Helge Hoel Manchester Business School The University of Manchester, UK

© Helge Hoel, University of Manchester

Helge Hoel

Manchester Business School

The University of Manchester, UK

PRIMA-EF Project – Helsinki, May 2008

Intervening against workplace bullying: exploring key issues


Structure of presentation

• Concept understanding and challenges to intervention

• Report on UK-based anti-bullying intervention

• Exploring some key issues in successful intervention


Defining bullying

• “Bullying at work means harassing, offending, socially excluding someone or negatively affecting someone’s work tasks. In order for the label bullying (or mobbing) to be applied to a particular activity, interaction or process it has to occur repeatedly and regularly, (e.g. weekly) and over a period of time (e.g. about six months). Bullying is an escalated process in the course of which the person confronted ends up in an inferior position and becomes the target of systematic negative social acts. A conflict cannot be called bullying if the incident is an isolated event or if two parties of approximately equal ‘strength’ are in conflict.”– Einarsen, Hoel, Zapf & Cooper (2003)


Workplace bullying: some obstacles for successful intervention

• Subjective and intangible nature of phenomenon making it difficult to acknowledge and rectify

• Sensitive issue for organisations and individuals involved:– Intervention may indicate a problem

• Power and control often at the centre

• Dynamics and process development


Client/customer violence: some obstacles for successful intervention

• Sensitive issue for organisations and individuals involved

• “The customer is king”

• Stigmatisation of targets: personal and professional shortcomings

• “Part of the job”


Intervening at different levels (taxonomy adopted from Murphy & Sauter, 2003)

Primary Secondary Tertiary

Legislation policy

Regulation (e.g. Swe) ETUC/UNICE agreement

ETUC/UNICE agreement

Industrial tribunal

Rehabilitation legislation (Sweden)

Employer/

Organisation

Policy/procedure, Risk-assessment

Leader training

Policy/procedure,

Mediation

Organisational recovery (consultant)

Job/task Job-redesign, e.g. role-conflict

Staff survey

Individual (Assertiveness training)

Social support/ Counselling

(Counselling)

EAP


Bullying intervention in the UK public sector

• Key features:– Combining qualitative and quantitative approaches– Randomised control design (CRT)

• Case studies/local steering committees– 5 organisations (three National Health trusts, a large police

force, a Central Government Department)

• Focus groups (pre and post intervention)

• Interventions (informed by the literature and focus groups/risk identification – total 55 groups)

• Evaluations (baseline and post-intervention measures) – Development of Bullying Risk-assessment Tool (BRAT)

• Application of self-reported and objective measures


Perpetrator level or rank

Managers/supervisors - 75%

Colleagues - 37%

Subordinates - 7%Clients - 8%


Intervention design (applied in all 5 organisation)

Group 1 Group 2 Group 3 Group 4 Group 5

Control Policy Communicatio

n

Policy Communicatio

n

Policy Communicatio

n

Policy Communicatio

n

Stress Manageme

ntTraining

NegativeBehaviourAwarenessTraining

StressManageme

ntANDNegativeBehaviourAwarenessTraining


Interventions

• A: Policy Communication

– Rational: awareness of policy will impact on behaviour

– Content: Management intent/commitment, examples of bullying behaviour, responsibility of managers


Interventions

• B: Stress Intervention

– Rational: removing or controlling precursors of negative behaviour would reduce bullying

– Content: develop understanding for managing own and others’ stress, sources of stress, coping, time-management, relaxation technique


Interventions

– C: Negative behaviour

awareness

– Rational: reduce and control negative behaviour by raising awareness of types of negative behaviour and their impact

– Content: Acceptable & unacceptable behaviour, development of transactional analysis skills for managing interpersonal relationships


Participant feedback(N=193 from 5 organisations)

4.33 4.23 4.27

1

1.5

2

2.5

3

3.5

4

4.5

Relevance Interest Overallrating

Mean participantfeedback scores

Did the training challenge you to think in new and different ways?

Yes:

75.10%

No:

24.90%


Analysing effects of intervention: preliminary results total sample

– Baseline (N=1041, response rate 41.5%)– Post-int. (N=884, response rate 35.4%)

• Variables:– Bullying (self-labelled)– Negative Acts (NAQ-R)– Mental health (GHQ)– Psychological contract– Antecedents/precursors of bullying (BRAT)

• Objective measures

• Analysis indicates no statistical significance – (univariate analysis of variance/between-subject effects)


Before/after intervention results: self-labelled bullying

All bullied Yes,

weekly/daily

Before 13.3% 1.9%

After 13.8% 1.9%

National

Sample

1

10.6% 1.4


Making findings understandable to members of the host organisation -

(pre/post intervention change)

Int/Org 1 2 3 4 5

CONTROL 0 - + + 0

POLICY - - + + 0

STRESS ++ +++ ++ -- --

NEG-B-A 0 ++ - 0 0

ALL + -- --- + +


Linking interventions to theory

• Theoretical understanding and orientation influencing choice of intervention

• :


Theory-based intervention

• Personality

• Work-environment hypothesis

• Social-interactionist perspectives

• The importance of context: the need for cross-disciplinary approaches


Local understanding: tailor-making interventions

• Importance of local understanding/context

• Identification of local risk-factors

• Some dilemmas:– Focus groups, interviews etc– Sensitivity – Stigmatisation– Bullying or general dissatisfaction


Critical factors influencing successful implementation

• Value for money: target intervention where most needed

• Ensuring that those in need of training are targeted for training

• Achieving critical mass to ensure change

• Sufficient time available to ensure experiential learning

• Wide participation – employee involvement


Externally initiated interventions: critical success factors (1/2)

• Managing organisational indifference and suspicions (Saksvik & Nytrø, 2001)

• Stability of management presence & input

• Shared understanding of theoretical underpinning

• Clarity of roles: outside and inside the organisation– Steering committees



• Managing the relationship with the organisation – scheduling, flow if information

• Researcher flexibility needed: responding to organisational events

• Short-term pilot programmes versus ongoing, long-term programmes (Landsbergis & Vivona-Vaughen, 1995)

• Training dose and realism: the limits of commitment


Wide participation and employee involvement

• Partnership approach: steering committee• Union involvement• Identification of local problem• Commitment, participation and response-rate• Impact on long-term success of intervention• As guarantor of long-term management support


Workplace bullying interventions: ensuring methodological progress (1/2)

• Opportunity for generalisability of findings

• Self-reported measures: selection of instruments – validity/reliability

• Applying design which makes it possible to predict cause and effect


Workplace bullying interventions: ensuring methodological progress (2/2)

• Relationship between choice of intervention and study design

• Tapping additional sources of information:– Trainer’s/trainees’ views, post-intervention

focus groups


Objective measures: unit and organisational data

• Absenteeism– Annual rate, long-term cases, frequent short term absenteeism

cases

• Turnover– Annual rates

• Grievance/complaints– Numbers filed

• Change: assessing degree of change– E.g. restructuring, staff shortages, change of manager, financial

cutbacks (assessed on scale 1-4)


Conclusions• Carrying out and evaluating interventions are

complex processes requiring ongoing organisational commitment and flexibility on behalf of researchers and need for further methodological advances

• Shared understanding of theoretical underpinning

• Compromising some scientific rigor may be necessary to achieve further progress when undertaking research in rapidly changing work environments

• To bring about lasting change requires long-term involvement and commitment across the organisation


Thank you for your attention!

• For further information contact

• Dr Helge Hoel

• [email protected]• +44 161 200 8784



• Managing organisational indifference and suspicions (Saksvik & Nytrø, 2001)

• Stability of management presence & input

• Shared understanding of theoretical underpinning• Clarity of roles: outside and inside the organisation

– Steering committees• Managing the relationship with the organisation –

scheduling, flow if information• Researcher flexibility needed: responding to

organisational events• Short-term pilot programmes versus ongoing, long-term

programmes (Landsbergis & Vivona-Vaughen, 1995)

Helge Hoel Manchester Business School The University of Manchester, UK

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