The Mobbing Encyclopaedia
Bullying; Whistleblowing
Consequences of mobbing
© Heinz Leymann - file 15100e
Effects on Society: In Australia, Toohey
(1991) calculated some of the costs for these and other cases of
stress-related illnesses. The Australian society's costs for sick leaves
due to employees being maltreated in the workplace are dramatic. Toohey´s
main criticism is focused on the fact that these employees, following long
periods of being subjected to very poor psychosocial work environments,
eventually consulted their physicians who diagnosed "stress"
(as is usually done in this country). Toohey´s criticism is that
the "health industry", by using this procedure, focuses on "being
ill", "not being well", or "not being able to take
the strain of working life", instead of forcing management, as Toohey
claims should be done, to carry out inquiries into the working environments
which produced the illnesses. The result of this type of policy does not
give management any incentive to reorganize the working procedures or the
social environment of their companies.
Highly abused employees also show a tendency towards early retirement,
as has been shown by Swedish public statistics. The figures for 1991 show
that as much as approximately 25% of the work force above the age of 55
were retired early. The Social Insurance Office estimated that ther were
a great many individuals who developed illnesses from poor psychosocial
working environments, in other words, mobbing experiences. Between 20%
and 40% of the yearly number of early retirements was caused by poor psychosocial
environments. Approximately every third to fifth early retiree in this
age group had suffered from extensive mobbing (personal discussions with
officials from the Swedish National Board of Social Insurance, 1993).
The fact that the Swedish government wanted to protect the national
budget from these heavy financial burdens is not surprising. At the turn
of the year 1993/1994, the Vocational Rehabilitation Act went into
effect. This law states that employers are obliged to present a vocational
rehabilitation plan to the Social Insurance Office as soon as an employee
has been on sick leave one month, or ten times within a 12-month period.
The purpose of this enactment is to transfer costs for rehabilitation to
the origin; the workplace where poor environmental conditions triggered
costly consequences (AFS, 1994).
Effects on the Organization: Johanson (1987), a
Swedish business economist, developed itemized lists in order to calculate
company costs for repetitive or long-term sick leaves. He found methods
by which to compute different kinds of costs to the company. He was also
able to demonstrate that it was less costly for a company to offer these
employees professional vocational rehabilitation, even a very expensive
one, and to reorganize working environments, than to deal with employees
in the manner as shown in the case of Eve.
Extended conflicts of this kind cause further negative development,
worsening the psychosocial workplace environment. As the concept of mobbing
is new, it is obvious that research results concerning these effects are
not yet available. Hypothetically, one can imagine its consequences in
the form of higher production costs, higher personnel turnover, lack of
personnel motivation and so on.
Effects on the mobbed individual: For the individual,
mobbing is highly destructive. We might wonder why the person does not
leave the organization. But as a person becomes older, his/her ability
to find a new job diminishes. This is probably the reason behind another
fact, namely that those who have developed PTSD
(Post-traumatic stress disorder) because of mobbing are rarely younger
than 40 years of age (Leymann & Gustafsson,
1996). The risk that the subjected person´s occupational
position will stagnate or even worsen is elevated (this is well demonstrated
in a study by Knorz & Zapf, 1996). Expulsion from employment
may easily turn into a situation in which the individual in question is
unable to find any job at all, which means that he or she is in effect
expelled from the labor market (e. g. Grund, 1995). Seen from this
perspective, further negative effects will most likely be detected in future
research.