By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune Senior Reporter

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

THE Bahamas could be suffering from a high rate of bullying in the workplace, according to the first study of its kind published in the International Journal of Bahamian Studies.

The research of William Fielding, Director of Planning at the University of The Bahamas, estimates that the prevalence of bullying is 21.7 percent based on a survey featuring about 2,060 respondents.

“This suggests that if the results from this study are indicative of bullying in the wider workforce, then The Bahamas suffers from a relatively high rate of bullying,” he wrote.

The survey is based on the Negative Action Questionnaire Revised (NAQ-R), which is widely used to measure bullying at work by assessing information about the workplace experiences of respondents.

Workplace bullying is divided into three categories: work-related bullying, personal-related bullying and physically intimidating bullying.

According to Mr Fielding’s research, workplace bullying was the most common type of bullying respondents experienced, followed by personal-related bullying.

Workplace bullying includes having one’s opinions ignored, having someone withhold information that affects one’s performance, excessive monitoring of one’s work, being ordered to do work below one’s level of competence, being exposed to an unmanageable workload and being given tasks with unreasonable deadlines.

Personal-related bullying includes having someone spread gossip and rumours about you, being ignored or excluded, being humiliated or ridiculed in connection with one’s work and being shouted at or being the target of spontaneous anger, among other things.

According to the study, 22.7 percent of men and 20.7 percent of women were classified as being bullied using NAQ-R.

Mr Fielding wrote: “Working in the private sector was associated with reduced bullying for males compared to government employment, but this was not seen for female participants. In the government sector, men were more likely than women to be bullied.”

Bullying was highest among people working in the tourism/hospitality section (30.6 percent), quickly followed by those working in law enforcement (30.5 percent).

In addition to using the NAQ-R scale, Mr Fielding’s research examined bullying from the perception of the respondents. Women, in this case, were more likely than men to feel they had been bullied in the workplace.

“…Women with higher levels of educational attainment are more likely to report being bullied than men with the corresponding level of education,” Mr Fielding wrote. “Therefore, education does not appear to be a protective factor for women from bullying. For both men and women, bullying rates differed with the level of education attained.”

He continued: “The consequences of this bullying can be appreciated in that both males and females were more likely to be thinking of leaving their workplace than if they had not been bullied, and not even just change jobs within the same workplace.

“Bullying had an even greater impact on respondents happiness in the workplace, with a lowered likelihood of respondents being happy when they were bullied. Females who felt bullied were even less likely than males to feel happy in their jobs. This attitude reflected in them being more likely to think of changing their job. Consequently, workplace bullying has the potential to produce greater instability in the female rather than male workforce.”

Among men and women who felt bullied, about 64.5 percent thought about leaving their workplace, compared to 34.5 who did not feel that they were bullied but still thought about leaving their workplace.

According to Mr Fielding, “for both males and females, employment by the government puts them at greater risk of being bullied than working elsewhere.”

“Even at the senior levels, women at management levels reported being just as likely to be bullied than women at non-management levels,” he wrote. “This was in contrast to the pattern of bullying in males…where managerial positions appear to protect them from being bullied…As might be expected, managers tended to be less bullied than those in less senior positions.”

Mr Fielding wrote: “Some participants appeared to appreciate that there was a ‘normal’ atmosphere of workplace bullying, ‘nothing extreme from managers outside the normal Bahamian system’, and this may be indicating that bullying is more prevalent here than elsewhere. Overall, the self-perception of bullying suggests a higher level of bullying than elsewhere, say in Great Britain, where across various sectors of the economy, between 83-95 percent reported not being bullied.”