At first, Joyce didn’t identify what was happening in her workplace as bullying. Her company had been largely remote for years, and she felt no physical threat from her colleagues. “I didn’t really think about that,” says the communications worker based in east England. “I still had in my mind the traditional idea of bullying as somebody getting in your face.”
Yet over time a feeling grew that her boss, who was new to the company, was consistently singling her out in uncomfortable ways. “It would be a group email where I would say one thing and she’d come back with another, or she would put me on the spot in a Zoom meeting without any prior warning,” she says. Many incidents seemed small in isolation: one day her boss changed all of the work social media passwords so Joyce was no longer able to access the accounts; on another, Joyce got an email reprimanding her for “pushback” against her boss’ ideas.
The incidents piled up. Despite having worked at her company for years, over a period of six months, Joyce says she went from loving her job to wanting to resign. “It was a traumatic experience,” she says. “It played on my mind and I just felt very sad.”
Of course, bullying has long been an issue in workplaces, and encompasses a wide spectrum of behaviour, typically associated with in-person work. A familiar scenario might be a domineering boss publicly berating an employee to humiliate them, or a group of colleagues leaving the office for lunch together, deliberately leaving another behind.
For some employees, remote work has provided relief and distance from the everyday distress of dealing with such incidents. Yet there is also evidence that, as companies have increasingly switched to remote and hybrid models, workplace bullying has not only continued but thrived, often in more subtle ways – especially as technology has opened new avenues for unkind behaviour.
Remote bullying behaviour
Remote bullying is not an entirely new phenomenon. Some data indicates it was a burgeoning issue even before the widespread switch to remote work.
A January 2020 study from HR advisory body The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), showed 10% of workers reported being bullied by email, phone or social media. “We were already seeing incidences of bullying that happened outside the physical workplace,” says Rachel Suff, senior policy adviser on employment relations for CIPD, based in London.
The expansion of remote bullying comes as little surprise to Suff. She believes the sheer number of digital channels available “gives more avenues for people to be bullied or feel on the receiving end of inappropriate behaviour”.