Cyberbullying in Workplace Getting Common and Severe

As we stay in virtual world more and more and interact with countless people, cyberbullying is turning out to be a common problem. It is more worrisome in the workplace as employees, use texts, emails or web postings to attack and abuse their colleagues. It is common as conventional bullying.

The study by psychologists highlights the facts that cyberbullying influences both the victim and witnesses and are more hidden in the workplace.

Till date cyberbullying was focused on younger people in school rather than the working adults. Through the study the researchers give employees certain guidelines on how to tackle and prevent cyberbullying in workplace.

This guideline that prevents you from being victims of cyberbullying will gain more importance as the communication technologies continue to evolve and widespread.

The study was conducted by Dr Christine Sprigg, Dr Carolyn Axtell and Sam Farley of the University of Sheffield, together with Dr Iain Coyne of Nottingham University.

For the study, the researchers included three separate surveys among employees in several UK universities, asking people about their experiences of cyberbullying.

"We gave people a list of what can be classed as bullying, such as being humiliated, ignored or gossiped about, and asked them if they had faced such behaviour online and how often," said Coyne.

They noticed that out of 320 people who responded to the survey; around eight out of ten had experienced one of the listed cyberbullying behaviors on at least one occasion in the previous six months. The results also showed 14 to 20 per cent experienced them on at least a weekly basis -- a similar rate to conventional bullying.

The research team also examined the impact of cyberbullying on workers' mental strain and wellbeing. "Overall, those that had experienced cyberbullying tended to have higher mental strain and lower job satisfaction," Coyne said. "In one of our surveys, this effect was shown to be worse for cyberbullying than for conventional bullying."

The impact of witnessing cyberbullying was different than that seen for conventional bullying. "In the research literature, people who witness conventional bullying also show evidence of reduced wellbeing. However, in our research this does not appear to be the case for the online environment," Dr Coyne said.

"Witnesses are much less affected. This might be because of the remote nature of cyberspace -- perhaps people empathize less with the victims. This could affect the witness's reaction to the bullying and potentially whether to report it or otherwise intervene."

 "We believe our research will likely have implications for the way that employers formulate policies and guidelines relating to cyberbullying, and the seminar will be an opportunity for us to discuss our findings and learn about the experiences of other employers," Coyne said.

The results of the study will be revealed at a seminar during the Economic and Social Research Council's (ESRC) annual Festival of Social Science in November.