Abstract
In this chapter, the author presents a very sensitive socio-psychological issue of workplace cyberbullying and the ways the employers try to discipline cyberbullying. The technology and digital media access have brought in speed, accuracy, and accessibility to everyone and anyone across the world in a work setting simultaneously brought in the dangerous culture of cyberbullying, which negatively impacts productivity. The author takes up some of the critical issues like browbeating, berating, stealing, excluding, dissing, doxing, snide, threatening, victim, bully, stress, stalking, flaming, outing, and trickery to clarify as to how the workplace cyberbullying issues happen inside the workplace.
TopBackground
Workplace cyberbullying refers to repeated, unreasonable actions of individuals, or a group of workers, directed towards an employee or groups, which are purposely intended to intimidate, degrade, humiliate, and undermine others, or creates a risk to the health and safety of the employees including their physical, emotional, and psychological safety (Branch, Ramsay, & Barker, 2013; Rayner & Cooper, 2006, p. 47-90). The National Crime Prevention Council defines workplace cyberbullying as the process of using the Internet, cell phones or other devices to send or post text or images intended to hurt or embarrass another person (Rayner & Cooper, 2006, p. 47-90). The Workplace Bullying Institute (WBI) (n.d.) defines workplace cyberbullying as an aggressive action that is repeated, health-harming with the mistreatment of one or more persons. Workplace cyberbullying increases the negative effects that persist over time, and the victim is at the risk of experiencing severe stress, anxiety, and poor physical and mental health (Farley, Coyne, Sprigg, & Axtell, 2015). The victims may become excluded from their regular working life due to ill health, stigmatization, victimization, or reputational damages due to workplace cyberbullying. These experiences may increase the chances of poor employee productivity, due to the victims working less efficiently, as they may take more time off, feel less committed to the organizations, or may quit, which may even increase the attrition rate, thereby bring down the productivity of the organization. Enormous options to be connected to the network during the working hours and non-working hours have increased with the advantage of the seamless connectivity with the help of digital devices that induces the workplace cyberbullying (Sarkar, 2015). From the above, cyberbullying in the workplace is viewed as an inappropriate and unwanted social exchange of behaviours, initiated by any perpetrator online or any digital technology-supported equipment, and this is now an epidemic across the world that is impacting productivity across the world, and it is rapidly spreading across the world, including the developing countries like India.
Workplace cyberbullying impacts the victims in the form of anonymous, fraudulent, aggressive, unwanted messages, or by spreading rumours. In the case of workplace cyberbullying, the perpetrators hack the email accounts of victims to threaten them. The perpetrators if undetected will move on to intimidate the victim through unwanted phone calls, and by using malicious or abusive messages during the working and non-working hours, and this is termed as workplace cyberbullying (Ramsay & Troth, 2011). The workplace cyberbullying impacts more than just a targeted individual victim (Farley, Coyne, Sprigg, & Axtell, 2015). The negative effects of the workplace cyberbullying can impact the entire workplace, or even the whole organization, by increasing anxiety and panic in the minds of the workers. The workplace bullies inflict pain in the employees by putting employees under distress, which forces them to be away from work. This psychological fear makes them avail of more sick days creating a high rate of absenteeism in the organization. This happens due to the impact created by workplace cyberbullying that increases stress-related health issues in the employees. This damages their positivity, which then percolates into demotivating them, and forcing them to disengage from their work. The above negative impact on the entire organization at various levels hits badly on the productivity of the whole organization (Farley, Coyne, Sprigg, & Axtell, 2015). It decreases the productivity that affects the entire business and indirectly increases the cost of the company in recruiting frequently, as retention of talent becomes increasingly difficult due to workplace cyberbullying (West, Foster, Levin, Edmison, & Robibero, 2014).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Doxing: A mode of cyberbullying by openly or publicly revealing sensitive or very personal information of the victim without the consent of the person, with the intention of embarrassing or humiliating the victim.
Fraping: An act of cyberbullying by using the victim’s social networking accounts or personal blogging sites to post inappropriate content with their names in it, to destabilize the self-confidence of the victim.
Trickery: A mode of cyberbullying similar to outing in that it has an element of deception in the act by which the perpetrator purposely deceives the victim tactfully.
Outing: The mode of cyberbullying done deliberately by the perpetrator to share a victim's secrets or personal information in a public forum to damage the reputation of the victim.
Flaming: Act of cyberbullying through which the bully insults the victims through electronic posts about the victim directly and sending insults repeatedly and uses blasphemous or obscene language to the level of sabotaging the self-confidence of the victim, and uses profanity as a weapon against the targeted victim, for which the damages are usually heavy and the victim gets damaged psychically and may go in hiding at times.
Workplace Cyberbullying: A negative, aggressive act that is repeated, with health-harming mistreatment on one or more people, in an organization. When the victim experiences acts of same nature from one or more perpetrators, of several forms, like verbal abuse, offensive conduct or behaviours including actions like threatening, humiliating, or intimidating, that harms the work in an organization, then it is considered as workplace cyberbullying.
Stalking: This act of cyberbullying is perpetrated on the victim by sending them targeted messages using digital and electronic media with the purpose of intentionally scaring or harming or intimidating the victim.
Cyberstalking: This mode of cyberbullying is done by the perpetrator to threaten the victims physically to harm the victim, which at times can be done to a child also, and the act includes monitoring, false accusations, threats, including offline stalking.
Harassing: This act of cyberbullying is perpetrated with the use of digital mode by sending hateful and hurtful messages with the intention to damage the morale of the victim.
Exclusion: The mode of cyberbullying by tormenting the employee or publicly excluding an employee, and discarding the email from the group, or excluding the person from important assignments to harass the victim employee is the chosen mode in an organization.