August 13th, 2010
New research shows HR’s negative role in workplace bullying
A study published in May 2010 by Premilla D’Cruz and Ernesto Noronha conducted in Mumbai and Bangalore, India telephone call centers (working for US, UK and Australian companies) reveals the experiences of bullied targets worldwide. Bottom line: HR worsens the situation for targets. Read the summary below, then read the article itself.
Protecting my interests: HRM and targets’ coping with workplace bullying.
Bullied targets beware! This May 2010 article by IAWBH Board member Premilla D’Cruz debunks some myths about Human Resources positive role in ameliorating bullying.
The context for the study is that previous work has shown that organizations generally do nothing or deem the complainant a troublemaker when bullying is reported. This study explores human resource management’s (HRM) influence on targets’ coping.
I found two HRM typologies used in the study to be pragmatic and useful. The first is Hard and Soft HRM. The former approach exploits employees as inputs in the production process useful only for maximized economic gain. Soft HRM treats humans as assets requiring investment because skilled people add value to the organization. Using the rhetoric of “professionalism,” HR masks hard HRM tactics to better control employees. Professional employees are encouraged to give work and loyalty a higher priority than personal needs ensuring compliance with org requirements, accepting discipline and termination as part of a rational process.
The second HRM dimension is Inclusivist vs. Exclusivist. Inclusivist strategies foster employee loyalty and engagement. The exclusivist approach is transactional in nature focusing on dismissal, layoffs, outsourcing and opposition to unionization.
The authors interviewed 59 telephone call center workers in Mumbai and Bangalore, India whose work is characterized by high volume and service quality demands and the ever-present threat of punishment. Specifically, their methodology adopted hermeneutic phenomenology, the descriptions and interpretations of participants’ work lives as they experienced them. Workers described the work environment as oppressive but that their employer cared about them. From the original group of interviewees, 10 bullied targets who were all new to the call center and not unionized were interviewed about their experiences. Transcriptions of the recorded interviews were analyzed for themes and revealing patterns of themes — specifically how did HRM affect coping with bullying.
The intensive interviews yielded four themes akin to stages of the bullying experience:
• initial confusion (over the bully’s selection of them as targets and the jarring juxtaposition of the espoused professionalism with the unprofessional mistreatment);
• trusting the employer grievance processes for redress (HR initially gives reassurances that a positive solution would result, HR delays are rationalized, eventually senior HR managers admonish complainants and hold them responsible for their fate, HR supports the bullies and the bullies retaliate using the complaint as rationale);
• moving inwards (emotional strain is devastating, social networks make targets feel loved and valued, others convince targets that alternatives exist, once the decision to move is made confidence and productivity return because of their strong work ethic); and
• exiting (though new post-bullying job meant leaving without notice or employer support, sense of regained control, lingering feelings of injustice over having to leave).
The authors conclude that HRM renders employees completely vulnerable because it operates as a one-sided managerial function that looks after only the organizations’ interests leaving the bullied employee with nothing more than their own individual voice. In other words, the maxim that HR is not an advocate for the interests of bullied targets seems true.
Source: Premilla D’Cruz & Ernesto Noronha. (May, 2010) Protecting my interests: HRM and targets’ coping with workplace bullying. The Qualitative Report, 15 (3), 507-534.
Read the article for yourself.
Tags: Hard HRM, HRM, IAWBH, Premilla D'Cruz, Qualitative Report, Soft HRM, workplace bullying
This entry was posted on Friday, August 13th, 2010 at 9:17 am and is filed under Employer Action/Inaction, Science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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The original article is frighteningly accurate in its description of the process I went through…except at termination. I worked in healthcare in Canada, where regional health authorities are the vast majority employer. There was no way I coiuld have arranged a transition to a new employer; resignation effectively ended my career.
The article references employees whose “attempts proved unsuccessful and they ended up choosing exit, seen as an active but destructive strategy.” I did not and do not see the choice to exit as destructive, rather as a re-constructive step. I was in a position where the culture was destructive to the supposed purposes of the organization, and the organization so pervasive in my area of interest and expertise, that I felt I had to give up my chosen field altogether to extricate myself from the bullying and bully promoting environment I could no longer tolerate.
I have not yet settled on a new career direction, but that part of the process is mine, and I will do it in my own time on my own terms. Ethical and professional considerations are important to me, and my standards cannot be met with the existing system in my area.
I agree with Kachina. I too work in Canadian healthcare and everything you have mentioned is true and exactly what I and many are going through. I have been bullied by leadership and management by way of exclusion. I am even being bullied by HR. I have so many examples of the 12 years in this organization, I could write 5 books. Unfortunately, the only way out is to leave….and the exit interviews are probably a waste of time because they do nothing about them.
Agree with Kachina above – leaving becomes the only alternative. I had to leave my job as an assistant because the bullying had become intolerable. I know I had a robust case to take a grievance action, but if I took this action, I know that I would never work in the same area again! Seems you’re damned if you do, and damned if you don’t. HR have made my life intolerable in every place I’ve worked where an HR department exists. Their role is a liability (to employees, not to the employer because they are merely there to protect company interests). A year on and still unemployed and traumatized by what happened to me. If effective HR persons exist, that would be a miracle.
My experience with bullying in a large HMO in Northern California was personally devastating for the time I continued to work there and for about 18 months after I left. I went to HR twice over the 3 years and to EAP one time, and while they were all contract representatives, they literally told me to “suck up.” That is the advice given by HR professionals.
The bullying of people who work hard, do their jobs, stay within OSHA compliance and are dedicated to minimize risk to the patients and keep the hospital within the parameters of The Survey are frequently brutalized by lazy, cruel established management who seek to bring people in line by threats and/or actual termination for absolutely no reason or trumped up charges.
It is a brutal system, theoretically dedicated to providing healthcare and preventative life style tips designed to keep their members living well. But they actively decimate their employees
Ditto what Ijisa said. I’m only ten months in to recovery…eight to go you figure?
Bullying by a female manager was ignored by HR and senior management. She continued to discriminate against me by hiring younger unexperienced men and leave me totally isolated from the team. I didn’t have a small fortune to hire an army of lawyers. My lawyer got the case to court but a new judge sided with Fortune 100 company and thought I had petty complaints and dismissed the case… along with a technical mistake on my lawyer’s part, I was traumatized again. It was like being kicked when you’re already down. I went from having a future to hoping I die young… they broke me… in more ways then imaginable. How does the bully, the management and HR that condone the behavior, and the lawyers and judges sleep at night? Money!
Yes, Caroline, the hard lesson is that justice is rarely achieved in a courtroom. Corp attorneys are well practiced at getting cases by people like you thrown out (summary judgement). Judges do re-traumatize. Please do not give up hope. Take comfort in the fact that you are not alone. Employers are creating a new underclass of invisible people cast to the winds without health insurance or a safety net. Is this the America you every thought you’d live to see?
Is Sending People to HRM a Recipe for Disaster? Maybe…
This HRM study is very upsetting. I know HRM’s and many are dedicated professionals seeking to offer fair investigations and a healthy workplace. However, having been through bullying experiences I know that HRM is there to defend and protect the company. It’s an untenable situation.
HR reflects the leadership of the org: fair-minded companies seem to generate reasonable responses to complaints; secretive, insecure organizations-unreasonable.
I’m working a case now wherein HRM is so confused by the different perspectives of target and bullying managers, that they’re clearly going to side with the managers. Training the HRM’s wouldn’t come close to solving the problem in this organization. This is a top-down situation.
I couldn’t agree more. Bullying is NOT a problem resolved by HR. It is leadership that set the stage and nourishes it. Only executives can stop it. But they have to want to.
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