Preventing workplace bullying
There are many compelling reasons that make workplace bullying a vastly under-reported phenomenon. Targets often operate in a state of denial for a long time before identifying it for what it is, and speaking up about it can spark retaliation from the bully.
A team of researchers at the University of New Brunswick is working to help people affected by workplace bullying, and to establish proactive measures that organizations can adopt to prevent it from happening in the first place.
Their efforts – which have culminated in the creation of a website called Toward a Respectful Workplace – have opened up a new level of candid discussion on how to deal with the issue.
Judith MacIntosh and Marilyn Noble are the co-chairs of the research team on workplace violence and abuse, based out of UNB Fredericton’s Muriel McQueen Fergusson Centre for Family Violence Research.
The duo’s work has garnered them national attention as experts on the subject. Noble fielded dozens of calls from reporters within a few months of their launching their preliminary study with targets of workplace bullying. A second study funded by the National Crime Prevention Strategy – examining the issue from the organizations’ perspective – has since culminated in the Toward a Respectful Workplace website.
“Workplace bullying was an issue that had received very little attention at the time we began. Our website has sparked interest and responses from across Canada,” says MacIntosh. “It’s now a discussable issue – and people really want to talk about it with us.”
Reaching out
In a nutshell, the impact of workplace bullying is personal diminishment – making others feel incompetent, ashamed, worthless, excluded, unwelcome, or unsafe, and thereby eroding their sense of self. It can have a negative impact on the entire organization, undermining trust, hampering productivity, and compromising safety.
MacIntosh and Noble began their research by conducting focus groups with women and men who had been affected by workplace bullying. They wanted to understand the problem from the targets’ perspectives, and to explore what resources targets might have wished they had had available to them when they were in the midst of the bullying situation.
After analyzing a series of these discussions, MacIntosh and Noble’s team designed a study to look across different workplaces and organizational cultures to find common threads and to search for effective solutions. Participants included managers, human resources specialists, and union representatives who were invited to brainstorm better ways of addressing the problem.
“We found that these participants wanted a website to get the word out,” says MacIntosh, who is the Assistant Dean of Research & Faculty Development with the faculty of nursing in Fredericton.
Prior to the development of Toward a Respectful Workplace, there were very few research-based community resources people could turn to regarding workplace bullying. By providing this information through a public website, the UNB researchers have made it easy and discreet for persons affected by workplace bullying to look at how to deal with the issue and learn how to approach their employers for help. The Website also allows organizations to find solutions when such problems arise, and to educate their employees on how to avoid it.
“It’s accessible to everyone,” says Noble, a community-based adult educator. “Broad dissemination of this information to the public is important because targets will often turn to their family and friends for advice. And a Website allows people who are embarrassed to find themselves caught up in this problem to find what they need without having to disclose their circumstances.”
Standing on the shoulders of giants
The Muriel McQueen Fergusson Centre, located at UNB Fredericton, is a nationally recognized research institution looking at family violence. Noble and MacIntosh’s research began there as a small project before it, too, became nationally recognized.
“UNB Fredericton is the perfect location because of the Muriel McQueen Fergusson Centre,” says MacIntosh. “It supported us in doing the research we needed on workplace abuse.”
New Brunswick’s population is roughly 50 per cent rural and 50 per cent urban, a rather different demographic from that addressed by other researchers in the field. Previous research on workplace bullying was generally conducted in larger urban centres. “We felt it was important to understand how smaller communities were experiencing and addressing this problem,” says Noble.
The website is only part of the solution.
“Our website provides information to help identify and understand the problem,” says MacIntosh, “but we need workplaces to become proactive in developing or adapting workplace bullying prevention strategies and solutions that are tailor-made to their particular organizational contexts.”
