A British Workplace Behaviour Survey explored prevalence of a wide range of behaviors that comprise “ill treatment”

in the UK workplace. “Ill treatment” included

• 47 percent reported unreasonable treatment

• 40 percent reported denigration and disrespect

• 33 percent experienced both unreasonable treatment and denigration and disrespect

• 6 percent experienced violence Unreasonable treatment included unmanageable workloads or impossible deadlines, ignoring opinions and views, and withholding information. Denigration referred to being shouted at and treated disrespectfully. The main targets for disrespectful behavior were gay, lesbian, and bisexual employees.

Unreasonableness and disrespect are forms of bullying that stop just short of actual violence. It was found that when management ignored behaviors, poor behavior flourished.

As a team, address the issue of measuring bullying in the workplace. How should it be measured? What kind of measurement instrument should be used? How will the criteria be generated? Address these key issues and identify a process that your team would recommend to develop measures of workplace bullying. If possible, generate an example of what a measure might look like. Would it be a rating scale, a checklist, or something else? Also, who would complete the measures? Finally, identify your plan for the resulting data, that is, what would you do with your results? Would you assess individuals with the data? Would you try to identify bullies? What utility would the measurements have?

Share your measurement approach and example with the rest of the class. Describe your management plan with regard to the use of the data. Under the direction of the instructor, the class should select the best measurement approach and the best management plan.