Overloading and the rise of Bullying

The continuing cuts in defence are increasing the pressure on staff as they try to produce the same outputs with fewer and fewer resources.

Civil servants working in defence are dedicated to supporting the armed forces but they are being overload to such a level in some areas that the delivery of defence capability is at risk.

A new style of motivation appears to raising it's head in the Ministry of Defence; one centered around bullying.

All employees wherever they work are entitled to work in a safe environment and any promotion of institutionalised bully whether intentional or not is unacceptable.

What is bullying?

Bullying is persistent unwelcome behaviour, mostly using unwarranted or invalid criticism, nit-picking, fault-finding, exclusion, isolation, being singled out and treated differently, shouted at, humiliated, excessive monitoring, having verbal and written warnings imposed, and much more. In the workplace, bullying usually focuses on distorted or fabricated allegations of underperformance.

Why do people bully?

The purpose of bullying is to hide inadequacy. Bullying has nothing to do with managing. Good managers manage, bad managers bully. Therefore, an individual or organisation that chooses to bully is admitting their inadequacy and the extent to which they bully is a measure of their inadequacy.

Bullying is an inefficient way of working, resulting in disenchantment, demoralisation, demotivation, disaffection, and alienation. Bullies run dysfunctional and inefficient organisations; staff turnover and sickness absence are high whilst morale and productivity are low.

Corporate bullying is where the employer abuses employees with impunity, eg:

• coercing employees to work long hours on a regular basis then making life hell for anyone who objects
• introduces "absence management" to deny employees annual or sick leave to which they are genuinely entitled
• regularly snoops and spies on employees, eg by listening in to telephone conversations, using the mystery shopper, contacting customers behind employees backs and asking leading questions, conducting covert video surveillance (perhaps by fellow employees), sending personnel officers or private investigators to an employee's home to interrogate the employees whilst on sick leave, threatening employees with interrogation the moment they return from sick leave, etc.
• deems any employee suffering from stress as weak and inadequate whilst aggressively ignoring and denying the cause (overload, lack of resources, poor management and bullying)

Serial bullying is where the source of all dysfunction can be traced to one individual, who picks on one employee after another and destroys them.

Any form of bullying is unacceptable in the workplace and the trade union movement has a zero tolerance policy to it and will challenge every instance of it.