Research Profile - Under Pressure

A UNB researcher is studying how women care for their health after being bullied in the workplace

[ Back to main article ]

Even the most rewarding job can be stressful at times. But imagine showing up at work each day when your boss is constantly berating or threatening you. What would you do? Dr. Judith MacIntosh, a researcher at the University of New Brunswick at Fredericton, is studying how women care for their health when they experience workplace bullying.

The term workplace bullying covers a wide range of behaviours, from excluding someone from workplace activities, to claiming credit for another person's work, to verbal and physical abuse. According to Dr. MacIntosh, these behaviours are persistent and are usually intended to cause harm. And they can have devastating health effects over time.

"We're all aware of the impact of extreme violence in the workplace, the type of incident that you see on the evening news. But at the other end of the spectrum is this very insidious, often subtle behaviour that erodes a target's self esteem over time and leads to health effects that can be very difficult to regain control over," says Dr. MacIntosh.

Workplace bullying results in a wide range of negative health effects, including increased stress, insomnia and disrupted digestion. In more severe cases, targets of workplace bullying may become depressed or exhibit symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder. These health problems can spill over into the person's social and work lives.

"Many people who have experienced bullying feel forced to leave the workplace when they don't experience a resolution, and because of the bullying they don't feel like they can ask for a reference," says Dr. MacIntosh. "So applying for subsequent jobs is often very difficult."

Dr. MacIntosh and her colleagues wanted to take a closer look at how workplace bullying affects women's lives and how women try to cope with the bullying. With the help of funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), they interviewed a group of women who had experienced bullying on the job to find out more about their experiences and how they had dealt with the abuse. Some of the women in the study had also suffered from other types of physical or emotional abuse, such as domestic violence.

"We wanted to understand whether women would take care of their health in similar ways when they'd had an 'extra layer' of abuse," explains Dr. MacIntosh.

Through the interviews, the researchers found that the women being bullied at work found it difficult to stay healthy. They would often stop exercising, stop following a healthy diet, and increase unhealthy behaviours such as smoking.

The researchers also identified a three-stage process that the women went through as they tried to cope with the abuse: sustaining, mobilizing and rebuilding.

During the sustaining stage, the woman had not yet realized she was being bullied, but she had begun to avoid the bully. For example, she might alter her schedule or stay away from places where she was likely to encounter the bully.

In the mobilizing stage, the woman would acknowledge, often with the help of a coworker or friend, that the bully's behaviour was unacceptable. She would then seek out help from human resources or her union, or take a leave of absence to regroup.

In the final stage, rebuilding, the woman would take steps to reestablish herself as a worker, resume taking care of her health, and reflect on what had happened and how to prevent it from happening again. This rebuilding process varied slightly from woman to woman, depending on how the bullying had been resolved.

For women who had experienced abuse before, there wasn't much difference in the effects on their health or the ways they tried to cope with the bullying, but it often dredged up the same negative feelings they experienced when being abused by their partners.

"Some of the women who had been abused by their partners used the same sort of avoidance strategies in the workplace, but they all said that it stirs up the same feelings of just not being good enough, of wondering if they somehow deserved to be abused because here it was happening again," says Dr. MacIntosh.

The researchers found that having a support system, particularly in the workplace, helped women manage the problem and overcome the health effects of bullying. Unfortunately, many employers do not have policies to help employees when they experience bullying, and existing policies are often not enforced or do not include common bullying behaviours.

Based on findings from another study, Dr. MacIntosh and her team developed a website that provides support for employees dealing with bullying, and guidance for employers who are trying to build more supportive workplaces. The researchers have received positive responses from both men and women who have visited the site and found it helpful.

"We need to increase public awareness about what workplace bullying is, that it is not acceptable, and what can be done about it," says Dr. MacIntosh.

The study:

Dr. MacIntosh and her UNB colleagues, Marilyn Merritt-Gray and Dr. Judith Wuest, interviewed 40 women recruited through ads in community newspapers. The women, who were between the ages of 20 and 60 years old, had all experienced workplace bullying. They worked in a broad range of occupations, from food service to finance to health care.

A little over half the women reported being bullied by other women, and about 70% had been bullied by a supervisor. Twenty-five of the women reported experiencing domestic violence, child abuse, or both, prior to being bullied in the workplace.

In the next stage of her research, Dr. MacIntosh would like to study men's experiences with bullying in the workplace.