF-format can be saved on your hard drive, emailed to work colleagues, and are much easier to read and print out!.. For BPIR updates and best practices sign up to our FREE newsletter.