As people spend a substantial part of their time at work, satisfactory working conditions are very important for their mental well-being. It can also affect person´s performance and overal quality of life. Mobbing at the workplace is therefore a serious problem that can deeply affect human dignity.

What is mobbing?

It is form of discrimination, which results in creating intimidating, hostile, embarrassing, degrading and humiliating or offensive environment. It can also be intended to interfere with human freedom.

This is often negative and unethical communication behaviour directed against the individual by one or more poeple. The aim is to humiliate or chase away the person from work environment. The most common examples include e.g. pointing out mistakes, intimidation, inadequate division of tasks between colleagues, disapproval of holiday, forced overtime, excessive control, taking credit for subordinate´s ideas, obstruction of carrer growth or threat of termination of employement.

Where the victim is, the perpetrator will be too

How it is possbile that only some poeple experience mobbing and others do not experience it at all? Many times it is in the personal attitude of each of us. It is not possible to bully some people. That´s why it is extremely important to get rid of the role of victim at the first place. There are cases when a person changes jobs due to bullying. It goes well for some time. However after a while many find themselves in exactly the same situation as they experienced in the previous workplace.

The common feature is the difference compared to other members of the team. The victims are mainly people who:

  • are alone (e.g. woman in men´ s team or vice versa)
  • conspicuos person (e.g with speech defect)
  • succesful person ( promotion)
  • new at the workplace ( comes with change of usual)

Even when we speak about a people who perform mobbing (so – called mobbers) we cannot accurately identify a typical perpetrator. Nevertheless, we find certain similar characteristics such as prone to aggressive behaviour. They can be also peaceful careerists who want to achieve their success or just envious persons who long for power at the expense of others.

If there is a fire, it will not go away just because you close the eyes

According to surveys, approximately 17 % of workers have experienced bullying in the workplace. Mobbing is often concealed and hidden, which makes its impact on the victim more serious. I tis a huge psychological pressure on the bullied person who becomes more unstable, sensitive and frightened. It can manifest itself in the form of physical difficulties such as insomnia, loss of appetite, migraines, dizziness or palpitations.

The larger the company, the more different personalities. This is a challenging process to maintain a healthy corporate culture that promotes open communication and friendships. It upholds moral values and leads its employees to respect and reverence for others. The most common behavior is unethical behaviour in companies that are not interested in their emplyoees and where is a lack of management system, work organization and overall discipline.

“The problem with humanity is that the wise people tend to be cowards, the brave ones are foolish and competent ones are impatient.”

– Truman Capote