Mobbing as a psychosocial risk at occupational health and safety in Turkey

Introduction

Recently it has been speaking about bullying/mobbing and violence at workplace in general. However it is not believed that it is a new pattern of behavior. It was discovered in 1980’s by Professor Heinz Leymann, He firstly described a phenomenon mobbing by researching social dynamics of workplace. There is now extensive literature regarding this phenomenon and the International Labor Office has considered mobbing together along with other violent behaviors. In developing countries mobbing is less well recognized and previously in Turkey it has not been recognized as an occupational health issue. Because of methodological difficulties, there is no gold standard for the measurement of mobbing behavior.

“Mobbing in the context of human beings either means bullying of an individual by a group in any context. Identified as emotional abuse in the workplace, such as "ganging up" by co-workers, subordinates or superiors, to force someone out of the workplace through rumor, innuendo, intimidation, humiliation, discrediting, and isolation, it is also referred to as malicious, nonsexual, nonracial, general harassment.”

Mobbing is psychological violence at workplace, which involves unethical communication systematically mannered by a group or an individual toward mainly one person.

It is often imagined, that mobbing is psychological violence caused by a superior to subordinate. However, mobbing occurs also among equal workers and also against superior.

There are lots of causes. Concurrence liquidation, bad organization, boredom, effort to suppress own inferiority, looking for a sacrificial lamb for own failure, etc.

Mobbing occurs frequently and over very long period. Mobbing as psychosocial risk factors can cause many has psychical, social and psychosomatic effects on employees including particularly distress and burnout in today’s work life. These negative effects also results some unintended consequences such as low job satisfaction, absenteeism, discreditable transfers to another work anxiety, social isolation, stigmatizing, voluntary unemployment, depression, compulsion, suicides, psychosomatic illness and has serious psychosomatic problems. There are suspicions that the social situation experiences effects the immune system.

The new Turkish Occupational Health and Safety Act (OSHA No: 6631) has made it mandatory to carry out risk assessment in enterprises for the purpose of taking preventive measures. Documentation and guidelines on psychosocial risk assessment is quite limited.

This paper objectives to identify the prevalence of reported workplace mobbing among a group of health workers, to evaluate the association between reported mobbing and its effect on health for victims. In other words, this paper aims to identify the relationship between mobbing, job satisfaction and psychological symptoms and distress as a psychosocial risk.

Material & Methods

This method used a cross-sectional questionnaire survey among full-time employees in the health sectors.. During a period of 3 months, we visited three hospitals. We then distributed printed questionnaires in closed envelopes and collected them back from the participants on a specific day. We distributed a total of 600 questionnaires. Some 5 of the returned 498 questionnaires had missing data so they were excluded from the analysis. 493 Participants question forms were evaluated. The response rate was 82%.

Our main outcome measures were the following:

• 1. A 20item inventory of bullying developed by Quine (1999);
• 2. A 7item  Job Induces Stress Scale developed by House & Rizzo (1972);
• 3. A 14item The Hospital Anxiety and Depression (HAD) Scale developed by Zigmond & Snaith (1983);
• 4. A 5item Job Satisfaction Scale developed by  Quinn & Staines (1977);

Reliability analyses for these instruments were made by using the Cronbach alpha coefficient and were as follows [Cronbach a (mean ± SD) ]:

Job Induced Stress Scale: 0.83 ( 20.6 ± 6.3); HAD Scale: Anxiety: 0.81 (7.6 ± 3.7); Depression: 0.73 (6.6 ± 3.7); Job Satisfaction Scale: 0.86 (10.4 ± 3.0) and 20-item bullying inventory: 0.83 (39.3 ± 3.6)

The Cronbach alpha coefficients of all these scales were over 0.70. Therefore we accepted the translated versions of these scales as reliable and used them in statistical analyses. The cutoff points of the HAD scale were as follows: 8 for depression, 11 for anxiety.

There were also some questions in the survey regarding the participants’ age, gender, marital status, occupation, years working for the institution, having a managerial responsibility or not, feelings and health complaints after exposure to mobbing behavior, type of mobbing, their perceptions about the causes of being mobbed and their actions in response this behavior.

The term ‘mobbing/bullying’ was explained at the beginning of the questionnaire. Statistical analysis was done by SPSS. We used frequency distribution, binary logistic regression analysis and student t test.

Results

In this study, more than one third of participants had worked for 1–5 years, 83.5% were 18–40 years of age, whereas 61% were female. Most participants had secondary and university education, 66% were married, 12% were Health Technician, 30% were Nurse, 55 % were Doctor. Only 15.2% had Managerial responses.

During the last year, 55.1% of the participants had been exposed to mobbing behavior, and 44.9% had not. Some 47.4% said that they had witnessed others being mobbed. It is important results in our study, Sixty-two percent of female victims were bullied by female perpetrators.

We performed a binary logistic regression analysis to see the relationship between the various characteristics of the participants and their exposure to mobbing behavior and found no relationship to age, gender, marital status, and length of employment. But we did find a difference among the jobs. Nurses/midwives/health technicians were most affected (75%), followed by secretarial and administrative staff (64%),

The relationship between mobbing and occupational health outcomes were examined by t test.

Table: 1- T Tests

As it is clear on the table above, job stress, anxiety and depression are highly seen on the experimental who are exposed to mobbing attitude than the others and the statistically is significant. Staff who had experienced mobbing in the past year reported significantly lower levels of job satisfaction than other. Additionally, they had significantly higher levels of job-induced stress. They were significantly more likely to have higher levels of anxiety scores and depression scores.

Some 51.9% of the mobbing victims reported that the exposure to mobbing behavior affected their health and 36 % was not sure about this. The most frequently seen effects were being anxious, tense, and unwilling to do their jobs. About 4.0% of them had taken time off work. Among exposed employees, 59.6% reacted to the mobbing when it occurred, but 22.9% were not satisfied with the outcome.

Discussion

While there is little empirical evidence at present, mobbing does extend beyond the industrialized world. In our study group, we found no relationship between the demographic characteristics and being subjected to mobbing. Some studies from Europe found occupation and sector as significant factors in mobbing. Leymann found that people working in educational settings to be most at risk (Leymann, 2002).  In Finland, mobbing was experienced most often in health care (European Foundation, 2005).In Spain, workplaces favoring strong competition between workers, with authoritarian management, were found to be most at risk; public administration, education, and health sectors were mostly affected (Sese , Palmer & Cajal, 2002).

Many studies in the health sector suggest a high prevalence of mobbing among health care providers, especially among nurses (Randall,1992; Niedl, 1995; Daugherty,Baldwin& Jr Rowley, 1998; Quine,1999; Quine,2002). There are a lot of studies that have showed the mob to be the victim’s superior. This was also shown in our study, but we also found a higher ratio of mobbing between colleagues at the same level.

Almost all studies regarding workplace mobbing found a relationship between job-induced stress, and being subjected to this behavior. We also found that staff that had experienced mobbing reported higher levels of job-induced stress, and their anxiety and depression scores was higher than those not being mobbed. These situations could be explained by the effects of mobbing behavior on the mental health of the victims, which has been revealed in numerous studies (Björkqvist et al.,1994; Einarsen & Rakens, 1997; Björkqvist, 2001; Kivimäki, Elovainio&Vathera, 2000; Kaukiainen, Salmivalli, Björkqvist & Österman, 2001).

Mobbing is psychological risk with devastating consequences. According to the Turkish law, employer is responsible for good atmosphere at workplace. New Labor code forbids any discrimination, pestering, harassment and persecution. However, reaching one’s rights is often very difficult in our country. Occupational safety laws are not clear for psychological risk and do not cover emotional well-being issues, and protective and proactive measures have been neglected. Furthermore, there are no scientific studies concerning emotional well-being and mobbing issues as psychological risk in Occupational Health and Safety in Turkey.

Mobbing and other workplace-related mental health issues should not considered a luxury but a necessity, and should not be further ignored like physical, biological and chemical risks, even in developing countries.

References

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