Bullying at work may be much more serious than it appears. In a survey conducted by job-search site Saramin on 2,975 office workers early this year, 45 percent of respondents said that bullying occurs in their workplaces.
Some 58.3 percent said they have seen colleagues quit their jobs because of this.
Bullying at work comes in many forms. The most frequently cited case was of a team leader singling out one employee and encouraging other members of the team to gang up on them. The second-biggest scourge mentioned was when a number of workers ostracize one of their colleagues. There are also cases of employees ostracizing their boss.
Although bullying is rampant in workplaces, the majority of companies do not seem to take this social ill seriously. Rather, in some cases, companies fire the bullied employee for disrupting the harmony of the organization.
Lee Jun-hee at the Korea Employers Federation said, "Just as companies run mandatory education programs to prevent sexual harassment in the office, so they should recognize the seriousness of bullying and come up with preventative measures."
