How Do You Recognize Mobbing?

It has been a long time I was thinking about what would cover all of us. Finally, I noticed why and when we are on this platform. Everyone is spending all day at work. Most of the time we spend more time at work with our colleagues than we spend with our family. End of the day we spend our time with our phones, on social media, or some blogs. While spending your time I just wanted to make you awake at one point. Are you happy at work? How is the behavior of people there? Do you feel a lot of headaches and stomach pains while communicating them? How do you act your family after work? What about your productivity, is it getting low? Can you sleep well? If you have negative answers to those questions, obviously you have some problems at work. If these problems have been there for a long time and if the reason is your colleagues or managers, we call it mobbing. Of course, it doesn't mean disagreements or all the things going wrong. There must be specific things to call it mobbing. Let's check what is mobbing and how can we decide if we are mobbed by someone. Mobbing is another term for bullying by someone or a group, in the workplace. According to Dr. Linda Shallcross who is Director of Workplace Mobbing Australia, mobbing is a deliberate attempt to force a person out of their workplace by humiliation, general harassment, emotional abuse, and terror. This mobbing is executed by a “leader” (who can be a manager, a co-worker, or a subordinate). Other terms for this mobbing in the workplace include workplace bullying, group bullying, and collective aggression. Each of these describes bullying at work, though it is important to note that this type of bullying can occur in numerous different social situations, not just paid employment settings. ACAS defines it like this: “Offensive, intimidating, malicious or insulting behavior, an abuse or misuse of power through means intended to undermine, humiliate, denigrate or injure.” How Common Is This In The Workplace?

Mobbing occurs where unwanted conditions or situations have:

Age Disability

Gender Race Religion Sex Sexual orientation

According to the published research of TUC, nearly a third of people (%29) have been mobbed at work and a big part of them are women. Also, for the age range, we can say the youngest ones and the oldest ones are more likely to be victims. While %72 of cases are carried out by the managers, only 39% of employees leave their jobs citing this as a reason.

How Do You Know If You Are Being Mobbed?

1- Ignoring: If your ideas are not received positive or negative feedback if what you say is constantly ignored as if it is unimportant if your questions - e-mails are left unanswered under the name of "forgetting"

2- Deceit: If he/she/they are lying to you and misleading you 3- Intimidation: If you are threatened with your status/salaries/positions 4-Minimization: If your work or emotions are minimized by your leader or colleagues 5-Shame and guilt: If you are feeling failed, unsuccessful and useless for your all Professional life because of some things which go wrongs 6- Mood swings: If you are trying to catch the good mood of your leader or colleagues and trying to avoid to have communication when you think if they are not good 7-Criticism: If your work is criticized even if you have fully done your job

8-Inconsistency: If expectations are changing suddenly or if they want you to make something impossible

9-Offensive communication: If you ask something to learn and it ends up with the other question by your leader/ colleague instead of replying to the question and it includes offensive words 10-Blaming: Shifting blame to others and using them as a scapegoat; not taking responsibility for problems or issues

and if continuously...

There are lots of examples for it but also there are some obvious signs of mobbing such as Intrusion, Coercion, Embarrassment, Yelling, and Revenge. These kinds of mobbing attempts may be the reason for the physical or psychological effects on the employee. Victims could have headaches, chronic pain, depression, anxiety, sleep disorders, indisposition, bad relationship with the social environments, and more.

If not prevented, mobbing can become a corporate culture. While the Director is mobbing Senior, Senior can do it to Junior, and eventually, all colleagues can group up and do it to one another. In all this negative business environment, it is not possible to grow a company or to achieve sustainable efficiency. Sometimes it may not be easy to recognize mobbing or to diagnose the situation exactly. However, Speed is the key here. To define mobbing very quickly, I think that employee performance evaluation should not be hierarchical. While evaluating upper-status managers the lower status employee, also lower-status employees should be able to evaluate managers. In my opinion, to make company communication better, this evaluation should be done at the horizontal level. There might be many effects while evaluating managers, of course, it shouldn't be the only criteria but still, it is necessary to get feedback from others, even if they are lower-status employees. Because if we spend all day at work, the only effective thing is not the work performance, but the communication within the company.

Sometimes, higher positions bring some huge responsibilities and behaviors at the same time, but leadership means is managing all of them. This is the same in horizontal levels. If you want to build successful work, you have to work as a team player and everyone has responsibility for what feel others.

In the general framework, it is seen that the main cost is incurred by the company as a result of mobbing, which is experienced at an individual level or company culture. While the company loses an employee due to corrupt relations, the replacement employee cannot sustain this long relationship much longer, resulting in unsustainable working conditions and extra employee costs, and extra time spent.

References: Is Micromanaging A Form Of Bullying? https://www.forbes.com/sites/heidilynnekurter/2021/06/29/is-micromanaging-a-form-of-bullying-here-are-3-things-you-should-know/?sh=9b28fb446765 https://worksmart.org.uk/health-advice/illnesses-and-injuries/violence-and-bullying/bullying/how-common-bullying-work https://www.betterhelp.com/advice/behavior/are-you-suffering-from-workplace-mobbing-heres-how-to-handle-it/.

https://www.yourerc.com/blog/post/20-subtle-signs-of-workplace-bullying https://www.ccohs.ca/oshanswers/psychosocial/bullying.html https://www.gov.uk/workplace-bullying-and-harassment