Researchers Identify the Root Cause of Workplace Bullying

Original article published by the NSCA Foundation

Organisational structures, not individuals, are responsible for workplace bullying, which reportedly affects 10% of employees, according to a study conducted by the University of South Australia (UniSA) that attributes “poor management practices” as the root cause of bullying. Researchers from UniSA have developed an evidence-based screening tool that identifies nine major risk areas for workplace bullying embedded in day-to-day practices, putting the onus on organisations to address the problem.

The researchers analysed 342 real-life bullying complaints lodged with SafeWork SA, 60% of them from female employees. The highest number of complaints were from health and community services, property and business, and the retail sector. The complaints revealed the risk areas for bullying in organisations.

In a paper published in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, lead author Professor Michelle Tuckey from UniSA and colleagues from the Centre for Workplace Excellence, the University of Queensland and Auburn University in the US, suggested a new way to tackle workplace bullying. Tuckey said that workplace bullying predominantly shows up in how people are managed, adding that managing work performance, co-ordinating working hours and entitlements, and shaping workplace relationships are key areas that organisations need to focus on. “It can be tempting to see bullying as a behavioural problem between individuals, but the evidence suggests that bullying actually reflects structural risks in the organisations themselves,” Tuckey said.

The researchers identified the major organisational risks and built them into a screening tool that has been validated in a hospital setting. “The tool predicts both individual-level and team-level workplace bullying risks that jeopardise the psychological health of employees,” Tuckey said.

The researchers said that existing strategies, such as anti-bullying policies, bullying awareness training, incident reporting and investigating complaints, focus on behaviour between individuals and overlook workplace structures. “Workplace bullying undermines the functioning of employees and organisations alike. It leads to mental health problems, post-traumatic stress symptoms, emotional exhaustion, poor job satisfaction, high staff turnover, low productivity, sleep problems and even suicide risks. To prevent bullying, organisations must proactively assess and mitigate the underlying risk factors, like other systematic risk management processes. Only then will an organisation thrive,” Tuckey said.

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