The “Too Hard Basket”: managing workplace bullying

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the use of employee assistance programs (EAP) as a form of perceived organisational support (POS) to address workplace bullying (WB), from the perspective of employees who have been the victims of bullying. Design/methodology/approach Using an on-line survey, data were collected from 397 employees across a range of positions and industry sectors in Australia, who indicated they had been subjected to bullying. Findings The results of the study indicate that WB is rife, and although anti-bullying policies were in existence participants felt that these were mere tokenism. The level of POS and use of EAPs were considered to be inadequate and, interestingly, in some cases offered more support to the bully than the victim. Research limitations/implications With the increased rate of WB, organisations are seeking different ways to address this. This study highlights that the ability of EAPs to provide support to employees in these circumstances appears to be limited. The findings suggest that if management wish to use EAPs to support employees in cases of WB, they must invest more in them. Originality/value This study seeks to extend research into the management of WB through EAPs and POS and posits that there is a high level of dissatisfaction with management’s response and support with regard to bullying incidents.

Abrasive leaders who changed: learning from their experience

“…Intervention adequacy is also an issue. A case in point, Lockhart and Bhanugopan (2019) discovered victims of bullying believed employee assistance programs were poorly supported token efforts rather than helpful in preventing and mitigating bullying.…”

“…Vincent [1], President and CEO (Tucker, 2019) Organizations are faced with an unsettling reality: Workplace psychological aggression (WPA) is endemic (Potter et al, 2016), and current human resource management (HRM) practices are seemingly ineffective (Lockhart and Bhanugopan, 2019;Potter et al, 2016). WPA, recognized as a global phenomenon, is studied across numerous disciplines using a variety of conceptual terms (e.g.…”

Construction and validation of an instrument to measure workplace bullying

“…The phenomenon of workplace bullying has received attention for decades from educators, researchers and practitioners (Kwan et al , 2016; Srivastava and Dey, 2020). Research results mostly report that workplace bullying has significant effects on individual work duties, teamwork and entire organizations (Hsu, 2019; Lockhart and Bhanugopan, 2020). As a result, educators and researchers have attempted to explain the factors relating to the emergence of workplace bullying and its characteristics and to determine its causes and effects.…”