NANCY MABASO AND LUCIA MUNONGI | Intentional educational interventions needed to curb workplace bullying

With schools having reopened last month, bullying is likely to be among the issues that teachers and parents will be alert to.

The same cannot be said about workplace bullying. This is because the general assumption is that bullying is only limited to children at school. This is a far cry from the truth. A study by Vrouvas in 2018 reported that 80% of teachers in public schools had experienced workplace bullying.

Workplace bullying is prevalent in many if not all, institutions and companies. A recent study in SA by Conco, Baldwin-Ragaven, Christofides, Libhaber, Rispel, White, Kramer in 2021 for instance, uncovered that more than 58% of the participants had experienced workplace bullying.

Of interest is that 44% experienced bullying more than once, while 64% of the participants had witnessed bullying. Bullying is an intentionally persistent act by one person that causes discomfort to the next person.

In the workplace, bullying can present itself as verbal and non-verbal such as name-calling, rudeness, social exclusion and nonverbal intimidation. Bullying at the workplace has been known to have detrimental effects on the employees’ well-being.

In many cases, this often leads to absenteeism from work, and if left unaddressed, workplace bullying can show its ugly face in various ways. The effects can manifest in the form of demotivation, physical illnesses and psychiatric conditions such as anxiety, depression and panic attacks from excessive worry.

In some cases, victims of bullying may resign from their jobs if they fail to withstand the heat. However, it is not always the case that all victims decide to leave. There have been instances where victims opt to retaliate in revenge.

One way they can do this is to sabotage the bully, which may often translate to sabotaging the organisation. Overall, workplace bullying contributes to reduced organisation productivity, which can translate to the loss of revenue. Some organisations may even close as a result.

In cases where workplace bullying happens in big institutions, it may gravely compromise the company or institution’s reputation. Staff turnover may result in the institutional brain drain as experienced and talented senior staff members leave for more favourable working environments.

Although there is a lot of information available on workplace bullying, one question that remains standing is why bullying continues to be a complex phenomenon with no clear-cut solutions at hand, given its detrimental effects on the staff and organisations.

Several reasons can be linked to the lack of clear-cut solutions at hand for workplace bullying: Lack of policies on antibullying: there is evidence that some organisations do not have set policies. Lack of awareness of existing policies on workplace bullying.

Some organisations make no efforts to alert their employees of the existing policies. Lack of awareness campaigns on workplace bullying: rarely do organizations hold campaigns to raise awareness on workplace bullying.

Fear of confronting the bullies: in some cases, victims of workplace bullying often lack the courage to stand up to the perpetrators. Fear of consequences: in most cases, resolutions favor those in power.

Ultimately, education becomes a necessary catalyst toward behaviour change, which can minimise or end bullying. This calls for intentional educational interventions from early on.

■ Dr Mabaso is a lecturer and educational psychologist in the department of educational psychology at the University of Johannesburg

■ Dr Munongi is a seniorlecturer in the department of educational psychology at UJ