Bullying and Harassment
This paper recognises the growing trend of Bullying and
Harassment at workplace in our society.
The paper will not focused only on bullying and harassment at
workplace, but also in the areas of sexual harassment, domestic violence, mediation
team, conflict and dispute resolution and labour law.
The introductory part of the report will be mainly about the
definition of bullying and harassment. I will also go further to explain causes
and prevention of bullying and harassment at workplace. It is a great topic
that affects our daily living; a lot of people are afraid or shy away from
talking about it.
With close examination and thinking innocently, I deem it
necessary to explore ways to help integrate abused people back to the society.
INTRODUCTION
The information retrieved from two sources below will be my
primary tools to discuss issues of bullying and harassment. I will also explain
our rights concerning harassment, how to identify it, when to report to the
management or law enforcement officer and how to prevent future occurrence.
One of the sources is the Government Report from Ontario Human
Rights Commission, Ontario, Canada and the second will be an article from Suzy
Fox and Lamont E. Stallworth. Good definition of harassment can be retrieved
from Government of Ontario Human Rights Commission which states that
“Harassment refers to comments that are unwelcome or should have been known to
be unwelcome. Every person has the right to be free from humiliating or
annoying behaviour that is based on one or more grounds in the code”.(OHRC
1999)
The definition of bullying can be retrieved from articles
written by two authors Suzy Fox and Lamont Stallworth. The title of the article
is bullying a framework for two internal organisational approaches to resolving
and preventing workplace bullying: Alternative dispute resolution and training.
The definition states that “workplace bullying is a behaviour that threatens,
intimidates or isolates people at work or undermines their reputation or job
performance”
The first source talks about the Ontario Labour Law, sexual,
physical and emotional harassments .It is a great source that actually treats
the issues of harassment at workplace in full details.
The second source explains the issues of bullying at
workplace, alternative dispute resolution and workplace anti-bullying training.
It greatly emphasises the importance of anti-bullying training for victims of
bullying, co-workers and managers. The Authors went further that bullying and
harassment affect all and everybody should understand the impact at workplace.
DEFINING WORKPLACE
BULLYING AND HARASSMENT
Workplace bullying is a social menace that often repeated
itself, unjustified actions of individuals or group of people towards a target.
The target may be student, employee and children with intention to humiliate,
intimidate and demean; which can constitute danger to health or safety of the
person.
Bullying has great similarity to sexual harassment, many
supervisors at work made some sexual explicit comments to co-worker and pass
sexual request; once the junior staff denied the request the supervisor shows
bullying attitude towards the junior worker. That even takes me to abuse of
power. This bullying behaviour affects the morale of the worker performance at
work.
Rayner(1997,pp199-200) felt “there were clear parallels
between workplace bullying and sexual harassment”. Because some people in
authority believe that they can use their power of office to intimidate female
workers to satisfy their sexual urge in order to show favouritism to female
workers. Bullying behaviour is also similar to mobbing; mobbing refers to a situation
whereby a group of co-workers are targeting another worker. An example is you
resume work in the morning and you give all your co-worker a cup of coffee each
and you just single out a co-worker. The co-worker singled out will consider
him/herself as a person being hated by the group.
These are the following examples of workplace bullying:
Being yelled or sworn at
Receiving blame without any justifiable reason
Negative criticism
Lack of respect shown toward an employee
Employee being denied a request for leave or time off when
feeling sick
Assigning many tasks and giving an unrealistic deadline to
complete a task
Workplace harassment can be defined as unwanted conduct
affecting the dignity of men and women at workplace. It may be related to age,
sex, race, disability, religion, sexual orientation, nationality or any
personal characteristic of the individual, and may be persistent or an isolated
incidence.” Aces (2006).
This paper will focus on the most common types of harassment:
Sexual harassment and harassment based on race.
Sexual harassment:
“Harassment in the workplace because of sex by employer or agent of the
employer or by another employee is prohibited under the code. It includes
unwelcome sexual remarks, physical contact, leering, in appropriate starring, demands
for date or sexual favours, and displays of sexually offensive pictures or
graffiti.”OHRC (1999).
People take most things for granted as well as sexual
harassment. An example is a male supervisor demanding for dates from a newly
hired female worker and that led to unwanted touching that she is afraid to
report to the management in fear of losing her job.
Harassment on race and related grounds
As earlier discussed in this paper, harassment is defined as
“engaging in a course of vexatious comment or conduct that is known or ought
reasonably to be known to be unwelcome”. (OHRC 1999). It includes racial
epithets and comments ridiculing individuals because of race or related grounds.
People can be considered as being harassed when they are humiliated because of religious
dress or singled out for jokes that are related to race or ethnic origins. It
is obvious that racially based comments such as Go back to your country is
offensive. Also a situation whereby an employer tolerates racial graffiti can
be considered as an example of racial harassment.
When the law fails
The human resources and employment law commununities occur
that bullying be so defined as to exclude trivial or frivolous incidents or
accusation (Fox and Stallworth,2008b)pp222.
I quite agree with comments made by Fox and Stallworth
because most big corporations do not take cases of bullying and harassment
serious because of legality behind it.Most cases of harassment has been
reported to Human Resources always being downplayed by the management of the
company. It could be believed that management supports the superior or
supervisor at the expense of the junior worker that made formal report of
harassment. An example of this is the case of a junior worker that reported his
manager to Human Resources Department of his company accusing his manager of
vexatious comments “where are you from , is that the way you guys dress in your
country?” After two months of investigation the management came up with a
verdict that is not favourable to the the junior worker. The management simply
told the junior worker that the company did not see any wrongdoings in the
course of their investigation and they insist that the supervisor is acting
according to the policy of the company. I was not amazed that the management of
the company supported the supervisor; probably the supervisor is a family
relation or friend to one of the company directors. Most of the time decisions
always favour people at the top position
Causes and Prevention of Harassment and Bullying:
There are
many causes of harassment and bullying in the workplace, most worker sometimes
made themselves vulnerable to harassment and bullying in different ways; a good
example is the situation where a female junior worker approach her supervisor
and started telling her personal story about her going through divorce and
later asked her male supervisor what is he doing on weekend?.She further
continued to seduce her supervisor about feeling of loneliness and she is
desperate to go out this weekend and the supervisor finally agreed to have a
date. They had date and later the relationship continue to grow which led them
to had continual affectionate relationship and this actually affects the
productivity at work and the male supervisor started to take advantage of the
female worker by having sex almost every week with her and even when the female
staff is not in the mood the supervisor has to force or threaten her to satisfy
her sexual urge. The fear of losing her job, the female worker cannot say no to
supervisor request. The best way to prevent this situation not to happen is for
the female staff not to solicit for sex and ask for date with her superior of
different gender.
Some
individuals are aggressive in nature; they want to be in control of everything
once they are in supervisory position. They go around bullying people in order
to meet job deadlines, they go into your personal space and they have no
respect for you. Because they are in position of authority they believe they
can hurt people‘s feeling. The best way to prevent this kind of bullying is to
call the attention of your supervisor and explain how you feel been treated and
if the supervisor refused to listen and you have to go ahead and make a formal
complain to human resource department of your company.
Dispute and Conflict Resolution:
It is
greatly important that every organization design a policy that will curb the
occurrence of workplace bullying and harassment that will create a common
ground for dispute and conflict resolution that every worker will have sense of
satisfaction.” The term conflict management or ADR has become increasingly
recognised as a cost-effective and fair method of resolving a variety of types
of workplace disputes, primarily statutory-based disputes arising under federal
and state EEO laws”.(Lipsky, Seeber & Fincher,2000).
ADR is the
processes created to resolve disputes openly and it is available in
administrative agencies and courts.
There are
three different types of ADR processes; The definitions of these three root ADR
processes are as follow (Lipsky et
al,2000).
·
Arbitration: A method of resolving a dispute in
which the disputants presents their case to an impartial third party (or
private judge),who then makes a decision for them that resolves the conflict.
This decision is usually final and binding.
·
Adjunction: Any forms of dispute resolution in
which the parties to the dispute present proofs and arguments to neutral third
party(usually a judge),who has the power
to impose a decision on the disputants.
·
Mediation: A voluntary and informal process in
which the disputing party to assist them in reaching a negotiated
Conclusion:
This
research paper has enabled me to
emphasis issues of harassment and bullying in workplace and how it affects all.
It is a great fact that harassment and bullying is a social phenomenon that
keeps evolving itself. It causes problem to workers and that reduce their
productivity and morale.
There are
many facts that many employees are scare or reluctant to launch complain about
being bullied for fear of losing their jobs.
References
Fox, S.
& Stallworth, L.E.(2009).Building a framework for two internal
organizational approaches to resolving and preventing workplace bullying:
Alternative dispute resolution and training. Consulting and Psychology:
practice and research,61(3),p220-241.
Rayner,
C.(1997).The Incidence of Workplace Bullying, Journal of Community and Applied
Social Psychology,vol.7,p199-208.
Kieseker, R.
& Marchant, T.(1999). Workplace Bullying in Australia: A review of current
conceptualisations and existing research, vol2, p61-74.
Ontario
Human Rights Commission. Human
Rights at Work.(1999).
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