I am a strong leader; You overstep the mark a bit; He is a bully. Conjugate the verb and you reveal your prejudices. You also confirm that the question of bullying can be subjective and vary according to circumstances. In a crisis, a manager might have to demand more from people who won’t always feel able to provide it. Bullying? Probably – but possibly in a good cause.
New research from Acas reminds us that bullying remains a serious workplace problem, even if not all of it is seen or heard. The organisation’s helpline has been busy: Acas has fielded 20,000 calls about bullying and harassment over the past 12 months. Lost productivity through absenteeism and stress related to bullying is estimated to cost the UK economy over £17bn a year.
It is easy to denounce bullying. The harder task is to understand why it is happening and to suggest ways of dealing with it. Bullying is an abuse of power. And just as businesses have supply chains, so there is often a supply chain of bad or intimidatory relationships that lead one particular manager into bullying a colleague.
Ambition or impatience can turn reasonable people nasty. Fear does not usually bring out the best in bosses. If you think you might be a member of the “fingertip club” – you are holding on to your job by your fingertips – it takes depth of character and personal resilience not to take out your anxiety on those around – or, in hierarchical terms, under – you.
The culture of an organisation is its operating software. If bullies are in charge and promoting like-minded people, don’t be surprised if the employee’s lot is not a happy one.
As long as bullying is tolerated it will never go away. Popular culture reinforces this. Believe what you see on the TV show The Apprentice, and you might conclude it’s the height of any business person’s ambition to declare “You’re fired!” to as many people as possible. In this game the winner is the last one standing, the one who can take the most pressure and, potentially, punishment. Does that sound like a good apprenticeship to you? What sort of a boss will the winner make?
Politics is part of the problem too. The only glimpse many people get of politics for much of the time is prime minister’s questions (PMQs). This is 30 minutes of low-grade pantomime which casts doubt on some of the Enlightenment’s founding principles. The winner here is often not the person who asks a good question or who raises an important issue for debate. The winner might be the person who goes last and pours as much abuse and scorn into his answer as possible. It is bullying, plain and simple. Some people like it a lot. It sets the tone for much of what passes for political debate.
And now we find the bullying ethos spreading to social media. While some research suggests that bullying at school has declined a little, online the cyberbullies are uninhibited and rampant. We are still learning how much harm this can do and what the ultimate cost of this will be.
Everyone, victim and perpetrator, is learning about the impact of new technology as it develops; learning on the job, as it were. The writer Julie Burchill has identified a new phenomenon: the “cry-bully”, someone who dishes it out but can’t take it. And no, I am not going to name names. I don’t want to get bullied.
An under-discussed aspect of the “rise of the machines” and the threat of being replaced by computers is that, naturally, automatons do not complain about rough treatment. You can bully an algorithm as much as you like. The PC does not have a union rep. It does not have to be consulted.
So in speaking up about bullying, people are also doing their bit to preserve and protect the human factor at work. Perhaps this is the choice we face: to insist that human beings deserve respect and essential dignity at work, or to give in to the bullies and lie down as the machines march in to replace us.
This new data has helped us to see what is going on. Effective employee representation might restrain the bullies. As John Earls, head of research at Unite, points out, Acas used to have a duty to promote collective bargaining. Maybe the answer to its busy bullying helpline would be to resume some of that former activity.
