News: Performance Management
'Half of managers bullied at work'
01 April 2008
Almost half of mangers allege to being bullied during the past year while at work, new research claims.
Personnel Today reports that in a poll of 2,300 people conducted by the Work Life Balance Centre and Coventry University, 44 per cent of managers said they had been bullied in the past year.
The figure includes 12 per cent of senior managers while more than one in ten of those affected said they had been bullied by their colleagues rather than somebody senior to them.
Denise Skinner, professor of HR management at Coventry University, said: "Improvements … need to be made in the way people are treated when they ask for help with work/life balance issues.
"Less than one-third of those who asked their employer for help found it effective while a quarter found the support to be ineffective with a further 13.9 per cent finding it made things worse."
The survey follows research by academics in Canada which found that managers do more harm by bullying their employees than if they were sexually harassing them.
Some 110 studies of employees' experiences of sexual harassment with those of workplace bullying were analysed as part of the research, reports Management Issues. 
