According to the latest ILO survey, around 743 million people worldwide suffer from workplace harassment or ‘mobbing’, which represents 22.8% of the total active world population. In Spain, the figures from the 2021 European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions report indicate that approximately 15% of workers have been subjected to at least one situation of workplace harassment throughout of their life.
Such a high prevalence worldwide, the seriousness of the consequences for the victims and its impact on practically all spheres of society require that the treatment of this problem be carried out from early detection and prevention.
Workplace bullying can severely impact the quality of life of the victim, with problems that can range from anxiety disorders, stress and depression, sleep problems, concentration and memory problems to muscle pain and chronic somatization, which also entails a deterioration of their general health and a drop in performance and motivation at work.
The company, on the other hand, can also be affected, by there may be an increased risk of absenteeism and prolonged sick leave or even receive claims or complaints before the Labor Inspectorate. For this reason, managers, as those most responsible for the identification and supervision of occupational hazards, must remain aware of compliance with current regulations regarding their prevention and use all means to preserve the safety and health of both workers like the company itself.
However, in recent years, the transformation of work environments resulting from the rise of digitization and ICT, as well as the generalization of work, has made the business environment highly changeable and demanding in favor of its efficiency and adaptation to changes. This factor can make it difficult for managers to detect and manage bad practices within the work environment and, therefore, put them and the organization at risk. In this sense, and with the aim of helping managers to identify signs and actions that constitute workplace harassment, hiscox has wanted to remember which are the most frequent types embodied in its Labor Practices Guide, created in collaboration with the Muñoz Arribas law firm.
different types of bullying
- mobbing. According to the ILO definition, it is any verbal or psychological hostile action that occurs systematically and persistently towards a single individual in the workplace, always with the aim of offending, intimidating or humiliating him. It can manifest itself, for example, in the spread of false rumors, in the isolation of the partner, in belittling or slander, among others. This is the term in English for what is commonly known in Spain as workplace harassment in general, so it is necessary to distinguish it from ‘bullying’, which is any act of harassment or mistreatment that occurs between students in the educational field and that has a more physical and less psychological character.
- ‘bossing’. This type of workplace harassment occurs when the perpetrator is a hierarchical authority in the workplace, such as a manager or manager, who takes advantage of his or her position of power to harass an employee. Sometimes, the aggressor or aggressors even resort to the use of dismissal threats, in order to induce fear in the victim and, in this way, either increase productivity or cause her to resign from work.
- Cyber bullying. Despite the fact that the term cyberbullying is normally related to the student environment, in which, in fact, there is a prevalence of 30% worldwide according to Unicef data, in recent years it has become an emerging risk in places of work, especially due to the boom in teleworking. This type of harassment encompasses all those aggressive behaviors or ‘mobbing’ that occur through digital channels such as instant messaging, calls, social networks or email.
- ‘Harassment’. Although this type of harassment and ‘mobbing’ or ‘bullying’ can be considered fundamentally the same, the truth is that there is a difference that is interesting to take into account. Harassment is that systematic and constant harassment towards an individual in the work environment, but this usually occurs exclusively for reasons based on individual characteristics and differences, such as sexual orientation, age or ethnicity.
- ‘Stalking’. It is a type of psychological harassment in which the aggressor interrupts in a disturbing, repeated and, above all, unwanted way, in the life of a person with whom he has no relationship or has previously had a relationship. This type of harassment can occur in the work environment, manifesting itself in behaviors such as unwanted physical approach, access to the victim’s confidential information, theft of the victim’s objects, surveillance during working hours and can even lead to sexual abuse.
“Today, the socioeconomic environment requires companies to be socially responsible. Ensuring a healthy work environment is one of the responsibilities of the managers of organizations, and, in fact, not doing so can mean negligence. But the truth is that situations such as workplace bullying can be difficult to detect in time, which is why, at Hiscox, we once again want to be an integral support for managers in protecting themselves against this type of situation, putting at their disposal available not only our RC insurance for Managers, Administrators and Directors (D&O), but also a Guide to Labor Practices that will serve as support in the important task of supervising all labor practices within their organizations”says Diogo Ogando, senior D&O underwriter at Hiscox Iberia.
