The problem of bullying creates a severe issue for the atmosphere of the workplace environment, the mental health of workers, and their performance. Various factors can contribute to the developing problem of harassment. It may be due to the application of incompetent leadership strategies that create the feeling of helplessness and devaluation of the employees and the invalid policy of bullying prevention and control. Hence, there is a crucial need to define and create a modern and effective system of leaders’ skills and values alongside a new manual for bullying prevention in the healthcare environment.
One of the essential parts of the process is defining workplace bullying and how leaders can influence it. Workplace Bullying Institute describes the problem as “repeated, health-harming mistreatment by one or more employees of an employee or a group” (n.d.). Bullying can be performed as a form of verbal abuse, behaviors marked as threatening, intimidating, humiliating, or sabotaging the working process (WBI, n.d.). All mentioned forms of bullying may result from weak or failed leadership. According to D’Cruz et al. (2021), certain styles and skills help to prevent acts of harassment and secure a healthy working environment for all employees. Among them, scholars emphasized the approach of transformational leadership, which associates with the beneficial organizational structure of the workplace (D’Cruz et al., 2021). According to the method, we can point out four skills necessary for leaders.
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Firstly, the central element is management skills and the ability to empower the employees. It is vital to establish a co-working approach in the working group, with the help of coaching, which has to minimize the biased attitude of the potential bully. It will reduce burnout, work alienation, and feelings of powerlessness and self-estrangement. Secondly, persuasion skills must be developed alongside strong charisma to achieve the most effective communicational interactions. Open communication may help establish connections with employees and offer them reliability on the leader in harmful situations. Thirdly, the inclusion approach has to be applied by the manager in the workplace; each team member has to feel their value to the company regardless of cultural, religious, race, or identity differences. And the last quality required for successful leadership to manage conflicts is the ability to put accountability for every person in the situation. It means every side of the conflict has to understand their role and involvement in the process, including the manager. Accountability has to be measured according to the policy of the healthcare organization. Hence, various leadership factors can contribute to creating and ensuring a healthy and safe working environment.
The bullying prevention and control policy is not directly secured by federal law. Still, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title VII, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration include employee safety programs, granting workplace anti-bully regulations. The first document “prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin” (Civil Rights Act, 1964, Section 703). It explores the regulations in terms of the situation of harassment, which does not always correspond to the bullying definition; hence, applying the act to the modern working environment presents limited solutions. At the same time, OSHA defines the central purpose of the regulation as “to provide a workplace that is free from violence, harassment, intimidation, and other disruptive behavior” (OSHA, 2012, p. 10-15). The standard expands the field of possible intervention by adding other notions of harmful actions in the workspace, defining the responsibility of employees and employers in cases of bullying. Thus, both documents prohibit bullying activities toward other employees based on various factors, but OSHA (2012) offers a more precise explanation of the violence forms than the Civil Right Act of 1964.
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