Reducing the Incidence of Workplace Bullying and Mitigating its Impact on Employee Performance

Abstract

Motivating work environment enhances performance of human resources whereas workplace hurdles, stressors and hazards result in a decline in their performance. Workplace bullying is a major workplace hazard that results in low employee performance. Hence, its incidence must be controlled and impact on employee performance must be mitigated. The current study was conducted to analyze the workplace bullying phenomenon, reduce its incidence by implementing antibullying interventions and mitigating its impact on employee performance by enhancing the level of emotional intelligence of the victims through emotional intelligence training interventions in health care sector of Pakistan. This study was carried in three stages: (i) Pretest stage, (ii) Treatment of Bully Group and Victim Group, (iii) posttest stage. In Pretest Stage, bullying incidence was reported and groups of bullies and victims were identified. There were 25 bullies who were lacking personality trait of agreeableness and 126 victims who had personality trait of agreeableness. In Stage 2: Treatment of Bully Group, anti-bullying interventions developed through The Transtheoretical Model (TTM) to change bullies’ behavior were applied to 22 bullies who agreed to be the part of TTM anti-bullying interventions. Moreover, in Stage 2: Treatment of Victim Group was carried out where employee performance and emotional intelligence level of 101 identified victims were assessed. By providing an informed consent, 36 victims with low level of emotional intelligence became the part of EI training interventions. In stage 3: posttest data was collected and analyzed. Results of Wilcoxon Signed Ranked test revealed significant decrease in bullying incidence and paired sample T-Test showed significant increase in emotional intelligence. Results of moderation analysis revealed that EI had significantly moderated relationship between workplace bullying and employee performance. Significant decrease in negative effect of workplace bullying incidence on employee performance was found when the level of emotional intelligence was enhanced. Similar results were reported in both pre and post-EI-interventions implementation stages. However, negative effect in post-EI-interventions implementation stage was relatively lower as a resultant higher level of emotional intelligence. Current study also discussed limitations or directions for future research and various important implications for theory, research and practice.