Workplace Bullying - Research Paper Example

WORK PLACE BULLYING College Work Place Bullying Work place bullying is a topic that has generated a lot of attention within the employment sector due to its negative impact on employee performance and the profitability of the organization. In the contemporary environment, the employees’ performance is a determiner of the organizational profitability. Worker bullying refers to the wrong treatment of employees that may have impact on their attitude to work. From the research of Devonish (2013), it is clear that bullying results to low work output among employees and reduces their commitment to the organization. At a time when employee loyalty is an important aspect of organizational strategies, it wise that all organizations shun work place bullying to ensure that employees are committed to the long term plan of the organization and that they perform optimally to achieve the goals of goals of the organization. Research by McCormack, Djurkovic and Casmir (2014) proves that organizations that provide a healthy work environment for the employees profit from optimal work output and perform better than those that pay little attention to work behaviour. Therefore, organizations must design strategies to ensure that work place bullying is shunned to pave way for optimal employee performance. Although the term bullying is common in management, it is clear that it is broad and refers to different aspects of organizational behaviour. Bullying or mobbing refers to situations in which a worker is subjected to long-lasting, recurrent, and serious negative or hostile acts and behaviour that are annoying and oppressing. Evidently, there are various forms of work place bullying within organizations. McCormack, Djurkovic and Casmir (2014) identify few including threats of professional status, threat to personal standing, overwork, destabilization and underpayment as various forms of bullying within many organizations. Among many researchers, there seems to be a consensus that work place bullying as the abuse of power that subjects employees to psychological, emotional or physical torture during their duties in the work place (Namie, 2003: Pfeffer, 2007). Often, those who have more powers in the organization abuse those below them by the way they handle them or even communicate during normal duties. Researchers such as McDonald, Backstrom and Allegretto (2007) have paid attention to underpayment as one of the forms of bullying within modern organizations. While this may be controversial, it is clear that in the endeavour to minimize expenditures within the competitive business environment, many organizations underpay their employees as a strategy to remain profitable in the long run (Galanaki & Papalexandris, 2013). From this point of view, it is clear that work place bullying encompasses many different of work-related behaviour within the employment sector. The welfare of the employees falls directly below the job description of the human resource managers. The human resource managers are concerned with the plight of workers right from the moment of recruitment and selection, worker integration and employee development to ensure that they are comfortable and produce optimally (Namie, 2003). The human resource managers design the strategies which should be used to manage the employees and are responsible of their welfare throughout their period of work. In the contemporary work environment, the human resource managers are experiencing a hard task in managing the employees from designing the way they should be handled, paid and even enticed (Woodrow & Guest, 2014). In a competitive age, there is great competition for skilled workers and the employees are always in the look for better working environments. On this note, the human resource managers have the duty to keep their employees by developing a healthy work environment that takes care of the social, psychological, emotional and economic values (Namie, 2003). Resultantly, managers must be able to shun work place bullying for the long term benefit of their organizations in a competitive business environment. A wide range of research has been conducted to reveal the negative impacts of work place bullying within the contemporary work environment. Vartia (2001) pursued a research to identify the impact of work place bullying within the work environment. In his research, he measured the level of stress and psychological ill-health within work place in both the targets of bullying and the observers. The findings of this research showed that both targets and observers of bullying in the work place have a higher level of stress and psychological ill-health as compared to those is healthy work environment. The research showed that those employees in such work places had low self-esteem and had little confidence in handling their duties. These findings resemble to the findings of the research by Barker et al. (2013) which proved that bullying in work place reduces the morale in work place and kills confidence of the workers. More recent research by Namie (2003) confirms that there is indeed a consensus among many scholars that bullying is the cause of stress at work. As it is the primary duty of the human resource management to management stress among its employees, it is clear that it would be crucial to prevent stress by eliminating any aspects of bullying within work place. Of more interest is the fact that bullying has direct consequences on the performance of the organization. To begin with, stress is a major cause of reduced work performance in the work environment (Namie, 2003). For instance, an employee who may be stressed during their time of work is likely to deliver lower work output as compared to one who is emotionally stable. This is because work output is a product of mind co-ordination and physical cooperation. Secondly, stressed employees are more likely to cause accidents within the work place (Devonish, 2013). An employee who suffers from prolonged stress has a problem in concentrating with their jobs and may not be keen with their actions. This may result to a great loss to an organization and sometimes death (Devonish, 2013). Additionally, work place bullying kills self-confidence within the workers and makes it impossible for them to be innovative in conducting their work. For instance, an employee who is reprimanded after he accidentally breaks a tool in the course of work may never have the confidence to try out new approaches to solve problems. In the contemporary work environment, employees need to be motivated to build self-confidence to work independently and solve emerging organizational problems (Vartia, 2001). On this ground, work place bullying leads to organizational loss in the short-term. In the long-term, work place bullying can lead to complete failure of the organization. Work place bullying results to massive loss of employees within an organization, which in the long has severe consequences for the organization. Workers who are bullied in their work place do not set long-term goals within the organization and always looking for better job opportunities (Vartia, 2001). Since they are unsatisfied, they will leave the organization as soon as another opportunity emerges (Namie, 2003). On this note, these employees are not aligned to the long-term goals of the organization and are not committed to driving the organization to success. Loss of experienced workmanship is a great loss for an organization (Hutchinson, 2012). The organization has to incur the expense of conducting regular interviews and training the employees, while they will leave as soon as another opportunity occurs. The performance of an organization depends on the ability of the human resource management to sustain the employees in the long term, as they have adequate experience to perform optimally (Hutchinson, 2012). For this reason, the organization will suffer from loss of experienced talent, leading to low performance. At times, bullied employees are likely to go on strike, leading to loss of organization time and resources (Galanaki & Papalexandris, 2013). Therefore, the consequences of work place bullying may have far reaching effects including closure of an organization. On this note, the human resource managers are tasked with a duty of maintaining a healthy work environment to win employee loyalty. To begin with, the human resource managers should provide fair wages for their employees to ensure that they are satisfied and perform optimally in their duties resources (Galanaki & Papalexandris, 2013). Another important aspect of maintaining modest organizational behaviour is developing an effective communication strategy (Hutchinson, 2012). Communication is one of the key tools within an organization that maintains harmony and reduces chances of work place harassment resources (Galanaki & Papalexandris, 2013). For instance, polite language in communication helps to ensure that there is cohesion between the management and the labour force. Any person using impolite language in communication should be punished according to set organizational regulations. To achieve this, it is crucial that organizations form feedback channels through which bullied employees can express their grievances for appropriate action against offenders. The human resource managers should focus on maintaining a satisfied labour force, which is not susceptible to harassment (Pfeffer, 2007). An organization that stops bully behaviour is likely to benefit from a well strong work team that is aligned to the long term goals of the organization. In conclusion, work place bullying is one of the organizational vices that may hurt both the short-term and long-term strategies of an organization. While it manifests in diverse forms, it is a complex term to determine and measure making it a challenge to address it. The consequences of work place bullying are low work output due to stress among and employees and massive loss of employees due to employee disloyalty for unfriendly work environments. Reduced work output results to organizational loss while loss of experienced employees results to disorientation of the organizations long term goals. On this note, the human resource managers have a role of modelling work behaviour by enforcing effective communication strategies, paying the employees fairly and punishing any unfriendly behaviour within the organization. The ability of the human resource managers to control work place bullying within their organization will determine their ability to acquire achieve both the short and long-term goals of the organization. Bibliography Branch, S, Ramsay, S, & Barker, M 2013, Workplace Bullying, Mobbing and General Harassment: A Review, International Journal Of Management Reviews, 15, 3, pp. 280-299, Business Source Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 2 May 2014. Devonish, D 2013, Workplace bullying, employee performance and behaviours. The mediating role of psychological well-being, Employee Relations, 35, 6, pp. 630-647, Business Source Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 2 May 2014. Galanaki, E, & Papalexandris, N 2013, Measuring workplace bullying in organisations, International Journal of Human Resource Management, 24, 11, pp. 2107-2130, Business Source Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 2 May. Hutchinson, J 2012, Rethinking Workplace Bullying as an Employment Relations Problem, Journal of Industrial Relations, 54, 5, pp. 637-652, Business Source Complete, 2014 EBSCOhost, viewed 2 May 2014. McDonald, P, Backstrom, S, & Allegretto, A 2007, Underpaid and exploited, Youth Studies Australia, 26, 3, pp. 10-18, Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 2 May 2014. McCormack, D, Djurkovic, N, & Casimir, G 2013, Workplace bullying: the experiences of Building and construction apprentices, Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources, 51, 4, pp. 406-420, Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 2 May 2014. Namie, G 2003, Workplace bullying: Escalated incivility, Ivey Business Journal, 68, 2, pp. 1-6, Business Source Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 2 May 201 Pfeffer, J. 2007. Human resources from an organizational behaviour perspective: Some paradoxes explained. The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 21(4), 115-134. Namie, G 2003, Workplace bullying: Escalated incivility, Ivey Business Journal, 68, 2, pp. 1-6, Business Source Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 2 May 2014. Vartia, M 2001, Consequences of workplace bullying with respect to the well-being of it’s targets and the observers of bullying, Scandinavian Journal Of Work, Environment & Health, 1, p. 63, JSTOR Arts & Sciences X, EBSCOhost, viewed 2 May 2014. Woodrow, C, & Guest, D 2014, When good HR gets bad results: exploring the challenge of HR implementation in the case of workplace bullying, Human Resource Management Journal, 1, p. 38, Academic OneFile, EBSCOhost, viewed 2 May 2014. Read More