Long-term UIC study: Chronic workplace bullying can negatively impact targets for years; laws and policies needed

An important new research study (go here for pdf) coming out of the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) finds that, among other things, targets of chronic workplace bullying may face higher levels of psychological distress and alcohol misuse for years after exposure to the abusive behaviors.

This “is the first study to examine the effects of [workplace harassment] over an approximately 25 year period.” The findings and recommendations are the latest results of a significant longitudinal research project launched at UIC in 1995 to understand the impact of sexual harassment and “generalized workplace harassment” (workplace bullying) on targeted workers, using mental health and alcohol misuse as the primary measures. The findings of this latest study are based on survey data received from over 2,300 self-identified targets of sexual harassment and bullying.

Major findings concerning bullying

The principal investigator of this study, Dr. Kathleen Rospenda, and the principal investigator of the original studies, Dr. Judith Richman, are pioneering researchers on harms caused by workplace bullying and sexual harassment. Dr. Rospenda recently shared her summary of the latest study, emphasizing its findings concerning bullying:

We just published an article using long-term follow-up data from our original harassment study. People who were classified as being exposed to a chronic pattern of generalized workplace harassment (aka bullying) during the first 10 years of the study reported higher levels of other stressors and greater alcohol misuse at follow-up (nearly 15 years after last recorded exposure to harassment). Chronic generalized harassment was indirectly associated with greater psychological distress at follow-up through its effects on current levels of stressors. Chronic generalized harassment was also associated with lower income at follow-up. Sexual harassment had similar effects, except also had a direct effect on psychological distress at follow-up. In short, even if you were exposed to workplace harassment a long time ago, it looks like it may make you more susceptible to experiencing other life stressors and it can have long-term impacts on your mental and behavioral health.

Because of the ongoing focus of this blog, here I’m emphasizing the study’s findings concerning workplace bullying. The full piece goes in depth on the very similar long-term effects of both workplace bullying and sexual harassment.

Laws, policies, and enforcement

These aren’t the survey results I’d prefer to share, but they surely buttress the case to take workplace bullying very seriously. Indeed, I am in full agreement with the authors’ recommendations for on-the-ground responses:

Given our findings that exposure to [workplace harassment] can have long-term effects on worker health, stronger enforcement of [sexual harassment] law and enactment of laws to prevent [generalized harassment]/workplace bullying are crucial for the protection of worker health. Additionally, employers should enforce existing sexual harassment policies and institute policies that explicitly prohibit generalized harassment or bullying in the workplace. Policies should include clear reporting procedures and clear penalties for policy violations.

The road to enacting workplace anti-bullying laws in the U.S. is proving to be a long one, stoked by employer opposition to creating liability exposure for even the worst instances of targeted abuse. Recently I completed a draft of a book chapter on international legal responses to workplace bullying, to be included in a forthcoming, multi-author treatise on global work laws. I came away from that project more convinced than ever that the U.S. is becoming an unfortunate outlier in its resistance to the idea that severe workplace bullying should be an unlawful employment practice. 

Thankfully, the UIC study contributes to an evidence-based argument that American workplace law should intervene when bullying behaviors cause tangible harm to workers. I am heartened that it implicitly supports enactment of the anti-bullying Healthy Workplace Bill, in addition to other measures that can safeguard workers from this form of mistreatment. In addition, I’d like to thank Drs. Richman and Rospenda for their extended and steadfast commitment to this uniquely valuable research agenda, which is now yielding important findings about the long-term personal harms wrought by both workplace bullying and sexual harassment.

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The article containing the UIC study is “Effects of chronic workplace harassment on mental health and alcohol misuse: a long‑term follow‑up,” published in BMC Public Health (2023), and co-authored by Kathleen M. Rospenda, Judith A. Richman, Meredith McGinley, Kristin L. Moilanen, Tracy Lin, Timothy P. Johnson, Lea Cloninger, Candice A. Shannon, and Thomas Hopkins.