Workplace bullying continues to be a significant problem in the 21st century. Although it is viewed as a form of aggression, bullying is hard to identify as it can manifest in both obvious and subtle forms. Besides, Strong management that gives constructive, objective feedback may be confused as a form of bullying. Despite all this, the existence of bullying cannot be denied. It has to manifest as a pattern of behavior, and thus a single incidence alone should not be considered. Bullying comes in several ways.
Workplace bullying has been demonstrated where an employee was given an unreasonable workload. This means that the affected employee had a lot of work at hand, and this gave them unnecessary pressure to complete the tasks at hand. The result of this was the alienation of the employee from the rest of the workplace team members. Faced with this isolation, coupled with long working hours, resulted in physical and mental exhaustion for the employee. This gave rise to burnout and depression. The bully's target was to cut off the employee from other workers as they thought of the employee as a threat to their position. The employee had great social skills with the rest of the workers and was a great problem solver with admirable working ethics such as competency, efficiency, and desire to keep learning. These attributes nurtured several new employees in the company and, by extension, careers.
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In the article, several aspects of bullying are provided. One such aspect deals with the profile of targets and the workplace bully. The article identifies that those who face bullying are mostly viewed as a threat to the position occupied by the bully. They are said to be among the brightest. Besides, the article identifies them as having emotional intelligence and great social and ethical skills that nurture others. On the part of the bully, they are said to devise mechanisms to undermine their target position consciously. They do this by setting unreasonable targets to their targets, increasing responsibilities, manipulative practices, deceptive measures, and an overall Jekyll and Hyde nature (Wiedmer, 2011) .
Another aspect of workplace bullying in the article is through calculative alienation of the victim. As already mentioned, such individuals may be given a lot of work that leaves them with no free time to interact with their colleagues. Also, by alienating such individuals, this amount to discrimination. With such individuals in exclusion, there hitherto position of influence by interaction with other employees is cut off. This leaves the bully who, in most times, is in a senior position with perceived little threat to their position. With the alienation, such employees always feel marginalized and frozen out aspects that can force one to resign, hence unknowingly aiding the course of the bully.
Workplace bullying has to be managed with the potential to cause an unhealthy working environment that is detrimental to the health of any organization. Several measures have been identified in the article. First, organizations need to acknowledge that workplace bullying exists. This then should be followed up by implementable policy measures that encourage civility while at the same time denouncing bullying. The article identifies disciplinary and legal consequences of bullying as one of the elements of the policy to be put in place. An incident reporting portal should be in a place where bullying instances are monitored and tracked over time, and the corrective measures put in place are also assessed. Such policies must also include employers recognizing and ensuring supervisors report incidents and move swiftly to protect bullied employees. For the part of the bullies, the organization should clearly state that all complaints will be processed fairly, and if remorseful, they will be given a second chance and be coached on civility. Organizational interventions have been shown to increase civility by 5% (Gillen, Sinclair, Kernohan, Begley, & Luyben, 2017) .
On their part, employees need to acknowledge that stopping bullying is everyone's responsibility. All employees are to ensure they report any instance of bullying and avoid being accomplices. This would require employees to be familiar with what constitutes bullying through a review of the company policy on what bullying is and what behaviors are unacceptable. They should also know what to do when such instances happen. Employees also need to be receptive to training programs on harassment and bullying. Here they will learn what constitutes bullying, know strategies for self-help like having difficult conversations, and being assertive. Proper documentation of bullying instances where the proprietor, the victim, the date and time, the place, and which form of bullying happened needs to be documented. In the evidence where witnesses were present, their names should also be included to provide a source of corroborative information (Sepler, 2015) . Besides, employees finding a “buddy to work with” or someone whom they can confide in can help prevent this behavior as it gives them a platform through which bullying incidents are aired.
References
Gillen, P., Sinclair, M., Kernohan, W. G., Begley, C., & Luyben, A. (2017). Interventions for the Prevention of Bullying in the Workplace. Cochrane Database Syst Rev . Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6464940/
Sepler, F. (2015). WORKPLACE BULLYING: WHAT IT IS AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT. Journal of Collective Bargaining in the Academy . Retrieved from https://thekeep.eiu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1499&context=jcba
Wiedmer, L. T. (2011). Workplace Bullying: Costly and Preventable. In Winter, Morality in Education.
