Bullies thriving in 'macho' Ireland

One in 30 employees is a serial bully but our macho culture fetes them as achievers, clinical psychologist and workplace bullying expert Dr Mark Harrold said yesterday as details of a conference on workplace bullying were launched.

Dr Harrold, who works with the HSE and has published research internationally on behavioural interventions, said companies were not doing enough to stop bullying.

"Very often, particularly in the current economic climate of Ireland where there's quite a macho culture around, we tend to fete bullies as the tough men, the ones who get the job done," he said.

"The bottom line at the moment is shareholder value within organisations . . . If that stays up, the behaviour tends to be tolerated."

The recent €1.2 million award to Deutsche Bank employee Helen Green, who had been bullied might help to concentrate employers' minds on the issue, he said.

The legal implications of bullying will be addressed in the national workplace bullying conference to be held in Dublin on November 9th. (see www.bravo.ie/workplacebullying for details)

Dr Harrold will be one of the key speakers at the conference. He said that while teachers, medical staff and social service workers complained most about bullying in Britain, middle-aged executives were now emerging as an "at risk" group here.

"They are middle-aged, or just past middle-aged, executives who become expensive in the eyes of organisations. And we see it time and again, their working conditions are made so intolerable that they will leave, because it's cheaper.

"It's cheaper to employ a 30-year-old enthusiastic person who is going to work for half the price."

He said immigrants could also be vulnerable to workplace bullies.

Meanwhile, Jacinta Kitt, organisational adviser, warned companies that judges were taking an increasingly critical view of employers who were not proactive in preventing workplace bullying.

She said the vast bulk of Irish companies either took a "minimum compliance" approach or just reacted to cases as they arose.

Bullies tended to "filter upwards" in organisations because of the "aura" surrounding them that they could get the job done.

Some 70 to 80 per cent of bullying victims relinquish promotion, take early retirement or just leave organisations, Ms Kitt said.