What is mobbing?
Mobbing
“In the early 1980s, a Swedish psychologist named Heinz Leymann identified a grave threat to health and safety in what appear to be the healthiest, safest workplaces in the world. … he labeled the distinct menace he had found with an English word: mobbing. …
Mobbing can be understood as the stressor to beat all stressors. It is an impassioned, collective campaign by co-workers to exclude, punish, and humiliate a targeted worker. Initiated most often by a person in a position of power or influence, mobbing is a desperate urge to crush and eliminate the target. The urge travels through the workplace like a virus, infecting one person after another. The target comes to be viewed as absolutely abhorrent, with no redeeming qualities, outside the circle of acceptance and respectability, deserving only of contempt. As the campaign proceeds, a steadily larger range of hostile ploys and communications comes to be seen as legitimate. …
Not infrequently, mobbing spelled the end of the target’s career, marriage, health, and livelihood. From a study of circumstances surrounding suicides in Sweden, Leymann estimated that about twelve percent of people who take their own lives have recently been mobbed at work.”
~ Kenneth Westhues, Professor of Sociology
Not only does mobbing often result in suicide, in extreme cases once a target has been abused beyond their breaking point it can end with incidents of workplace violence and homicide.
Why has this email campaign been created?
I experienced the phenomenon of mobbing first-hand while employed at a notoriously abusive Canadian newspaper. The bullying I was subjected to went on for many years, but I couldn’t put a name to what was happening. Most people learn about mobbing only after it is too late and serious damage has already been done. Due to this creeping, cumulative characteristic of mobbing it is referred to in Europe as “the slow poison”.
In my own case, a 22 year career was systematically destroyed and I was eventually left disabled and financially ruined. My family and I have been devastated and, as a direct consequence, we have since also been rendered homeless. Mobbing is a nightmarish ordeal, a downward spiral from which some are never able to recover.
As Prof. Leymann explains, “The unwieldy social situation for these individuals consists not only of severe psychological trauma but of an extremely prolonged stress condition that seriously threatens the individual’s socio-economic existence. Torn out of their social network, the majority of mobbing victims face the threat of early retirement, with permanent psychological damage.”
As a result of these experiences with workplace bullies I became determined to do what I could to raise awareness about mobbing and so I decided to create mobbing.ca (http://mobbing.ca), a website dedicated to providing information and resources to help others who have been targeted.
This is why I have started this email campaign. Everyone needs to know about mobbing; what it is, how it happens, its devastating consequences and what to do if it is happening to you, but I need your help to get the word out.
What can you do to help?
Too many lives have been destroyed, and even lost, as a result of workplace mobbing. It is time to say enough is enough. Awareness and education are the first steps to dealing with this problem. I ask that you forward this email to everyone you care about. You may not be experiencing this abuse yourself but someone you know may be suffering in silence, or someone they know is being impacted by mobbing not realizing the danger they are in. If each of us does our part to help spread the word about workplace bullying needless suffering and death can be averted.
Thank you for taking the time to read this email and for forwarding it to everyone you know. I would also encourage you to visit mobbing.ca (http://mobbing.ca) to learn more about workplace bullying and the mobbing phenomenon. I welcome your feedback, please contact me at the email address below.
Sincerely,
Anton Hout
Webmaster, mobbing.ca
Website: http://mobbing.ca
Email: mobbing.ca@gmail.com
You might also like
|
|
|
|
|
Loading ...
Comments