Workplace Violence and Harassment
• Describe causes of workplace violence and how it affects victims and the organizations.
Definition of Workplace Violence
Workplace violence includes bullying, harassment, emotional abuse, emotional or psychological terror, and violence (Matjasko, Needham, Grunden, & Farb, 2010). According to the National Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) (n.d.), around 2 million workers report workplace violence annually. OSHA (n.d.) puts violence into four categories: criminal intent, customer/client, worker-on-worker, and personal relationships.
Workplace bullying is defined as offensive, assaultive, and harassing behaviors that have occurred over a period of six or more months and result in unfavorable outcomes for the victims. Workplace bullies are common to almost all organizations. Image: Office space. Authored by: sativis. Source: https://pixabay.com/en/chair-office-table-workplace-75562/. License: CC-0
Criminal intent is when someone with no relationship to the workplace commits a violent crime, such as robbery or assault, on an employee. Criminal intent accounts for 80 percent of all workplace homicides (FBI, n.d.) and is more common in certain professions, such as taxi
drivers and late-night retailer workers, than other professions. We are most likely to hear about this type of violence when there is a mass shooting at a workplace, such as the shooting at the YouTube offices in 2018 and the shooting at an office complex in San Bernardino, California, in 2015.
Customer/client violence occurs between an employee and a customer. Examples of this include a patient attacking a nurse or a customer attacking a sales clerk. A number of careers are at greater risk for this type of workplace violence, with health care being the highest. Other occupations at risk include first responders (law enforcement and emergency medical services), social workers, teachers, and correctional officers. Many of these incidents occur when the customer or client is triggered by a disagreement, is denied services, or has a medical issue.
Worker-on-worker violence is also called workplace bullying or horizontal violence. Einarsen and colleagues (2003) defined workplace bullying in terms of behaviors that are offensive, assaultive, and harassing that result in unfavorable outcomes for victims and that the bullying behavior has occurred over a period of more than six months. Whether overt or covert, intimidation and harassment impact the well- being of victims (Farmer, 2011). Workplace bullies are common to almost all organizations (Jacobson, Hood, Van Buren, & Iii, 2014). Between 10 percent and 20 percent of U.S. employees reported being bullied at least once in the previous six months (Yamanda, 2003). Namie (2014) reported that more than 65 million U.S. employees were dealing with or witnessed someone else experiencing workplace bullying. The U.S. Workplace Bullying Survey (Yamada, 2015) reported that 54 percent of victims said that the bullying occurred overtly and happened in front of others, 32 percent said bullying occurred behind closed doors, and 10 percent said bullying happened in an office with the door kept open, so others could hear. Female workers experience higher rates of sexual harassment than male workers (Vartia & Hyyti, 2002).
Zillmen (2017) reported that an ABC-Washington Post poll found that 55 percent of women in their sample experienced unwanted sexual advances. Of the women reporting unwanted advances, 33 percent said those advances were made by a male, and 25 percent said it was from a colleague who had some say in their careers. This represents a serious and chronic issue that can threaten women’s careers and livelihoods.
Workplace shootings, like other types of mass shootings, grab national attention. The Fort Hood shooting was committed by U.S. Army Medical Corps psychiatrist Nidal Malik Hasan, who shot and killed 13 people and wounded 30 others in 2009. Image: Fort Hood Shooting. Author: Sgt. Jason R. Krawczyk. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Army_mil-55427-2009-11-07-171121.jpg. License: CC-0
The fourth category of workplace violence is personal relationships. This type of violence happens when relationships outside of the workplace spill into the workplace. This type of violence brings the threats from outside not only to the victim, but it also threatens coworkers and clients. Many employers are hesitant to get involved in the personal lives of their employees. Many employers do not realize just how personal violence can affect their employees and the entire company. Employees who experience personal victimization are often late to work, distracted, take more sick days, and miss work more often. If someone is the victim of domestic violence, the perpetrator may follow the victim into work, make inappropriate calls to the victim at work, and make inappropriate comments on the Internet about the employee and the company.
Another way that workplace violence is categorized is by type of aggression, verbal or physical, each of which can be passive or active aggression (Baron & Neuman, 1996).
Verbal
• Passive includes failing to provide information needed by the target and failing to return communication (the silent treatment)
• Active includes insulting, acting condescendingly, yelling, and belittling
Physical
• Passive includes getting others to cause harm to the victim and reducing the victims’ ability to contribute to projects or events such as ensuring scheduling conflicts and limiting their ability to socialize with coworkers
• Active includes theft, physical attack, vulgar gestures, and intimidating the victim
According to Baron and Neuman (1996), the most common types of violence are not the physical assaults (although those are most often discussed in the media). The most common aggression is verbal, indirect, and passive, and recent changes in many organizations (e.g., downsizing or increased workforce diversity) have generated conditions that may contribute to the occurrence of workplace aggression by increasing worker stress and decreasing workplace resources.