11.2% of workers are at high risk of suffering workplace harassment and 18.8% present an average risk. Or what is the same, 30% of Spanish workers have to suffer this hell in the office. This is the conclusion of a study by the Social Observatory of the La Caixa Foundation based on a Spanish-wide representative sample of 5,000 people.
The worker who suffers workplace harassment is almost five times more likely to develop a generalized anxiety disorder. Detecting or stopping it in time is therefore crucial to ensure the psychological well-being of people in their workplace. Now there are tools to detect it in time. The study was carried out by the Cármides research group from the universities of Málaga and Seville and was led by researcher José María León.
The project is part of the annual Social Research call for Spain and Portugal of the Social Observatory of the La Caixa Foundation. And the sample on which it is based – 5,000 people on a national scale – makes this study one of the most serious and worked on workplace harassment.
But when can we talk about harassment at work? The researchers consider workplace harassment "a series of negative behaviors, such as suffering isolation at work, taunts and heavy jokes that are not well received, concealment of the information necessary to properly perform the tasks that must be undertaken or constant and unfounded criticism, among other aspects".
Harassment is also considered "behaviour aimed systematically and repeatedly over time at one or more people, which ends up in a position of inferiority and defenselessness".
These situations of abuse need a breeding ground. José María León-Pérez points out that "the main factors are of a group and organizational nature, such as stressful conditions in which roles are poorly defined and facilitate feelings of frustration; competitive environments in which work teams do not have the ability to integrate different points of view and manage conflicts, and which favor the law of the strongest or lack of leadership, and abusive supervision”.
The Cármides research group has developed "a robust tool" to detect bullying from a statistical point of view. This technique was applied through the questionnaire on exposure to negative behaviors at work called S-NAQ, which included three risk groups: high (object or target of harassment), medium (at risk) and low (no exposure to bullying behaviors).
Four months after the classification of the 5,000 who took part in the questionnaire, the study focused on almost 2,100 workers chosen, because of their vulnerability, for a second phase of the study. The psychological well-being of these people was analyzed based on a scale that measures anxiety. The researchers then verified that "the probability of developing a generalized anxiety disorder, the most common psychological disorder in bullying situations, was almost five times greater in people classified in the group at high risk of suffering workplace bullying", concludes this study.
And when this data was segmented, among that group of people exposed to a high risk of harassment, it was determined that 19.9% showed extensive symptoms of anxiety. It is the alert, now possible to detect with these studies, that announces "the presence of a possible generalized anxiety disorder compared to people who face a medium or low risk of harassment". A great prevention tool, then.
