Editor’s note: This article was first published in June 2011; it was written amid Spain’s economic crisis in 2011.
Reading this article, many people will realise that at some point in their working lives they may have been victims of this kind of calculated workplace harassment, known as “mobbing“. There are two profiles of boss or employer capable of this kind of harassment.
Below we set out the techniques typically used in mobbing and the specific aims behind them, the consequences for the “victim”, and the problem of taking it to court, since, as a rule, the harasser is rarely charged and the victim has everything to lose.
What the harasser wants from mobbing
1. With the arrival of the crisis, many companies need to shed workers, and a lack of liquidity means they can’t afford to dismiss an employee and pay severance for the years worked. So it’s cheaper if the worker leaves of their own accord, which, with jobs so scarce, is unlikely to happen. That’s where mobbing techniques come in: essentially, inviting or forcing the worker to leave the company.
2. Far from using a technique consciously, the harasser is often a born corporate psychopath, with that natural hostility and mistreatment of certain employees in their blood. Like any psychopath, they single out a victim and make that person’s life impossible. They enjoy it, and in private meetings they even joke and boast about their exploits with their inner circle.
Techniques used in mobbing
- Isolation at work: the victim is given an isolated workstation, away from colleagues.
- Social isolation: the harasser tries to turn all the victim’s colleagues against them, spreading lies and inventing rumours that damage their image. In short, the aim is to make them look like the “odd one out” in the company.
- Ridiculing the victim: they are reprimanded in public in front of all their colleagues, shouted at, and made to look incompetent, with everything they do criticised.
- Destroying their professional standing: they are given tasks they aren’t trained for or, conversely, tasks far below what they did before. They are demoted within the company and, where possible, given humiliating tasks.
- Blocking their personal and professional growth: the harasser doesn’t just want them out of the company, but wants to stop them from finding another job. Having turned all their colleagues against them, the harasser will also try to tarnish their CV and reputation outside the company. Employers talk to other employers, so the harasser will make sure to spread enough information that no other employer decides to hire them.
- Breaking their will: by this stage, a person has only two ways out: to go under or to bend. The braver ones who decide to bend will be left with a stain on their record for disobedience, and it will be noted in their file.
The culmination of mobbing
At this level of harassment, the harasser could go as far as abusing the victim verbally, physically and sexually. The victim could be raped and nobody would believe them, since their own colleagues would have witnessed the friction between the boss and the victim and might see the accusation as an act of revenge.
Consequences for the victim of mobbing
Several psychological studies have found that a victim of this kind of harassment can develop trauma similar to that of soldiers returning from Vietnam, and even identical to that of someone who has been kidnapped and raped.
If the victim doesn’t get out of this situation, they may suffer lifelong after-effects, sinking into permanent depression and losing the will to live.
If, on the other hand, the victim decides to get out and leave the company, they may find themselves out of work, which was their biggest fear and the very reason they put up with the harassment.
If they report the harasser, their professional reputation is tarnished along with their CV, because employers take a dim view of a worker who has taken legal action against a company. In the eyes of other companies, this person is a troublemaker.
This is the reality for thousands of people who, out of fear, don’t dare speak up or report it. Then again, the justice system hasn’t done much to encourage such complaints either: in most cases, for lack of evidence, the accused isn’t convicted and the victim loses time, money and their job.
In the next article we’ll suggest some business ideas that support this social cause and help people who suffer workplace harassment.
Featured image: Userpilot ., CC BY 2.0, via Flickr.
