An employee who harasses his manager ! It also exists.
02.03.2016 / Category: Employment
The bossing, or ascending moral harassment is a practice we do not talk about a lot, difficult to characterize and tends to develop leaving often poor executives and managers harassed by their employees.
Bossing takes many forms
In a company, write to his superior if one is unhappy is a normal procedure. Drizzle him with messages of recrimination at every turn is less. It is not "normal" either to forget systematically to provide him working documents, to barge him in, to make fun of him openly etc. These acts, there are others, are part of the 'techniques' of ascending moral harassment. Executives who are victims of an employee evoke their discomfort, difficulty of work, or even their fear to return to their post.
Psychological and physical consequences of the bossing can be severe and are discussed in the context of moral harassment in general: doubts, fatigue, irritability, extreme fatigue, which can lead to psychological collapse.
Bossing in Switzerland
The phenomenon of bossing is difficult to characterize and quantify. It is still little known and few official data exist in Switzerland. In 2002, the Secretary of State for the economy estimated at 1% officials harassed by an employee. The proportion is probably more important but difficult to measure. Indeed, moral harassment in general doesn't always have a definition accepted by all and ascending vertical harassment is only the beginning of a recognition process.
The most exposed
There is no profile type of bossing victim. Rémy Wyler, lawyer in the law of work in Lausanne, notes that the risks of conflict increase "when tasks and specifications of each and the others are not well defined, because it creates ambiguities or misunderstandings". Middle managers are the most susceptible to situations of harassment that last, their position not always allowing them to call for help.
What does the law say?
According to the jurisprudence of the federal court, it is the repetition of actions performed "to isolate, marginalize or exclude" that characterizes the harassment at work and this, regardless of hierarchical level. For cases that are reported, independent investigations are necessary but the intentionality of the facts and the objective pursued by the stalker are always difficult to make and it remains extremely difficult to separate things.
Paula Williams
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