There is some bad news on the research front in that a Cochrane Review completed in 2017 (Gillen et. al., 2017) found that the data for interventions to effectively reduce bullying was poor and there’s not much to tell when it comes to interventions that alleviate bullying. The review did find that one study reduced poor behaviours but not bullying. This study used the CREW model (standing for Civility, Respect and Engagement in the Workforce) and was conducted in a health service. The intervention measured incivility, not bullying, but the reviewers considered the behaviours to be similar.
The CREW intervention aimed to be flexible and respond to the specific needs of the group. Work teams identified their strengths and weaknesses in respect to civility. Each group had a facilitator who used a toolkit with 40 different exercises and discussion topics. Group sessions were run weekly for a period of 6 months . Sessions would typically discuss questions such as
“How do we show respect to one another here?”
“How do we show disrespect to one another here?”
CREW is a variation of what many organisations do already. Developing a set of group norms is a well established way to get groups to work better together and be specific about how they should be treating each other (Dhanini et. al., 2019). So it would be no surprise to any group facilitator or HR professional that the intervention improved the health care worker’s reports of work team civility, burnout, job attitude and management trust.
Since the deflating Cochrane Review in 2017 there have been a number of studies that have tested other interventions that have proved successful. And remember there is always the option to ensure that the precursors to bullying outlined in the previous episode, can be addressed. Practices such as:
Reducing stress across the work environment
Managing workloads to reasonable levels
Ensuring staff are clear about their role and that of others
Managing change effectively to reduce uncertainty and stress of staff
Providing training for leaders on how to lead with democratic leadership styles rather than autocratic leadership styles
Give support to work teams to create their own group norms and behaviours
Consistent with the CREW approach Dhanini (2019) concluded after an extensive review of the research on bullying that “we expect that organizations that establish norms for civil interpersonal interactions should have lower levels of incivility than organizations that do not have these norms”.
Conflict management climate
Conflict management climate (CMC) is the perception of an organisations conflict management policies and procedures. Employees continually assess the fairness and predictability of these practices which are reinforced by the interactions between leaders and staff. Who do I go to and what will happen when I complain about negative behaviours? This question defines CMC. People watch how others are treated and supported when they make a complaint about bullying or are involved in a conflict. The CMC works at both the organisational level and the team level. The way the team leader or middle level manager handles conflict is as important as how senior executives talk about conflict and the human resources department processes conflict complaints. All these actions and behaviours combine to create an organisation’s CMC.
A Norwegian study of workers on ferries operating on the Norwegian coastline found that an effective CMC reduced the incidences of bullying behaviours (Zahlquist, 2019). The main way the study achieved this was through the CMC, reducing role conflict and cognitive demands, which are both predictors of workplace bullying. This is successful because when crew members had problems related to their work and how it is done (i.e. they are unsure what their role was or are feeling overwhelmed), they were confident their manager would be able to help them sort it out. Another successful method is having a designated person to direct a complaint to (Butterworth, 2016), which smooths the process and encourages individuals to bring forward their complaint.
The questions used in the study are a good guide to assess how your CMC is rated by your staff. How your staff respond to these questions on a scale of 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree) gives an indicator of how they view your CMC:
“If I have a serious disagreement with someone at work, I know who I should talk to about it”;
“The way we deal with disagreements between employees in my unit works well”;
“My superiors deal with conflicts in a good manner”;
“We have good procedures and methods for raising disagreements and conflicts in my workplace.”
Addressing these questions by implementing programs that will improve employee responses is an effective way to develop an effective CMC and reduce bullying.
As we have long known our workplace policies and procedures have a critical role in reducing and addressing bullying. Now we know one of the reasons is that these policies and procedures contribute to an effective CMC. The organisation has to take them seriously and follow through when a complaint is lodged, and if this is the case it builds the confidence of staff to take action themselves or bring a complaint forward. The sense that justice is carried out is the critical part of having anti-bullying policies, they can’t be just documents. If staff sense that the organisation lacks procedural justice it can lead to an increase in bullying (i.e. the bully knows there are no consequences) (Feijo, 2019).
Having an organisation which has a culture of support helps buffer the effects of bullying (Butterworth, 2016). Support from leaders and colleagues helps give the bullying target the emotional strength to take action against bullying behaviour.
Strong psychosocial (organisational support) safety climate (PSC)
Psychosocial safety climate (PSC) has been found to be a strong predictor of bullying behaviour. The weaker the PSC in the workplace, the more likely bullying is to occur. The PSC is simply how effective an organisation is in supporting staff in their psychological health. What comes first the wellbeing of staff or productivity and profit? The PSC covers areas such as (Zahlquist, 2019; Buttwerworth, 2016):
Stress
Occupational risks
Role conflict and ambiguity
Job control (i.e. how much say we have in how our work is done)
Monotonous and repetitive tasks
Work demands, such as speed and volume of work
A strong psychosocial safety climate is affected by (Dollard, 2017):
The ability of the organisation, and in particular senior staff, to demonstrate support and commitment about issues that affect psychological health and safety.
Communication about factors and risks that affect psychological safety
The extent to which staff are involved (e.g unions, general staff, OHS reps) in matters that affect psychological health and safety
How much the organisation prioritises health and safety over productivity
One Australian study involving 1062 participants across a number of industries found that strong PSC predicted reduced bullying over 4 years (Dollard et. al., 2017). The research concluded:
“These findings suggest that an increase in PSC in an organization decreases the likelihood of bullying through its influence on procedures implemented in three areas: those directly addressing bullying, reducing stressors,and resolving conflict.”
Role clarity comes up again
A lack of role clarity is associated with an increased likelihood of bullying (Feijo, 2019). Lack of role clarity is a situation where there is confusion as to who does what and when. This can lead to interpersonal conflict which can then escalate to bullying. Sometimes the bullying is direct person-to-person confrontations but can also be displayed through the undermining of others, such as the withholding of information required to complete a task and exclusion from meetings. These forms of bullying can be harder to identify and take multiple instances for even the target to become aware of it occurring.
A lack of role clarity is a stressor for staff and reduces the psychological need many of us have for certainty. The mechanisms an organisation has to increase certainty around work practices, such as inclusive types of leadership and procedures that allow the review of work processes, help maintain the clarity of what everyone’s role is within a team and avoids the escalation of conflict into bullying.
Participation has to be part of the intervention
A study conducted across ten Australian supermarket stores tested a mixture of interventions and their combined effect on bullying (Li et. al., 2023). A survey was initially conducted to identify risk areas to become topics for discussion about potential interventions. The survey identified risk areas that related to people management practices, job demands and job resources, as well as the types of bullying behaviours that staff were experiencing. For example the lowest scoring people management items were:
Recognising and rewarding job performance
Managing tasks and workload
Managing underperformance
These items were then used as topics of discussion in small group workshops that involved staff across the store and they subsequently created action plans to address these issues and subsequently reduce bullying. Bullying was monitored across the stores that participated and compared to those that did not participate in the intervention.
The stores that participated in the intervention had:
A decrease in bullying complaints (where as the comparison stores experienced an increase)
Complaints to employee relations within the human resources department decreased at greater rate than comparison stores
An increase in employee advocacy and customer experience where as the comparison stores experienced a decrease in both.
One of the significant factors was the improvement in the job demands ratings via people management practices. The job demands were assessed with questions such as:
I have to make complex decisions at work
I have to do a lot of emotionally draining work
I have to perform a lot of physically strenuous tasks to carry out my work
Similar to the Norwegian ferry study, having managers available to discuss job difficulties reduces many of the factors that create conflict and subsequently bullying. One of the keys was using research to identify risk areas and then involving staff to create the solution. This brought together staff and created a ‘we are all in together’ mentality. Here are some comments from a staff member and manager (Li et. al., 2023):
“Yeah, one whole team not just your—like you’re a team player not a department player, you’re about the whole store, not just your department; that’s a big difference I’ve noticed. Yeah, that’s us.” Team member
“I think we were kind of not really a team, but we were like several teams, but now I think we’ve had that opportunity to really grow and develop, and send people across and cross-train people, so it’s now more of that one team mentality as well.” Manager
Cognitive rehearsal is an effective training exercise
Doran (2020) refers to a study with a group of nurses in a hospital in Korea that used a learning technique called cognitive rehearsal. Cognitive rehearsal involves the participants imagining the bullying situation and rehearsing non-violent responses and coping strategies. In this study the nurses were presented with a scenario via an app on their phone. The study found that it reduced the nurses' experiences of person-related and work-related bullying and turnover intention. It had no effect on reducing intimidation-related (i.e. physical) bullying experiences.
Cognitive rehearsal is similar to many practice exercises used in anti-bullying training programs, so there is now evidence that these common techniques are effective. A review of five studies, which is still in pre-print, found that cognitive rehearsal was an effective strategy in reducing bullying (Jeong et. al., 2023). The rehearsal activity at least seems to give participants increased confidence to attempt to address bullying behaviour. As we learnt in the previous episode bullying depletes emotional energy and self esteem, so anything that can increase a bullying target’s self-esteem and readiness to confront a bully will be an effective strategy.
References
Butterworth, P., Leach, L. S., & Kiely, K. M. (2016). Why it’s important for it to stop: Examining the mental health correlates of bullying and ill-treatment at work in a cohort study. Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 50(11), 1085-1095.
Dhanani, L., Wolcott, A., & Pueschel, A. (2019, July). Is it the person or the place? A meta-analytic test of the antecedents of workplace incivility. In Academy of management proceedings (Vol. 2019, No. 1, p. 12256). Briarcliff Manor, NY 10510: Academy of Management.
Dollard, M. F., Dormann, C., Tuckey, M. R., & Escartín, J. (2017). Psychosocial safety climate (PSC) and enacted PSC for workplace bullying and psychological health problem reduction. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 26(6), 844-857.
Doran, C., Rebar, A., Waters, K., Meredith, P., & Doran, C. (2020). A Review of the Evidence Related to the Impacts of, and Interventions for, Workplace Bullying in the Construction Industry. Mates in.
Feijó, F. R., Gräf, D. D., Pearce, N., & Fassa, A. G. (2019). Risk factors for workplace bullying: a systematic review. International journal of environmental research and public health, 16(11), 1945.
Gillen, P. A., Sinclair, M., Kernohan, W. G., Begley, C. M., & Luyben, A. G. (2017). Interventions for prevention of bullying in the workplace. Cochrane database of systematic reviews, (1).
Jeong, Y., Jung, H. S., & Baek, E. (2023). Effectiveness of cognitive rehearsal programs for the prevention of workplace bullying among hospital nurses in South Korea: A systematic review and meta-analysis, 28 September 2023, PREPRINT (Version 1) available at Research Square [https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-3255015/v1]
Li Y, Tuckey MR, Neall AM, Rose A, Wilson L. Changing the Underlying Conditions Relevant to Workplace Bullying through Organisational Redesign. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 2023; 20(5):4373. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20054373
Zahlquist, L., Hetland, J., Skogstad, A., & Einarsen, S. V. (2019). Job demands as risk factors of exposure to bullying at work: The moderating role of team-level conflict management climate. Frontiers in psychology, 10, 471375.
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