Workplace Bullying Interventions

At left, possible workplace bullying?

Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=393839

A paper on workplace bullying is found here, two sections from the abstract are reproduced below:

BACKGROUND: Bullying has been identified as one of the leading workplace stressors, with adverse consequences for the individual employee, groups of employees, and whole organisations. Employees who have been bullied have lower levels of job satisfaction, higher levels of anxiety and depression, and are more likely to leave their place of work. Organisations face increased risk of skill depletion and absenteeism, leading to loss of profit, potential legal fees, and tribunal cases. It is unclear to what extent these risks can be addressed through interventions to prevent bullying.

AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS: There is very low quality evidence that organisational and individual interventions may prevent bullying behaviours in the workplace. We need large well-designed controlled trials of bullying prevention interventions operating on the levels of society/policy, organisation/employer, job/task and individual/job interface. Future studies should employ validated and reliable outcome measures of bullying and a minimum of 6 months follow-up.

So, there is only “low quality evidence” that the interventions actually do any good to prevent workplace bullying. One possibility is that the organizational interventions are pushed by administrators who want to “cover themselves from potential liability (“see – we did something!”) or to burnish their resumes with their “impressive intervention sessions.” Or, we may have “experts” without actual data to back up their assertions, as well as (possibly well-meaning) individuals who do not know how to best approach the problem. As the authors state: “Future studies should employ validated and reliable outcome measures of bullying and a minimum of 6 months follow-up.”