The number of unreported cases is high and the consequences are serious. And yet bullying is as common in German offices as desks, office chairs or telephones. Bullying or psychological terror in the workplace has nothing to do with occasional teasing; it is an attack on the mental and possibly physical health of employees. There is currently no separate “bullying paragraph” in criminal law - in serious cases, bodily harm, coercion, insults or slander are used for such acts. It's high time to have a fundamental conversation about a serious danger in the workplace. As colleagues you share it Desk, goes on a lunch break together and yet sometimes caution is required here.
What is bullying?
In order to consistently get to the bottom of the phenomenon of “bullying”, let’s unpack the very fine language tool right at the beginning. One might think that an Anglicism that is adopted into German usage means at least exactly the same as in its native language. But he only does this to a limited extent: The English “mobbing” actually refers to a state, namely “being insulted” or “surrounded by something”. As a noun it is used in a similar way to German, but English still has a few stages of development: first “mobbing” (harassing), then “harrassing” (harassing, bullying) and finally the word that describes a process like the English “mobbing”: “bullying”.
Bullying or mobbing – what is this quibble about words?
Someone who has ever been confronted with psychological terror in the workplace will attach great importance to such details. Real bullying has just as little to do with bullying as it does with harassment. It is true that someone who bullies or harasses at work is clearly crossing a line, and not just that of decency. But real bullying goes further than a derailment that may arise from a burning anger. If you look at the many word meanings of “bullying”, you get closer to the matter: “tyrannize”, “harass” or “intimidate”, for example. The bully, i.e. the “bully,” is referred to as a “tyrant” or “brutal guy; thug.” Brutality and tyranny have a different quality and a longer staying power than the short-term violence of crossing borders. However, psychological terror, the correct translation of “bullying”, hits the nail right on the head. It's not just bullying victims who are asking themselves why it's even necessary to use a false anglicism for something that the German language can describe very precisely.
Nevertheless, bullying has become established as a synonym for psychological terror in the workplace. Due to the ability to insult people anonymously on the Internet, the word has acquired an offshoot as “cyber-bullying”. The bottom line of this digression: Psychological terror in the workplace has different dimensions than bullying or harassment, which can correspond to a flare-up of emotions. On the contrary, psychological terror requires cold calculation. If you want to approach a definition, “bullying” can be described as the intention to disgust another person out of a certain social group with targeted, repeated and regular harassment. It's no wonder that the workplace has become the most common setting for such attacks. The competition is fierce; And anyone who doesn't have the will to work their way up through performance just bullies their way out. It is by no means just colleagues of equal status who bully each other. Bullying is often carried out from top to bottom - a particularly perfidious form of psychological terror because those affected are even less able to defend themselves than against hierarchically equals.
On the history of the term “bullying”
The fact that colleagues and superiors defame and isolate each other in order to wear each other down in the long term is a behavior that is of course much older than the term that describes it. It first appeared in public and economic discussion at the beginning of the 1990s. According to a representative study for the Federal Republic of Germany by the Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, at this time there were increasing reports of attacks, harassment or social exclusion by colleagues, colleagues or superiors across all employment groups. Initial studies carried out in the Scandinavian region by a group of scientists led by the now deceased psychologist and pioneer in bullying research, Heinz Leymann, showed back then that bullying was anything but a marginal phenomenon. The publication of the study had a huge impact in the Federal Republic: health insurance companies, trade unions and churches addressed the issue. The first self-help groups, company initiatives and even a nationwide hotline were set up.
2002: The first German bullying report
After the turn of the millennium, the first bullying report for Germany was published, which was based on representative data. The results about psychological terror in the workplace included: A good million working Germans suffered from bullying, with older workers being at increased risk, but those under 25 being most affected. The highest risk factor for bullying was in the professional group of social workers, social educators and educators - followed at a distance by sales staff, banking and insurance specialists, technicians and health service professionals, IT specialists and accounting clerks as well as those working in office jobs. Sorted by industry, the publishing industry had the sharpest elbows, followed by the wood, credit and electricity industries.
It was important for the authors of the study to note that the term “bullying” was often used inappropriately – which is still true 15 years later. They pointed out that even isolated taunts and arguments in the workplace are quickly described as bullying. Since psychological terror in the workplace is hardly consistently defined as bullying in the scientific literature, they largely relied on Leymann's description of bullying as "negative communicative actions that are directed against a person (by one or more others) and that occur very often and over a longer period of time and thus characterize the relationship between perpetrator and victim". The authors therefore derived the following definition for their work: “Bullying is understood to mean that someone is victimized, harassed or disadvantaged and excluded at work, often over a longer period of time.”
Increasing trend: Bullying is and remains a problem
Of course there has always been bullying. However, individual surveys and studies show that the willingness to make life difficult for colleagues with targeted attacks has increased recently. On the other hand, the problem is more well-known today and it is not only the works council, union or interest groups that keep a particularly keen eye on the behavior of their employees at work. Especially in times of constantly increasing working hours, superiors are keen to ensure that there is a good working atmosphere in the office. However, there is also a high percentage of bullying that occurs out of pure boredom - without a specific reason and without a far-reaching agenda. So colleagues you often sit Office chair on an office chair, the mood should be right there. There are now partitions or room divisions office furniture can create some distance.
The latter can also be observed outside of the workplace. Whether with the help of the Internet or directly in the schoolyard: Since the word “victim” became established as a swear word in youth language and is more likely to trigger malice than pity, bullying has occurred, especially among adolescents, to a level that borders on inhumanity. The Canadian Amanda Todd has achieved notoriety. In her case, an unprecedented smear campaign online and in the schoolyard resulted in suicide. Numerous young people between the ages of 13 and 15 have also taken their own lives in recent years after a long period of direct or indirect attacks. The perpetrators, an indefinite group of classmates, acquaintances and even total strangers who take part in the insults, are of course never caught and therefore cannot be punished.
So bullying students become bullying employees. It is therefore important for colleagues and superiors to remain vigilant regarding psychological terror in the workplace and not even to tolerate behavior that qualifies as bullying.