The Royal Australasian College of Surgeons estimates that bullying costs businesses in Australia and New Zealand $21 billion a year although some put it even higher with the Australian Human Rights Commission says it is as high as $36 billion a year for Australian employers.

Research out of the United States has found that nearly half the people who have been bullied have experienced anxiety, panic attacks, clinical depression and post-traumatic stress. What’s even more alarming, according to that research, is that once a person is targeted, they have a 64 per cent chance of losing the job for no reason. They will always find something, you can bet on it. Even worse, 40 per cent never report it.

In other words, bullying is a silent epidemic.

Where are we most likely to find bullies? According to the British Psychological Society journal, The Psychologist, bullies are most likely to thrive in workplace cultures where there is a high level of competition, where there is constant radical change, where there is a climate of insecurity and people are always worried about the next round of redundancies, where is a strong “macho” style of management (although female bosses can bully too), where there are rigid hierarchical structures, where staff are just expected to do as they’re told, where there are excessive work loads and a lack of procedures to tackle bullying and harassment issues.

How do we define bullying behaviour? Apart from abuse, your views and opinions might be ignored. You might be exposed to an impossible workload. People might withhold information from you in a way that affects your job. You might be given impossible targets or deadlines, or ordered to do stuff that’s way too difficult. You might be frozen out of conversations. You might discover that someone is spreading lies and gossip about you. Even worse, people might be making remarks or comments about your habits, your background, family, private life and attitudes. You might find yourself being constantly micro-managed. Suddenly, you might find you are not getting important work any more and instead you are being loaded down with trivial and unpleasant tasks. Or you might find yourself being disciplined and humiliated by being put down in public.

All these things happen in workplaces now. The thing that strikes me the most is that workplace bullies either thrive because of inept management that ignores the problem (and by doing so colludes with the bully), or because they are bad managers themselves. Studies have found that bullies are inept, insecure and untalented people who have a secret rage against themselves and who take it out on others. Many bullies have what psychologists call a narcissistic personality disorder, someone who always needs to be admired and who demands total compliance. In a sense, you might even feel sorry for them.

What should we do about it? Maybe more awareness and an understanding that this sort of behaviour should not be tolerated.

Have you experienced bullying or witnessed it? What happened? What was done about it? How much of this sort of stuff happens? And what can we do about it?