The Criminal Code defines harassment at work as "the act of harassing another person by repeated acts with the purpose or effect of degrading working conditions likely to injure his or her rights and dignity, impair his or her physical or mental health, or impair his or her ability to work."
Starting as of January 2011, it is mandatory for Italian companies to conduct the Related Work Stress assessment and repeat it every three years. Failure to comply results in significant fines and criminal penalties for the employer.
The guidelines suggest the use of questionnaires and checklists to assess the degree of stress to which workers are subjected.
In spite of this obligation to assess stress in the company, superficial verification, often due to lack of time or the need to control costs, prevents the detection of situations of great distress and risk for both the worker and the company itself.
Marie-France Hirigoyen, a psychiatrist-psychotherapist and expert in victimology, has done a great deal of research on stress in the workplace and describes some typical dynamics this way. Excerpted from her book "Moral Harassment":
"Stress at work and the economic cost of its health consequences remain poorly quantified phenomena. Stress is not recognized either as an occupational disease or as a direct cause of work stoppages; yet occupational physicians and psychiatrists note an increase in psychosomatic disorders and alcohol or psychotropic drug abuse related to excessive work pressure.
These stresses are due to the excessive pressure of work.
This pressure very often due to bullying or bad relations in the company, pushes employees to ask to be put on sick leave for long periods. The lack of care and attention to these phenomena in fact does not help the employee to get out of such precarious state with significant consequences on business productivity.
Hirigoyen continues,
Disorganization in a company is always a source of stress, whether it is a bad definition of roles (you do not know who does what, who is responsible for what), an unstable organizational climate (a person has just received a new qualification and you do not know if he or she will keep it) or even a lack of focus (decisions are made without the agreement of the people concerned). The heavy-handedness of some administrations or highly hierarchical companies allows certain power-hungry individuals to turn on other individuals with impunity. Some companies are "squeezers." They rattle the emotional cord, use their staff by demanding more and more. When the worker, exploited, no longer makes enough, the company gets rid of him without giving it a second thought. The world of work is extremely manipulative.
In these cases, in fact, poorly organized and in some cases poorly "enlightened" management allows untrained people or people with concepts that are in fact uncaring of the needs of subordinates to make the work environment toxic. It would therefore be enough for management to handle with more care and open-mindedness, certain potentially critical situations.
Although, in principle, the affective sphere does not come directly into play, it is not uncommon that in order to motivate its staff a company establishes a relationship that goes far beyond the normal contractual relationship one may have with one's employer. Employees are asked to commit themselves body and soul to their work in a system that sociologists have called "managinary" thus turning them into "golden slaves." On the one hand, too much is asked of them, with all the stress consequences that come with it; on the other hand, there is no recognition whatsoever of their efforts and their person. They become interchangeable pawns. After all, in some companies you make sure that employees do not stay too long in the same place, where they might acquire too many skills. They are kept in a perpetual layer of ignorance, of inferiority. Any form of originality or personal initiative is disruptive. Momentum and motivation are broken, refusing any responsibility and any training. Employees are treated like undisciplined schoolchildren. They cannot laugh or look relaxed without being called to order. Sometimes they are asked to self-criticize as part of weekly meetings, thus turning work groups into public humiliation.
Finally, the author reflects on the ability of educational institutions to convey the importance of "human capital" and its preservation. She then questions how much space is given to the study of critical emotional issues that may arise in the company.
To aggravate this process intervenes the fact that today many of them are underemployed and have an equivalent or even higher level of education than their hierarchical superior. The latter then has to increase the pressure to the point where the employee can no longer tolerate it or ends up putting himself on the wrong side of the argument. Economic stresses mean that more and more is demanded of workers, with less and less consideration. There is a devaluation of the individual and his or her abilities. The individual does not matter. Little does his history, his dignity, his suffering
matter.When stress manifests itself with its courtship of insomnia, fatigue, irritability, and the employee not infrequently refuses the work stoppage that the doctor proposes for fear of reprisals upon his return."
The psychologist has effectively described dynamics that are common but difficult to identify with a basic and superficial assessment. Indeed, scholars suggest that, especially in sales-oriented companies and the resulting "obligation to perform," research should be conducted aimed at uncovering any situations of psychological abuse, which are often withheld for fear of retaliation. Such assessments should be conducted extensively, by careful and trained specialists, over a sufficiently diluted time frame to allow for the appropriate checks. A careful assessment of work-related stress must necessarily help the employer defuse and resolve situations of risk or hotbeds of dissatisfaction or conflict present in the company.
For let us not forget that a calm and satisfied worker will go to work more motivated and certainly more productive bringing enormous benefits, to himself and to the company itself, in terms of productivity and attendance.