The people most likely to experience bullying at work are middle managers. These are the ones who tend to have the highest stress levels due to targets being placed upon them. They are not high enough ranked to make significant decisions within the company and yet they are the ones called upon to ensure the workforce implement all the decisions made at high levels. How well the company’s employees perform is up to them.
In this high stress role, pressure is put on them to achieve their targets. While this pressure can be positive and constructive, it often takes the form of bullying. Threats are common place. Obviously they are expected to perform to standard but to be threatened constantly that their job is hanging by a thread, that they might be demoted or suffer some form of punishment is to take advantage of the company’s authority over them. These middle managers often find themselves being bullied by the very processes that their superiors use to motivate them.
This bullying pressure, unsurprisingly, can rub off on the managers and they soon learn to use similar strategies. They begin to bully each other in the same way. It becomes ‘the way things are done’ in the company. Teachers know this very well. Perhaps we do not define them as middle management but they have their superiors and they are responsible for those beneath them (the children) to perform. Teachers are bullied more than any other profession (except perhaps, nursing). Being bullied by their heads of department and by each other is so common is has become almost second nature in schools. Although they all have anti bullying policies in place to protect the children from bullying at school it is not a good sign that their role models are demonstrating what not to do on such a regular basis.
If we want to stop bullying at work we have to radically change the structural hierarchy within our major corporations. Change the culture and we can change the behaviours.
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