WORKPLACE BULLYING COSTING INDUSTRY AND TAXPAYERS £12 BILLION A YEAR

FOR RELEASE WEDNESDAY 4 DECEMBER 1996

Embargoed for 00.01 hours

Following a survey on workplace bullying by the Institute of Personnel and Development (IPD) last Thursday (28/11/96) comes a ground-breaking book by Tim Field. Bully in sight: how to predict, resist, challenge and combat workplace bullying, with a foreword by Diana Lamplugh OBE, reveals a catalogue of abuse, mostly in the guise of "management".

The book imparts detailed insight into how, why, when and where bullies bully, the most serious types of bullying (corporate and serial - see below), and the circumstances that give rise to and sustain bullying. A wealth of suggestions and ideas for standing up and fighting back are also offered.

Much of this insight into bullying is appearing in print for the first time, the author believes. Detailed descriptions of how to recognise both the appalling psychiatric injuries AND the causes are likely to set alarm bells ringing in employers' legal departments, especially with the predictable and foreseeable nature of bullying explained.

"Even the IPD's figure of 1 in 8 people reporting being bullied at work in the last five years may be conservative", comments Tim Field. "Bullying is an abuse which often goes on behind closed doors with no witnesses; a similar study in 1994 by Staffordshire University Business School showed that in a survey of 1137 employees, 1 in 2 said they were being or had been bullied at some time in their working life. The presence of the IPD survey says more than the content", adds Tim. "For such a respected professional body as the IPD to acknowledge publicly that bullying is a problem could be the turning point and the culmination of nearly a decade of work initiated by the late Andrea Adams".

With potentially between 3 and 14 million employees affected, the costs are staggering. In 1994, the Health & Safety Executive (HSE) estimated the cost of stress and stress-related illness to be in the order of £4 billion. Unofficial estimates put the cost as high as £12 billion or more. The author believes that bullying is one of the main causes of stress - perhaps THE main cause of stress today. "After last week's budget, the Chancellor would do well to note that this cost represents something like 2p on the basic rate of income tax", observes Tim.

Since 1 January 1996 Tim has been running a national Workplace Bullying Advice Line from his home in Oxfordshire. In twelve months he has taken nearly 700 calls of which more than 600 are cases of bullying. "Many callers are in tears, often approaching mental breakdown; some are in breakdown as they talk to me", reports Tim. "At least 10% of callers admit to having considered suicide, some have already attempted it and a couple of cases involve actual suicide. The true figure of suicides is probably much higher".

Calls come from all sectors of the workplace (including the voluntary sector); the most common type of caller is female, 45-50ish, professional or office-based. The next most common are males 45-55ish, professional or office-based.

Now an author, speaker, trainer and independent consultant, Tim liaises with many organisations in the field of workplace bullying including the Andrea Adams Trust, the Campaign Against Bullying At Work (CABAW), and The Suzy Lamplugh Trust.

-ends-

For press information contact:

Tim Field, author, Bully in sight: how to predict, resist, challenge and combat workplace bullying
P0 Box 67, Didcot, Oxfordshire 0X11 0YH, UK

Copies of Bully in sight for media review are available - please call, write, fax or contact us online.

Tim Field welcomes interviews and opportunities to give talks, seminars and training workshops on any aspect of workplace bullying. His presentations are informed, eye-opening, professional,  entertaining and always well received.

Notes to researchers, reporters and editors

Book details

Title: Bully in sight: how to predict, resist, challenge and combat workplace bullying
Author: Tim Field
ISBN: 0952912104
Foreword by: Diana Lamplugh OBE
Publication date: Wednesday 4 December 1996
Format: Paperback, 384 pages including resource section and index
Publisher: Success Unlimited, P0 Box 67, Didcot, Oxfordshire 0X11 0YH, UK
Telephone: 0700-ACHIEVE (2244383)

Availability: price £16.95 from bookshops, or signed copies are available mail order via secure online credit card ordering.
Mail order sales include 30-day money-back guarantee.

Background information

Corporate bullying

- is where the employer feels free to abuse the workforce without fear of being called to account:

• example 1: instructing managers to fire anyone who looks like having a nervous breakdown because of stress, justified on the basis that it is cheaper to pay tribunal awards for unfair dismissal than risk facing personal injury claims as in the John Walker case (reference Walker v. Northumberland County Council, [1995] IRLR 35, High Court, Queens Bench Division)
• example 2: coercing employees into working 60, 70 or 80-hour weeks on a regular basis and threatening them with redundancy if they object, whilst simultaneously refusing to accept the European Working Time Directive limiting working hours to 48 a week.

Serial bullying

- a compulsive, addictive behaviour where one person picks on another, usually a subordinate and bullies them senseless; characterised by:

• excessive criticism (for control and subjugation, not performance enhancement)
• abuse of the disciplinary procedures to dismiss the target when they assert their right not to be bullied
• a predictable and foreseeable process (explained in detail in the book Bully in sight) which is common to almost every case
• the most common reasons for being picked on by a serial bully are 1) being good at your job, often excelling, 2) being popular with people (envy is the apparent basis of these two reasons), 3) standing up for a colleague who is being bullied, 4) blowing the whistle on malpractice, illegality etc, and 5) being too expensive.
• the serial bully exhibits:
  • a Jekyll and Hyde nature (vicious in private, charming when witnesses present)
  • compulsive lying, which is highly convincing
  • poor or non-existent people skills and an inability to form stable relationships
  • a desire to operate outside the bounds of society, often outside the law - with every expectation of getting away with it
  • an inability to learn from past experience, however unpleasant

Click here for the full profile of the serial bully.

Advice Line: for the latest statistics click here

Bullying Helplines: see Adult bullying helplines on the Links page

Facts, figures, surveys and cost of bullying: click here

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