According to a survey carried out by OCCMundial 44% of professionals who have worked in Mexico have suffered workplace harassment or “Mobbing” (an English term that refers to harassing, harassing, among others) and of this 45% is carried out by the immediate boss or a superior within the business organization chart.
Why is it that these problems occur among co-workers? There may be many answers to this question, it may be because of envy, because you do not like your partner, for the simple fact of making life impossible for someone else, among others. And as it was possible to read in the data that were mentioned at the beginning, this is a big problem that afflicts many people in their working life, actions that will not allow them to perform correctly in their work area, they will not want to go to work. and even those extra problems will be taken to their homes, in addition to being the trigger for contracting a disease related to this stress or even certain cases of collaborators who have decided to kill themselves for these causes have been documented.
Likewise, within the same survey it was found that 9 out of 10 collaborators think that there should be a severe law that punishes the harasser or those who carry out such workplace harassment, it is also noted that 5 out of 10 collaborators mention that in their organization There is no established channel or some way in which they can complain about this problem.
We must remember that human resources are the most important that any organization can count on, so I hope that reading this article will help the reader to reflect on this very chaotic subject.
Key concepts.
To facilitate the reading process on the topic "Mobbing and its effect on professional development", some definitions that are considered important for the reader to know are cited:
Mobbing
"It is a form of labor abuse, mainly psychological or moral, characterized by persistent, systematic and continuous harassment of the worker in different ways." (StressLaboral, 2018)
«Situation in which a person exercises extreme psychological violence, systematically and recurrently and for a long time on another person or people in the workplace in order to destroy the communication networks of the victim or victims, destroy their reputation, disturbing the performance of their duties and finally causing that person or persons to end up leaving the workplace ». (Leymann, 1990)
Professional development
“Professionals seek to refer to achieving growth and self-realization, to achieving that goal that one day they set themselves as future professionals. A developed worker is one who manages to reach an optimal level of knowledge necessary to perform in the area of interest. ” (Universia Spain)
What is mobbing?
As you could read earlier in this article, mobbing or also known as workplace harassment is the activity that occurs in organizations when a harasser or a group of them begins to provoke various negative feelings such as fear, discouragement, anguish, among others, in a collaborator through actions such as: insulting or hurtful jokes, jokes that could be considered “heavy” and in bad taste, completely ignoring the collaborator and not allowing him to participate in any activity, constantly humiliating him, giving him an overload of work, among many others.
The collaborator or group of collaborators who receive that psychological damage without any justification through those harmful acts, may arise through various social groups, such as their own colleagues (among collaborators who are of the same hierarchical line), from his subordinates (uncommon, since it is the one that is done to a boss or superior, but it could be carried out when the superior is of a weak character), from his superior (this is more common, since he comes from the boss to his or her subordinates).
Said psychological damage is generated methodologically and constantly over a long period of time, and may be through weeks, months or even years, likewise, this can lead to physical attacks, such as "casual" accidents. A mobbing situation that lasts for a fairly long period of time, in addition to psychological damage and illness, can trigger a very extreme situation, such as employee suicide.
What the mobbing person or people are trying to do with these actions, threats or harassment, is for the victim to permanently leave the job, since its provocateurs perceive it as a nuisance or a potential threat to their particular interests within the organization.
Types of mobbing.
According to (EstresLaboral, 2018) we can find various types of mobbing or workplace harassment, this is depending on the hierarchical place that harassers occupy in the organization and the reasons for these attacks, these are:
In relation to the hierarchical level of the victim and the harasser.
Professor Heinz Leymann was the first to establish a native classification of workplace harassment, based on the hierarchical relationship between the collaborators involved, the terms "vertical", "horizontal", "ascending" and "descending" were established "
Downward vertical harassment (also known as bossing).
This is generated when the harasser is at a higher level hierarchically speaking than his victim, in other words, when one or more superiors mobbing one or more collaborators who are under his command.
A somewhat recurring example in various organizations where this happens, is when the superior wants his collaborator to resign voluntarily, so that he does not have to pay that extra money that is generated when he dismisses the collaborator, so he will want to provoke everything possible stress on your victim, using all the resources available to you.
Vertical ascending harassment.
As mentioned above, this occurs much less frequently than descending vertical harassment, this happens when the victim of mobbing is located in a higher hierarchical position than that of the harasser.
This can happen when the collaborators do not accept or do not want, due to various circumstances, the individual they have placed as their superior.
A leadership class that is too "soft", "soft", or authoritarian can sometimes cause this type of harassment. Even situations have arisen where employees exercise workplace harassment on their superior, threatening to denounce him supposedly because he is harassing them at work.
Horizontal harassment.
This occurs when the harasser or the group of harassers are in the same hierarchical line as that of the collaborator who will be the victim of mobbing, that is, they are their own work colleagues.
A clear example would be that of a person who is just beginning to work in the organization, who brings ideas and a fresh attitude, so that his work colleagues will see him as a potential threat to how they have been working before their arrival.
Multidirectional bullying.
This is the combination of bullying that was mentioned above. We can find it when managers and colleagues want to provoke the resignation of a specific colleague or group of colleagues, so mobbing will come from different hierarchical lines.
In relation to the motivation of the stalker or stalkers.
Another probable group in which mobbing can be classified, is the one based on the motive that leads the harasser to do it. It is very likely that there are several reasons at the same time, these can be:
Workplace harassment for economic reasons.
It is a type of mobbing in which, the way the harasser behaves will be for purely economic reasons, to receive more money for a promotion, among other issues.
Workplace harassment to cause voluntary dismissal.
One of the most common cases of mobbing that can occur within an organization, and in this what is desired is that the collaborator who is a victim make a voluntary withdrawal, so that they do not have to pay the extra money if they are fired without justification, therefore, all the “tricks available will be used to achieve this“ voluntary ”loss.
Maternal workplace bullying.
This is a truly harmful form of workplace harassment that can occur in any organization, regardless of the type it is, since although they are all cruel, this could be one of the worst, since it is aimed at women in the company who are pregnant, since they will serve as an example and threats for collaborators who want to become mothers in the future, since thus, the organization will not have to give them that maternity leave.
It is normal for some or most of the women in the organization to think about it a lot, before looking for a pregnancy, after witnessing all the mobbing that their pregnant companions had to undergo, and this would lead in the same way, to voluntary dismissal.
Workplace harassment due to personal conflicts.
This type of harassment is derived when the victim had an argument or a dispute with their harasser, which could be due to delegation of responsibilities, some belongings that were lost, different points of view to resolve things, among others.
Harassment at work for pleasure.
Some collaborators have a way of being that by nature seeks to dominate others, manipulate them to do what they want and perverse just for pleasure, and this will make them tend to physically or psychologically harm the rest of their colleagues. Although it seems hard to believe, they will only do this to be able to calm that feeling of pleasure when seeing another suffer.
For this class of collaborators, mentally bending, humiliating and crushing his / her victims will make them feel relieved and fulfilled. Although there will be times when he will do this while there are no possible witnesses to expose him, it will not be difficult for him to find henchmen who will second him, since he will have by nature that ability to manipulate others, so that he does what he wants.
Sexual workplace harassment.
This type of mobbing has as its purpose some motivation of a sexual nature, although, sometimes this is not the only incitement, since sometimes it is only sought to get off and see the poor collaborator who has to suffer. Although the majority of stalkers are usually men, there have been cases in which women are the ones who carry out this type of workplace harassment.
It is also more common to use the position at the hierarchical level that the harasser has compared to that of the victim, and related to this, he will also take advantage of the economic situation that the victim is going through.
Among the most frequent ways in which this type of mobbing can occur is through sexist comments, non-consensual approaches and, in the worst cases, sexual assault on the victim.
Stages of mobbing.
Although within the workplace harassment, there may be various situations or significant differences in relation to each particular case, usually three main stages can be derived, which are conflict, harassment and resolution.
The conflict.
As it has been read within this article, in any case of mobbing, no matter what type it is, there will always be some cause that causes the stalker to start attacking his victim. In various situations, behind this origin, some kind of problem may be found between the parties involved, ranging from the personal to any other class, causing the mobbing to begin.
This stage of conflict may not appear (as in the case of workplace harassment for pleasure), and even if it appears, for the victim it can go completely unnoticed. The case of a small altercation for some delegation of tasks or different ideologies for the resolution of a problem can be presented, for the victim this will be something totally temporary and something that worries him, but for the one who will become his aggressor he will take it as something totally personal and that you can not miss.
The collaborator who will act as the future attacker acts as if nothing had happened, and may even come to act cordially and amicably with his future victim, in order to be able to have his friendship and have access to personal data with which he may attack its most fragile characteristics in the near future. Likewise, this could be done so that, when the next stage (harassment) begins, the psychological damage increases, as it has given the victim a lot of confidence in the harasser.
Harassment.
As its name implies, this is the primordial stage and in which there will be all kinds of harassment by the harasser towards his victim, such as verbal degradations, fabricated rumors (gossip), tacky taunts, verbal or physical attacks, phone calls or text messages from an anonymous number late at night to disturb the victim, among other damages that may occur to the harasser.
Also, it will be normal for the attacker to want to control by manipulating the rest of the collaborators or coworkers, so that they also attack the victim even if they have nothing against them, with this the psychological "blow" that the victim will suffer is will increase considerably.
The stage of harassment can have a very diverse duration, since it is directly related to the strength and resistance that the victim presents in the face of harassment, the elements that they have to face them, their hierarchical level in the organization, how much need that job, among other things.
The resolution.
The outcome stage of workplace harassment, this can occur for various reasons, among which are:
- Definitely the victim has given in and gave up and voluntarily left the organization, since she will have gotten a new position in another company or because she simply could not continue tolerating that "hell" in which she was. The victim was able to and I find a way to defend myself and finally be able to stop mobbing, usually through the support of the rest of his colleagues, his superiors or immediate bosses, with the help of an agent outside the organization, among others. they are relocated to another job.
Likewise, it is of utmost importance to point out that the end of workplace harassment does not necessarily mean that the victim recovers her level of well-being before the mobbing begins, since workplace harassment can trigger a rather deep footstep inside the victim's mind, It will not be easy to erase or delete for the victim, this, if it is not overcome, will be accompanied by health damage and in some more complicated situations, suicide.
Ways of dealing with mobbing.
Although mobbing is some of the most unpleasant that can happen to us within a job, we must remember that everything in this life has a solution, except for death, (OCC Mundial, 2013) indicates some ways to face this problem.
Identify the abuse.
A collaborator who regularly speaks ill of us, reproaches us all the time, does not include us in meetings or does not let us express our opinion, propagates negative information about us, that says that he did things well When in fact it was us, it is a clear example of the labor situation being applied to us.
Usually, the main reason for having these terrible attitudes, will be that we want to leave the job or the position in which we are currently, that we are not taken into account or that everyone hates us, so that he can obtain some kind of benefit.
It is of utmost importance that we analyze with a cool and clear head the context that we are facing, so that we find the answer if the collaborator who spends all his time making life impossible for us, really wants to ruin our working life or He is only an individual who loves conflict and wants to harm several people, if this is the case, it is best to ignore it completely and avoid contact with him at all costs. But, if your attitude is really affecting our work environment, you must resort to other kinds of strategies.
Confront it.
The more professional we are in our working life, the way we act in the office will be superior, our relationship with our colleagues will also be better. It is extremely necessary that we do not show our feelings very openly and always set a limit against our stalker, without wanting to get us out of our boxes.
We should not become a target that is easy to disturb, when an envious or perverse collaborator wants to attack us directly and spoil our work, we must make it very clear that we do not like their attitude in the least. It could be the case that, a collaborator is making some bad taste indications about another collaborator in front of a group of people, we could tell him that this lexicon is not welcome in this organization or that his way of thinking is very out of place.
We must not think that his attitude will be temporary or that he will never repeat himself, we must act with a clear head and intelligence, control our feelings and speak firmly. Demonstrate to those who want to start harassing us that this attitude does not please us and that we are not going to allow them to continue behaving like this.
Report.
When we see that the situation we are experiencing regarding workplace harassment does not stop and is reaching levels that are too unpleasant for us or we see that our performance in the organization has decreased considerably, we must immediately tell our immediate superior or the section of human resources of our organization.
We need to present a strong demonstration and evidence that our relationship with our stalker is undermining our performance in the organization. We must remember that we cannot allow our feelings to control us, we are professional people and we must always act as such.
The more founded and controlled our accusation against our harasser, the easier it will be for everyone to find a viable solution.
Thesis proposal.
Hold a series of conferences at the Orizaba Technological Institute aimed at managers and collaborators of organizations in the Córdoba - Orizaba Zone so that they know the effects of mobbing.
Objective.
Promote the importance of avoiding mobbing in organizations and how to act on this problem in the event that it occurs.
Thanks.
I thank my family, for giving me all the support and the drive to continue day by day, the Orizaba Technological Institute and CONACYT for opening their doors to me and allowing me to continue my studies with the Master in Administrative Engineering and Doctor Fernando Aguirre y Hernández for Motivate me with your knowledge in the Fundamentals of Administrative Engineering seminar to carry out each of the assigned articles.
Conclusion.
Mobbing or workplace harassment is a somewhat unpleasant subject, since nobody in their right mind would like to live what it represents, but it is something that we must know and know how to act when it comes to presenting, as managers of a organization to be able to take care of the most important resource that we have which is the human resource, and we as collaborators of some, if we see that a colleague is suffering it or is carrying it out against someone else, we should not remain silent In this situation, since we are never alone.
I think it is of utmost importance that we begin to change these lousy attitudes that we can find in any organization, regardless of its line of business or its size, I recommend reading about moral leadership, as it is a way to reinforce this article, to better understand where we should go in order to be better human beings.
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