March 14th, 2011

Post-bullying economic woes for bullied targets

In a recent WBI 2011 instant poll that asked how the next job compared financially, the news is not good.

The question: For those who have ever lost a job to bullying, how did the next job compare financially?

Responses from 241 site visitors (a sample of individuals known to declare themselves to be targets of bullying at work)

26% — That job was never replaced – there was no next job

25% — Less money, but safer

13.7% — Less money, bullied again

11.6% — More money and safer

17% — More money, but bullied again

5.9% — Got another job, no change

Of those who did get another job, the financial status was:

LESS money earned — 52.8%

No change — 7.9%

MORE money earned — 39.3%

Thus, nearly 40% did come out ahead confirming the validity of our advice that there will be an eventual end to the bullying. And if you move along quickly enough without suffering severe health harm, you will have a new life. Getting out can be positive.

The fact that 53% did suffer an economic setback is probably based on the dwindling number of well paying jobs on the market to replace the job the target once loved. To those people, we emphasize the benefit to personal health and sanity of leaving the toxic workplace. You were too good for that place anyway.

The saddest fact is that over one-quarter of bullied targets were not able to replace their lost job. We know that bullying comes uninvited. No one asked to be intimidated or humiliated. Since the most veteran, competent workers are targeted, it is safe to assume that they once loved their jobs very much. They simply wanted to be left alone to do the work for which they were getting paid. But bullying displaced them and put them on the street involuntarily, regardless of whether they were fired or had to quit to preserve their health. This is the tragedy of workplace bullying.

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Tags: economic cost, survey, WBI research

This entry was posted on Monday, March 14th, 2011 at 10:07 am and is filed under Bullying-Related Research, Tutorials About Bullying. 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.