Mobbing – Raising Awareness on Women Victims of Mobbing

The UK Perspective

Liz Cox

2004

DAPHNE PROGRAMME

EUROPEAN COMMISSION

Preventive Measures to Fight Violence Against Children,

Young People and Women

CONTENTS

  1. Definition of the term 3
  1. Legislation and regulation6
  1. How widespread is it?8
  1. The causes of workplace bullying10
  1. What are the consequences of bullying?12
  1. What is currently being done about issues of harassment and bullying?13
  1. Which employment areas are currently most at risk to bullying?14
  1. Conclusions15

Bibliography16

Daphne Project: Mobbing and mobbed women in Europe

The UK perspective

‘Bullying represents an occupational hazard of considerable magnitude…While certain sectors appear to be more vulnerable to bullying, no sector escapes the problem entirely. Workplace bullying can no longer be relegated to the fringes of occupational life. Whilst some demographic groups may be more vulnerable than others, bullying is present at some level across all groups.’ (Hoel and Cooper, 2000)

This background paper prepared by the University of Surrey for the European project explores this general picture and attempts in conclusion to draw out issues that are of particular concern to women, and highlight areas where women’s issues need further exploration.

1.Definition of the term

The terms harassment and bullying are the most usual descriptors in the UK for what is referred to in European studies as mobbing. The World Health Organisation (2003) equates psychological harassment at work with ‘mobbing’. It gives as the cause the deterioration of interpersonal relations as well as organisational dysfunction. The behaviour is related to a variety of factors based on gender, religion, ethnicity, age, nationality, disability, background, sexual orientation and other diversities as well as to socio-economic reasons. The WHO describes it as culture related and therefore the way it is performed and sensitivity to it, may vary in different countries.

Dr Heinz Leymann, working in Sweden in the 1980s, used the word mobbing to describe psychological harassment by up to four individuals against one target on a weekly basis for up to six months and ‘mobbing’ is the term often used in German speaking countries. Lee (2000) quotes Pollert (1981) who used the term ‘arbitrary victimisation’ when looking at a survey of women factory workers. The issues were breaches of discipline, work standard and failure to please, described by the 1990s as harassment. Lee suggests that the greater publicity given to bullying in the 1990s beginning with a series of Radio 4 programmes on the ‘Abuse of Power’, has established a language to enable people to recognise and describe their situation. Bullying’ has been associated with schools and with children but has been extended to describe incidents in the work place. Harassment and bullying are used interchangeably to describe similar types of behaviour, but harassment is often linked specifically to sexual and racial harassment which have a different position in relation to legislation in the UK than does bullying. The website ‘Bully on line’ has a large section covering contact and support for children bullied at school, but also describes bullying as being present behind all forms of harassment, discrimination, prejudice, abuse, persecution, conflict and violence. When it has a focus it comes out as racial prejudice or harassment, or sexual discrimination and harassment. When the bullying lacks a focus it comes out as pure bullying. ‘I believe bullying is the single most important social issue of today’ Tom Field. (

Definitions from an academic perspective are more careful. Lewis and Sheehan (2003) say that there is no agreed definition of workplace bullying. Quine (1999) considers that the workplace presents opportunities for a wide range of intimidating tactics. Hoel and Cooper (2000) use as their basic definition the one presented by Einarsen and Skogstad (1996).

‘We define bullying as a situation where one or several individuals, persistently over a period of time, perceive themselves to be on the receiving end of negative actions from one or several persons, in a situation where the target of bullying has difficulty in defending him or herself against these actions. We will not refer to a one off incident as bullying’

Many definitions of workplace bullying share these three elements.

  1. Bullying is defined in terms of its effect on the recipient not the intention of the bully and is therefore subject to personal perceptions.
  2. It must have a negative effect on the victim. These negative effects have also to be defined.
  3. The bullying behaviour must be persistent.

Hoel and Cooper (2000) exclude from their survey occasional aggressive behaviour which they say falls outsidethedefinition they used except if the intimidation was of such a severe nature that the target was left in a permanent uncertainty or fear. The stress on ‘difficulty of defending themselves’ highlights an imbalance of power between the protagonists, but the source of such power is not defined and could be from a hierarchy or from informal sources. Lee (2004) does not agree that single incidents should not ‘count’ as bullying. Her survey of a number of workers sees them interpreting single incidence as workplace bullying.

The government’s Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service, ACAS says that the terms bullying and harassment are used interchangeably and that bullying is a form of harassment and gives a general description of harassment as;

“Unwanted conduct affecting the dignity of men and women in the workplace. It may be related to age, sex, race, disability, religion, nationality or any personal characteristic of the individual and may be persistent or an isolated incident.’

Such a definitions highlights that the behaviour is ‘unwanted’ and ‘not encouraged or reciprocated’. The use of the expression ‘dignity of men and women in the workplace’ is used by many commentators as a more embracing concept that avoids the problems of definition of harassment and bullying.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) describes bullying as

“Persistent unacceptable behaviour or a single grossly unacceptable act by one or more individuals working in the organisation against one or more employees, this behaviour is perceived by the person experiencing it to be offensive, abusive, intimidating, malicious, insulting or involving a misuse of power”

ACAS point out that firm management by one person can be considered as bullying by another. However the emphasis in most definitions is that it is how the behaviour is perceived by the recipient which is the deciding criteria. The intention of the perpetrator is not material.

The TUC points out that bullying at work generally consists of regular and persistent intimidation, while sexual or racial harassment can occur as a single grossly offensive act.

The following are examples of bullying behaviour presented by MSF, the Industry and Service Union.

  • Constantly taking credit for others work but never taking the blame when things go wrong
  • Open aggression, bawling out, threats, shouting, swearing abuse
  • Constant humiliation, ridicule, belittling efforts – often in front of others
  • Excessive supervision, monitoring everything including minor jobs
  • Overruling a person’s authority, reducing a job to routine tasks well below skills and capabilities
  • Setting impossible objectives
  • Withholding information, ostracising, marginalising and spreading rumours
  • Blocking promotion or training opportunities
  • Refusing reasonable requests for leave
  • Intrusive questioning

To this the World Health Organisation adds

  • Assignment of tasks that are hazardous or are unfit for the worker’s health
  • Forced inactivity
  • Lack of communication
  • Removing essential work instruments
  • Threats of disciplinary action plus a whole category of attacks on the individual such as: damage to personal belongings; exclusion; gossiping; instigation of colleagues against the victim, isolations, provocation, spreading false information and threats of violence.

Bullying and harassment does not have to be face to face but can include written communication and email, posting up or downloading offensive material, phone messages and automatic supervision methods, such as recording telephone communications if not applied to all workers.

These definitions of bullying and harassment in the workplace do not have a specific aspect that relates to women alone since bullying and harassment seems to affect all groups. Some commentators see violence in the workplace as part of bullying and harassment. Remedies against assault are available, this is an area where women may be more at risk. Violence from clients or members of the public towards employees seems to be on the increase. This is more often defined as workplace violence rather than bullying, but in a study of mobbing and women it needs to be included.

‘Women are more vulnerable to violence due to their inferior position in the labour market’ Duncan Cappell, ILO quoted in ‘Women Transporting the World’. The International Transport Union would include violence under the area of workplace bullying.

2. Legislation and regulation

There is currently no specific legislation protecting employees from bullying at work but there is increasing discussion about legislation that would cover all areas of harassment. At the moment, harassment and bullying can be approached via a number of other pieces of legislation, although some commentators, say that there is a lot of legislation but none of much use. Success rates in cases of bullying and harassment are not high. (Leighton in Tehrani 2001)

The Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 was extended by the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 to give a duty to employers to carry out an assessment of work place risk to their employees’ health and safety and take preventative and protective measures. Work related stress is currently the second most often cited reason for absence from work and the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) identifies bullying and harassment as one of the causes of work related stress. Thus the responsibility devolves on safety reps to investigate sources of stress, such as bullying and harassment and produce a risk assessment in the same way they would for more tangible sources of danger in a work environment, for example noxious gases or dangerous machinery. This is not an easy area and inspectors may be unwilling to intervene if the case is not clear cut. (Leighton, 2001)

Employees can also claim unfair dismissal or constructive dismissal if they are forced to leave their jobs as a result of bullying or harassment. If an employer has not dealt with a complaint of bullying or harassment he has breached the implied duty of mutual trust or confidence (Employment Rights Act 1996). The employee can claim Unfair Dismissal on the grounds that their employer’s behaviour led to their resignation. Such behaviour includes

  • not providing support to managers in difficult work situations
  • the harassment or humiliation of staff, especially in front of other less senior employees
  • the targeting or victimisation of certain members of staff
  • altering the employee’s job description or contract without deliberation

A number of cases in common law, have shown that employers’ liability can be extended to psychiatric or psychological damage that is caused by bullying at work. There is no specific gender related issue seen here; the sex of the bully or the bullied can be male or female.

The Protection from Harassment Act 1997, was primarily established to provide legal protection against stalking but it has become the main legislation dealing with harassment in the workplace. (Freda, 2001) Section 1 of the Harassment Act states that, ‘ a person must not pursue a course of conduct which amounts to harassment of another, and which he knows or ought to know amounts to harassment of the other. ’Section 7 defines ‘harassment’ as including causing alarm or causing distress and states that the aforementioned ‘course of conduct’ must occur on at least two occasions. This act however, is concerned with individual harassment of an individual, not with collective bullying.

Harassment on the grounds of a person’s sex, race or disability comes under the definition of discrimination and there is legislation that deals with these issues; the Sex Discrimination Act 1975, Race Relations Act 1976 and the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. The sex discrimination act covers any degrading and unacceptable form of treatment and includes not only unwelcome acts which involve physical contact of a sexual nature but also conduct falling short of such physical acts. The code produced by the European Commission, Recommendations on the Protection of the Dignity of Women and Men at work (1991) gives practical guidance to employers, unions and employees. In the case of Reed & Bull information Systems v Stedman (1999) harassment was further defined;

‘It is the person on the receiving end who defines harassment. Once they have made it clear that behaviour is unacceptable and unwelcome it will amount to harassment, even where other workers would not see the same behaviour as offensive’

Anti Discrimination legislation has been extended to gay and lesbian workers (Dec 2003).

A Dignity at Work Bill was drafted by the MSF Union (Manufacturing Science Finance ) in 1997 to protect employees from bullying and harassment at work but it was not passed. It has been reintroduced but may still not pass into law because of insufficient parliamentary time. The bill has been criticised for lack of definition of such phrases as ‘unjustified criticism’ and ‘unjustified punishment’ which will require case law to clarify and could provide a difficult period for employers. It would however shake up current discrimination and health and safety laws which, it is suggested, mean that a woman suffering bullying at work has a better chance of making a successful claim under the discrimination laws than a man. (

Leighton argues (Tehrani 2001) that belief that the law can be an effective defence against bullying and harassment is misplaced and will fuel a litigation culture. He thinks that the European Commission idea of ‘Rights’ instead of alleged breaches of statute and common law will be more effective. The law of employer negligence is particularly difficult to prove. The results for litigants in the form of financial compensation is often not very satisfying. Often they want the bully to be dismissed or disciplined and some feeling of ‘justice’. Ideas of ‘Alternative Dispute Resolution’ (ADR) are suggested by Leighton as worth exploring.

3. How widespread is it?

The last ten years have seen work place bullying increasingly a subject of academic and popular interest. This is partly due to the work of those who have experienced workplace bullying and who want to address the secrecy that surrounds the subject (Bully on Line, Andrea Adams websites). But other popular and academic writers have attempted to raise awareness of its incidence, have looked at how to overcome it and the psychological harm suffered by targets of bullying.

BBC News on 2 October 2002 (Bully on line), quoted Dr Patrick Gilbert of Mercer Human Resources Consulting that across the country ‘over 1.5m workers could be victims of repeated bullying at work’, based on a survey of 3,500 workers. At the European level, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on harassment in the workplace in September 2001 and stressed the need to investigate this further.

Hoel and Cooper (2000) conducted a survey of 5,288 individuals from 70 organisations covering a wide range of occupations and industries that included the public, private and voluntary sector. It was backed and advised by representatives of the CBI and the TUC. The conclusions were that one in 10 workers had been bullied in the previous 6 months, 1 in 4 if the period was extended to the last five years and almost one in two had witnessed bullying at work in the last five years

This work corroborates an earlier survey of UNISON members carried out by Staffordshire University in 1997 when 2/3 of members had either experienced or witnessed bullying at some point. This survey also highlighted some sectors and in particular the CWU communications workers union where 25% reported that they had been bullied. Safety reps reported stress as a main concern and 30% reported bullying as causing stress.

Quine (1999) surveyed 1100 employees in a NHS community trust and found 38% of employees experienced one or more types of bullying in the previous year and 42% had witnessed the bullying of others.

Hoel and Cooper‘s (2000) survey showed that 11.4% women and 9.9% men experienced workplace bullying in the last six months and this difference was increased when ‘the last six years’ was considered with 27.7% women and 22% men reporting being bullied. However when the survey looked at negative acts, and the frequency of exposure, men reported higher frequency. Only in two areas ‘unwanted sexual attention’ and ‘insulting messages’ did women report a statistically higher frequency.

In a few industries women are over represented among targets – notably in Higher Education the fire service and the voluntary sector. Within the Civil Service the number of men to women reporting bullying was 6.5% men and 16.3% women. Higher Education is a sector where a large number of women are employed; the fire service where they are in a minority.

The perpetrators in 74.4% of the reported cases were managers or people in superior positions, followed by 36.7% bullied by peers or colleagues, 6.7% by subordinates and 7.8% by clients/members of the public. (Hoel and Cooper, 2000) Quines’s survey (1999) says that the most common bully was a senior manager or line manger although 34% was someone of the same seniority. The report from Transport Salaried Staff Association, (itf) extends this to bullying behaviour from outside an organisation, from clients.

‘There are call centre staff who sit all day with earphones on, listening to unrepeatable insults from customers – things they would never dare say face to face.’

All levels of management report bullying including senior management and people with non supervisory roles.

Sexual harassment however, as a separate category from bullying was found by the Industrial Society in 1993 to affect 54% of women and 15% of men. Surveys highlight the police and the Health Service as having particularly high levels of sexual harassment. The Equal Opportunities Commission suggests that most at risk are;

Young women who have been in the job for less than a year

Divorced or separated women

Lesbians or gay men

Women working in areas not traditional for their sex and where they are in a minority