Mobbing

Generality

Mobbing is a hostile and persecutory behavior carried out against an employee or a work colleague, in order to marginalize him or deprive him of the functions exercised in the field of work organization.

The basic dynamic of the phenomenon consists in an attitude of psychological harassment or harassment aimed at isolating the victim, preventing her from fully performing her normal working activity .

Mobbing can be divided into:

• Horizontal : practiced by colleagues for different reasons, including competition, careerism, career, envy or racial, cultural, religious and political difference.
• Vertical : implemented by the employer or superiors, sometimes to induce the employee to resign.

This form of marginalization represents one of the main causes of stress in the work environment and can have very harmful repercussions on the health of the mobbed person, such as anxiety, panic, isolation, depression, changes in sleep-wake rhythm, dizziness, headache and behavioral disorders .

The mobbing victim worker can develop, therefore, real physical or psychological pathologies, which can be compensated through a claim for damages.

Mobbing: Definition

"Mobbing" comes from the English verb "to mob", which means "to attack in mass".

In its transposition in the workplace, the term assumes the meaning of oppressive, persecutory or, more generally, of psychological violence perpetrated by the employer or by colleagues against an individual to force him to resign or, in any case, to leave the 'professional environment, for reasons of competition, envy, jealousy or bad interpersonal relationships.

The identifying elements of mobbing are:

• The presence of at least two subjects (mobber and mobbed) who come into conflict with each other in the work environment;
• The vexatious activity continues and lasts (the hostile behaviors occur with a weekly frequency, for at least six months);
• The purpose of isolating the victim in the workplace to permanently remove them or prevent them from playing an active role in the work.

This form of psychological violence is not a stable and sudden event, but turns out to be a real articulated process, which gradually evolves over time through different stages. In order for mobbing to exist, therefore, a single act is not sufficient, but a plurality of situations is necessary.

Curiosity: mobbing in ethology

In the study of animal behavior, the term "mobbing" is used to describe the behavior of some animal species, consisting in threateningly encircling a predator, an intruder or a member of the pack or the flock itself to remove it.

Triggering factors

Before assuming legal relevance, mobbing has been the subject of various studies in the medical field, by psychologists and sociologists.

At work, the phenomenon takes the form of psychological terrorism that implies a hostile attitude and situations of systematic conflict by one or more persons (placed in a superior, inferior or equal position with respect to the mobbed), with the aim of causing damage of various types and severity towards the targeted individual.

The mobbing victim worker becomes the object of continuous harassing and persecutory activities, which recur systematically over a period of not a short time, causing him considerable mental, psychosomatic and social suffering .

The desire to damage the victim may be motivated by a political and corporate strategy purpose, but also by unconscious emotional factors, such as character traits or feelings of revenge and envy favored by some personality traits.

Warning!

A situation of mobbing is defined only in the presence of repeated and objectively documented systematic persecutions . The phenomenon must not be confused, therefore, with the generic forms of hardship or the controversies that occur daily in the sphere of the working sphere.

Furthermore, the condition is distinguished from student "bullying" or from military "nonnismo" : these last forms of aggression are strongly characterized by acts of violence or physical threat, while mobbing rarely leads to such behavior.

Types of mobbing

Vertical Mobbing

Psychological violence is implemented by the employer or a hierarchical superior. In Anglo-Saxon terminology, this form is also called "bossing" or "bullying".

• Bossing : it is practiced by superiors and is configured as a business strategy to eliminate employees who have become "uncomfortable", without determining union or legal cases. This phenomenon - also called planned mobbing - often occurs during company restructuring or mergers.
• Bullying : indicates a series of behaviors implemented by an individual superior towards the employee.

Horizontal Mobbing

The oppressive and discriminatory activity is carried out by work colleagues or even by subjects subordinated hierarchically to the mobbed worker; in the latter case, some authors speak of ascending or bottom-up mobbing.

Based on the number of workers affected by the persecutory behavior, it stands out:

• Individual mobbing : when the goal is a single employee;
• Collective mobbing : if the object of the vexatious activity is a group of workers (as can happen, for example, during corporate restructuring, early retirement, layoffs etc.).

Based on the motivation, instead, it is possible to identify:

• Emotional mobbing : related to personal motivations and bad interpersonal relationships (jealousy, careerism, illicit practices, paranoid personalities, etc.).
• Strategic mobbing : it corresponds to a precise strategy of exclusion of a worker from the company, which, with this premeditated and programmed action, intends to carry out a downsizing of the activities of a given subject or his removal.

Protagonists of mobbing

Mobbing involves two main categories of people:

• MOBBIZED : is the objective of systematic, frequent and continuous practices, implemented in order to deprive him of the functions exercised in the field of work organization. The subject is designated disqualifying tasks and his personal and professional skills are challenged. The humiliations and the offenses concern not only the working life, but also go to invest the private life of the victim. The mobbed is often criticized or sabotaged.
• MOBBER : is the one who initiates and perpetrates the attack. The motivations for implementing mobbing can be different and include the fear of losing one's job or hard earned position, the simple antipathy towards someone with whom one is forced to live several hours a day, or the concern of being unjustly outclassed by someone else young.

The condition of mobbing foresees that there is a difference in power between the two protagonists of the conflict situation, in which the victim always finds himself in a condition of disadvantage.

Mobbing behaviors

The forms that mobbing can take are different and can consist of:

• Psychological pressures or harassment;
• Systematic slanders;
• Verbal abuse and personal offenses;
• Attitudes aimed at debasing or unjustly intimidating, even indirectly;
• Unmotivated criticisms and hostile behavior;
• Marginalization of the worker's tasks for no apparent reason;
• Attribution of excessive tasks, capable of causing serious inconveniences in relation to the physical and psychological conditions of the worker;
• Exasperated exercise of forms of control towards the worker.

The hostile behaviors determining the process of mobbing can concern:

• Possibility to communicate : the mobbed worker suffers a strong and constant limitation to the possibility of interacting with colleagues, as well as a systematic and groundless impediment to access to information necessary for ordinary work activities.
• Social relations : the employee is physically excluded by transferring to isolated or distant places, preventing him from communicating with other work colleagues and depriving him of means such as telephone, computer and mail.
• Social image: the mobbed person is subject to repeated offenses, discrimination and vexatious acts related both to the work plan and to the private sphere, which disparages his reputation. The delegitimization of the image can also occur in front of colleagues and subjects unrelated to the company.
• Quality of the professional situation: the employee receives meaningless directives or considerably above his professional qualification. In other cases, the mobbed subject is given dequalifying tasks in relation to his / her competences. The worker can be excluded in a way that is not motivated by training and professional updating initiatives. The mobber can simulate professional errors, continually criticize the victim's performance or professional abilities, implement sabotage actions and entrust deliberately confused and / or contradictory tasks.
• Health : the mobbed is forced to carry out activities that can compromise his state of health (eg denial of vacation or leave periods, assignment of burdensome or dangerous tasks or with exhausting shifts etc.). Very rarely, the worker can be subjected to violence or sexual harassment.

It should be remembered that many of these actions, if isolated and not repeated, can take place even under normal conditions; there is talk, however, of mobbing when one or more of these actions becomes systematic and long-term.

Possible consequences

The consequences of mobbing have repercussions essentially on the victim, who suffers the most damage in terms of economic losses and health problems .

In the long run, the mobbed worker may experience psychosomatic, relational and mood disorders, which can also lead to permanent psychophysical disabilities . Nervousness due to the situation often causes breathing difficulties, tachycardia, headache, dizziness, problems with expression and communication skills, gastro-intestinal disorders, dermatological manifestations and dysfunctions of the sphere of sleep and sexuality.

Mobbing can also lead to disorders of intellectual functions, difficulty in concentrating and problems in social contacts. In several cases, moreover, the occupational situation experienced as adverse can determine the appearance of the "post-traumatic stress disorder", which is accompanied by a series of psychic disorders (such as anxiety, state of continuous tension and depression) that are usually occur after an acute or cumulative psychic trauma.

Other frequently observed psychopathological consequences are adaptation disorder, anxiety and behavioral alterations (eg eating disorders, alcoholism, smoking, aggression, etc.). The mobbed subject can also manifest obsessions, isolation and depersonalization.

In addition to causing health problems, mobbing causes considerable financial damage, following the use of repeated medical examinations and the loss of work as the final outcome of the persecution process. Mobbing also has economic effects on the company: mobbed employees significantly reduce their work performance, as well as obliging the company to invest time and money on substitutes during absences for visits and sick leave.

At the national level, there is no specific legislation aimed at regulating the phenomenon of mobbing. However, however, there are constitutional, civil and criminal laws that allow workers to be protected against harassment in a professional context. The worker who is the victim of this behavior, as a whole unlawful, in fact, can obtain compensation for patrimonial and other damages, that is to say on an existential, biological and moral level.