Why engagement data is revealing a more systemic story behind workplace bullying
We spend a lot of our time working with organisations on employee engagement, trying to understand what helps people thrive at work and, just as importantly, what causes them to disengage.
As part of this work, we regularly speak to individuals about their day-to-day experience, not just what shows up in surveys, but what it feels like to be in the system.
In one of these conversations, a young professional shared his experience and as it was deeply disturbing.
He is a young graduate, employed in a very well- known company
This was his dream. He is very smart. Driven. Someone who wants to do well. We asked him what it feels like to go to work in the morning.
He explained that he entered his profession optimistic and ambitious, ready to prove himself. “You come in wanting to do well,” he said. “You really want to leave an impression.” What he didn’t expect was how quickly that drive would be stretched beyond reason.
The pressure wasn’t seasonal. It wasn’t just a busy month. Seventy-hour weeks were standard, the expectation was clear: if you are not visibly overloaded, you must have capacity. And if you have capacity, more work will follow. Every hour he works is billable to the organisation.
Working overtime wasn’t exceptional. It was the baseline required to avoid being labelled an underperformer. Weekends blurred into weekdays. Missing a Saturday required justification. Finishing tasks efficiently did not create breathing room; it simply created more tasks.
There were moments that felt unmistakably like bullying. Being told his team was “the embarrassment of the office.” Sitting through feedback sessions structured to focus twice as long on weaknesses as on strengths. Walking into reviews already convinced he had failed, because the culture had taught him that “no one can say they did well.”
But the deeper issue was structural
Performance ratings determined promotion. Managers controlled professional sign-off. Reporting channels existed but rarely resulted in change. The organisation was understaffed, so pressure flowed downward. Managers themselves were under strain, so appreciation disappeared. The system rewarded endurance, not sustainability.
In one intense audit period, he completed nearly a quarter of his team’s total deliverables. He was later told this was “unprecedented” for someone at his level. Instead of pride, he felt manipulated. “I thought I was underperforming the whole time,” he reflected. “Then I realised I’d been pushed beyond what was expected.”
When asked about the impact, he shared openly. “There were nights I just broke down,” he said. “Sometimes I almost hoped to get sick so I could rest.”
This is not bullying as we traditionally imagine it. It is not always loud. It is not always personal. Sometimes it is systemic, normalised and even justified as a rite of passage.
And when extreme pressure becomes culturally acceptable, silence becomes part of the job description. But perhaps the most poignant was how he explained that he is very mindful to be a friendly and positive influence in the team, knowing that his peers are all struggling with their mental health, hoping his smile will uplift them, even if just for that moment.
We ran our individual engagement survey with him, and the results support how unhappy he is at work: His overall engagement score sat at 34%, a clear signal of deep disengagement. But what matters more is how that disengagement shows up.
- Team experience: 15% He didn’t feel supported or strengthened by the people around him.
- Freedom to work in his own way: 21% A strong sense of being controlled, with little room to operate independently.
- Sense of impact: 25% His work felt inconsequential, like it didn’t really matter.
- Recognition: 30% Effort was not seen or acknowledged.
- Trust and fairness: 34% A breakdown in belief that the organisation operates with integrity.
- Pressure levels: 40% Work demands felt excessive, unpredictable, and unsustainable.
- Manager support: 45% His manager was not experienced as a strong source of guidance or support.
The only area that held relatively strong was career growth (63%) likely because he needed this experience for his professional accreditation.
Workplace bullying is often seen as a moral failing or a personality clash between individuals. However, when we look at the empirical evidence from our recent organisational surveys, a more systemic narrative begins to emerge. Our data, based on a sample of 804 employees, suggests that bullying is not merely an individual behaviour, but a predictable outcome of specific environmental pressures and leadership deficits.
The prevalence of bullying
Bullying is defined as repeated, targeted behaviour that creates a hostile environment and excludes reasonable management practices. While the average prevalence of across our sample is 17%, the reality is highly inconsistent, ranging from 10% in some organisations to a staggering 40% in others. This suggests that bullying is not an inevitable by-product of work, but a variable of the specific environment. The cost of such environments is a significant erosion of the psychological contract: While non-bullied employees report an average engagement score of 70, those who are bullied report a significantly lower score of 60.
Engagement triad
To understand why bullying is so destructive, we look beyond the overall engagement score and examine the specific pillars of the employee experience. We categorise these into an Engagement Triad: the relationship an employee has with their Manager, their Career, and their broader Environment. By breaking the data down into these specific constructs, we can see exactly where the psychological contract is being severed.
To understand why bullying is so destructive, we look beyond the overall engagement score and examine the specific pillars of the employee experience.
We categorise these into an Engagement Triad:
- the relationship an employee has with their manager
- their sense of Career growth and future opportunity
- and their experience of the broader Environment they work within
Each of these plays a different role.
The manager relationship is where culture becomes personal. It is how pressure, feedback, and expectations are experienced daily.
The career dimension explains why employees stay, even in difficult environments. Growth and accreditation can create a powerful reason to endure.
The environment reflects the system itself, the workload, norms, structures, and expectations that shape behaviour across the organisation.
When we analyse engagement through this lens, a clear pattern emerges.
If managers are supposed to be the guardians of culture, seeing their domain take the biggest hit is a provocative finding. It forces us to ask: Is the manager the bully, or has the environment made the manager’s job impossible?
The manager or the environment?
The discourse in organisational psychology suggests that bullying is rarely just an individual “bad apple” behaviour. Organisational research suggests bullying is a symptom of an unhealthy environment that manifests where there is high job demand and low job resources.
Our data support this, the regression analysis found that the presence of Manager support acts as a strong protective factor against bullying, as perceived management quality increases, the odds of bullying decrease. Conversely, we found that pressure levels serve as a significant risk factor, increasing the likelihood of bullying incidents.
This invites us to consider the “Recipe for bullying”, namely high-stress, high-pressure environments coupled with low managerial talent. In this light, bullying may be less about individual malice and more about a systemic shortcoming when leadership cannot effectively mediate organisational pressure. This suggests a cyclical failure in which high-pressure environments and leadership deficits first function as a recipe for bullying, which then negatively influences the employee-manager relationship, further eroding the employee’s trust in their manager and their perception of the work environment.
What does this mean for leadership?
The “so what” for HR leaders and executives is this: Bullying is not a peripheral HR grievance to be managed case-by-case, but a primary indicator of systemic operational risk. When we observe a 16-point “engagement crash” in the manager-employee relationship, we are seeing the disintegration of the organisation’s most vital performance link. If management support is our strongest shield and high pressure levels, the primary catalyst, then addressing bullying requires more than just a code of conduct, it demands a strategic recalibration of how leaders distribute pressure and mediate its effects.
Establish boundaries
Local research supports this systemic perspective. Badenhorst and Botha’s work on workplace bullying in South African higher education institutions emphasises that meaningful prevention lies in creating clear policies, building organisational awareness, and equipping leaders with the skills to manage conflict and intervene early.
- Establishing an anti-bullying culture by adopting a clear zero-tolerance stance against bullying behaviour.
- Implementing and operationalising an anti-bullying policy; such a policy should entail clear definitions of the acts that are associated with workplace bullying and the procedures to follow to report and handle incidents.
- Creating awareness of workplace bullying and procedures to follow in the case of incidents.
- Education and training on policies, procedures and practices to follow in reporting bullying incidents.
- Effectively addressing incidents of conflict and bullying in the working environment; in this regard, the conflict de-escalation strategies suggested by Glasl (1982) can be followed.”
Audit the system, not just the symptom
- Conduct regular Culture or Climate Surveys to understand patterns of psychological safety, leadership behaviour, workload pressure and team dynamics.
- Look for hotspots rather than isolated incidents. Analyse exit interviews and absenteeism data for early warning signs.
Build protective leaders
Leaders can be trained to:
- Intervene when staff are overworked
- Model respectful challenge
- Intervene early in toxic dynamics
- Regulate their own stress so it does not cascade downward
- Hold performance conversations without humiliation
Acknowledge and support at risk employees
Some employees are more vulnerable during restructuring, high pressure periods or performance transitions.
- Offer confidential check in conversations
- Provide access to coaching or EAP support
- Train managers to spot withdrawal, disengagement or sudden silence
- Create safe reporting channels that are genuinely protected
Prevention includes noticing subtle exclusion, not only overt aggression.
Conclusion
Workplace bullying is rarely as simple as one difficult person or one toxic interaction. More often, it is the quiet outcome of systems that normalise pressure, reward endurance, and leave managers without the capacity to lead well.
What makes this form of bullying so dangerous is that it hides in plain sight. It is rationalised as high performance, justified as a rite of passage, and sustained by environments where speaking up feels futile. But the data tells a different story.
When engagement collapses, when trust erodes, and when employees begin to endure rather than contribute, we are not looking at isolated incidents, we are looking at system failure.
This shifts the responsibility.
The question is no longer: Who is the bully?
It becomes: What is the system producing?
For leaders, this is both confronting and empowering. Because while individuals may contribute to the problem, it is the system that sustains it and the system that can ultimately resolve it.
If pressure is inevitable, then leadership must become the buffer, not the amplifier.
And if organisations are serious about performance, then creating environments where people can thrive, not just survive, is no longer optional. It is a strategic imperative.
A final thought
The young professional we spoke to never used the word “bullying”. He just described how it felt to work there. And that’s the risk. Because when pressure becomes normal, and silence becomes expected, and endurance becomes the measure of success. Bullying doesn’t need to announce itself. It becomes part of the system.
If this resonates, it may be worth taking a closer look at what your data is already telling you.
If you’re curious about how to assess your culture and identify early signs of systemic pressure or risk, reach out to our OD team for a conversation at odteam@omnicor.co.za.
Acknowledge and support at risk employees
Resources:
https://sajhrm.co.za/index.php/sajhrm/article/view/1909/2975#2
