How bullying at work migrated to the remote environment

Joyce works in the communications department for a company in the east of England. It took her a while to identify that what was happening in her workplace was bullying.

Most of the company’s work was done remotely long before the pandemic, and she didn’t feel attacked by colleagues.

“I didn’t really think about it,” says Joyce — whose last name is withheld for privacy reasons. “I still had in my mind the traditional idea of ​​bullying as someone disrespecting me personally.”

Until, over time, the feeling grew that her boss (who had only been with the company for a short time) was isolating her constantly and in uncomfortable ways. “It was a group email where I would say one thing and she would respond with another, or she would start talking about me in a Zoom meeting without giving me advance notice,” she says.

In isolation, many of those incidents seemed minor. Within a day, the boss changed all the passwords on social media at work and Joyce no longer had access to the accounts. In another, Joyce received an email scolding her for “resisting” her boss’ ideas.

The incidents piled up. And even after working at the company for years, six months were enough to make Joyce stop loving her job and get to the point where she wanted to quit.

“It was a traumatic experience,” she says. “It shook me a lot and I was very sad.”

It’s clear that bullying has been a problem in the workplace for a long time. It encompasses a broad spectrum of behavior and is typically associated with face-to-face work.

A familiar scenario occurs when a domineering boss devalues ​​an employee in public to humiliate him or when a group leaves the office for lunch together, deliberately leaving a colleague behind.

For some employees, remote work provided relief and distance from the daily strain of having to deal with these incidents. But there is still evidence that, as companies increasingly adopt models of remote and hybrid work, workplace bullying has not only remained, but has developed, often in more subtle ways — especially as technology has opened up new paths to unkindness.

remote bullying

Remote bullying is not an entirely new phenomenon. There are data that indicate that it was already growing even before the widespread shift to remote work.

A January 2020 study conducted by the London-based human resources association CIPD (Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development) showed that 10% of professionals reported being bullied via email, phone or social media.

“We’ve already seen cases of bullying happening outside of the physical work environment,” says Rachel Suff, ICPD’s policy adviser on labor relations.

So the expansion of remote bullying with the arrival of the pandemic was not surprising to Suff. She believes the sheer number of digital channels available “provides more avenues for people to be bullied or feel they are being treated inappropriately.”

Indeed, in many cases, these new avenues have started bullying incidents in the pandemic era.

A survey by the American Workplace Bullying Institute showed in 2021 that, of 1,215 American remote workers consulted, 43% reported being bullied in the workplace, mostly by video calls and email.

And a quarter of respondents concluded that working remotely during the Covid-19 pandemic made colleagues more likely to mistreat others.

In 2022, the number of bullying cases brought to the UK Labor Courts broke an all-time annual record – a 44% increase on the previous year.

The most common incidents included nasty comments during video calls, deliberately excluding colleagues from remote meetings, and using messaging apps for gossip during peer presentations.

In Joyce’s case, digital collaboration tools enabled some of the bullying she received from her boss.

One night after work hours, Joyce received a message asking if she could join in on a video call right now. On the call, the boss asked her to open a new email that, to Joyce’s surprise, was a formal, written warning from her boss — who read it aloud.

“I just wanted to get off the call,” Joyce says. “Why did she need to do that so dramatically and watch my expression?”

As bad as she felt, data from the Workplace Bullying Institute indicates that Joyce was spared some of the humiliation, as only she and her boss were on the roll call.

In the institute’s surveys, 35% of respondents indicated that their remote bullying took place over video calls in front of others “in real time, with facial expressions being more highlighted by technology”.

Remote bullying in front of colleagues can not only be demeaning, but also intensify the team’s sense of disconnection as a whole.

In person, colleagues can step in to stop the bullying, showing their support for the employee who is the target of the humiliation or disagreeing with the bully, according to Kara Ng, a professor of organizational psychology at the University of Manchester in the UK. But this gets more difficult in a virtual environment.

In fact, remotely, some colleagues may not even notice the problem. “It’s much harder to identify bullying behavior in the digital workplace,” says Priyanka Sharma, organizational psychologist and founder of London-based workplace learning consultancy Mindtrail.

“It’s much easier to intentionally exclude someone from important meetings or withhold significant information, and harder to tell when a colleague is worried,” she says.

A lack of intervention can leave the targeted employee feeling that their peers approve of the bullying behavior, even if they do not. And after there’s an incident, remote work environments offer less opportunity for casual conversations with colleagues to discuss what happened.

“Not being able to socially clarify the issue with someone and understand the group’s norms can be very harmful,” says Ng. “You just end up feeling more and more isolated.”

problem that spreads

It is possible that the isolation of remote work may also change the way professionals interpret the behavior of their colleagues, increasing their propensity to feel that they are being bullied.

A 2017 study of 1,100 remote workers showed that these employees were more likely to report that their colleagues isolated them, gossiped about them behind their backs, and even influenced others against them while working from home.

They also stated that when a conflict arose between colleagues, remote work made it difficult to resolve.

Without the physical indications and context of face-to-face communication, remote work really opens up space for different readings of messages that are sometimes simple.

“In the digital context, we often have to interpret the tone of voice, which is difficult,” says Sharma. “So people can start to question their sense of belonging, whether they’re really being bullied and whether it’s intentional.”

This gray area can be worrying for professionals, but it also provides a plausible “alibi” for the bullies themselves. As a result, low-level mistreatment may increase.

When seemingly minor incidents such as blunt comments or minor slights are ignored, the consequences can be serious for individual employees and the company as a whole.

“The breeding ground for the most serious types of harassment and bullying is low-level inappropriate behavior, which could often simply be eliminated,” says Suff. “And if bullying isn’t addressed, it’s like a wound that grows. It’s never confined to the individuals who were its original source.”

“It’s important that bullying isn’t just an issue between the perpetrator and the victim; it’s a collective issue,” adds Ng.

Studies indicate that people who witness bullying can experience the same negative impact on their well-being as people who experience harassment.

“This really affects the motivation of the group. People can be afraid to share their opinions, feel more stressed and this can lead to a drop in performance and commitment, which ends up affecting the company”, explains Ng.

In general, it is known that bullying in the work environment causes anxiety, depression and worsens professional performance. And yet “there are certain characteristics of cyberbullying that make it more harmful than ordinary face-to-face bullying,” according to Ng.

“Especially the 24/7 availability and the ubiquity of technology and social media. Before, you could leave the work environment and maybe feel a little more secure, but now that divide doesn’t exist anymore. “, she says.

the solution of the problem

Before the pandemic, the group likely most responsible for workplace bullying were managers, who were responsible for 40% of incidents, according to the CIPD study. And in 2021, the Workplace Bullying Institute concluded the same was true for remote work, with managers accounting for 47% of reports of bullying.

Bosses at all levels have enormous influence over bullying behavior in all organizations.

“One of the main points emphasized by the research is the role of the leader to model what good behavior is”, says Ng. Without a strong example of inclusive leadership, “employees may feel that bullying behavior can go unpunished or acceptable.”

In addition to managers, it is the obligation of companies to ensure that they have structures in place to deal with remote bullying, including clear processes for employees to report incidents with the assurance that they will be properly dealt with — especially when managers are responsible for the bullying.

This requires a proactive approach and, in many cases, a deeper understanding of the subtle ways in which remote bullying manifests.

For remote workers stuck in work environments where bullying is an issue, one option is to take the issue to HR, especially if it’s committed by a boss.

It takes courage to speak up about the problem, but Priyanka Sharma advises people to do so as early as possible, “so matters can be dealt with with a sense of urgency, without impacting their long-term mental well-being.”

And people who report bullying in remote work can also do something that face-to-face victims often can’t: provide evidence like messages, emails and call logs.

“Bullying is repetitive behavior, and if you can show that the experience is frequent, you have a stronger argument,” says Kara Ng. “One of the main differences between cyberbullying and traditional bullying is that there is usually a trail of evidence.”

This text was originally published here.