Information Age: News, analysis & insight for IT & business leaders

Trade union research finds bullying is rife in IT departments

More that three IT workers out of five are struggling to cope with bullying in the workplace, according to new research conducted by trade union Unite.

This is impacting productivity. Of the 860 workers questioned, 22% said that they had taken time off work due to office bullying.

Chief among workers’ complaints were unattainable deadlines, constant over-monitoring and excessive criticism of minor matters. Over half of respondents felt that they had been harassed by senior members of staff, suggesting that ‘hand-down stress’ may be contributing to the problem.

“In stressful environments, managers are under pressure to deliver results and so pass that stress on to their employees,” said a spokesperson for Unite. Combined with “ineffective HR policies”, this creates a deadline-driven environment of constant antagonistic pressure, the spokesperson added.

More worryingly, many victims of workplace bullying are reluctant to speak out, creating a culture of silence around the problem. Nearly 40% of those bullied said that they had not raised the issue at all, while 26% of respondents said that they felt any such complaint would be dismissed as inability to cope.

Rather than address the problem directly, IT workers are likely to handle their distress in more damaging ways. According to the Unite survey, 51% of those bullied had experienced physical and behavioural problems as a result, including constant headaches, panic and anxiety disorders, and increased reliance on alcohol and illegal drugs.

Information Age spoke yesterday to Scott Lovell, a former network design engineer who left the IT industry last April after suffering a nervous breakdown and whose experiences resonate with the findings of the survey.

“There is a culture within IT that when the work is there, you do whatever you have to do to get it done,” said Lovell. “As managers come under pressure to perform according to traditional business models, this culture of intensity is no longer allayed with built-in leisure time."

Workplace bullying has a devastating effect both upon individual employees and upon company productivity. According to the TUC, bullying in the workplace costs UK businesses in excess of £2 billion every year through a combination of ‘lost time, lost incentive and lost resources’, as skilled employees take time off work, lose motivation or suffer stress burnout and leave the profession altogether.

In an industry such as IT, which relies heavily on skilled human capital, the knock-on effects are considerable. Unite advises IT managers on how to ‘develop more efficient HR policies’ in order to tackle workplace bullying proactively.

Further reading Unhappiness in the IT sector The IT professional’s lot, it seems, is not a happy one.