What is Cyberbullying and How It Impacts Work Productivity?
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The modern digital era brings lots of new possibilities and also challenges. Cyberbullying definition is a relatively new phenomenon that went through numerous changes in the last few years. From the very start, it was recognized as a form of bullying with the use of digital means and methods. With the development of the latest digital tools and software, the number of cyberbullying definitions has increased. It includes email, mobile, text messages, social media bullying, etc as well as different types of cyberbullying at work.
Cyberbullying implies the targeting of a victim in cyberspace. It can be a person or a group of people. This is a huge downside of the modern digital era. This form of bullying through digital methods and means should get its solutions fast. Nowadays, it is already impacting people’s personal and professional lives badly.
Cyberbullying can take place at workplaces as well. Workplace cyberbullying occurs when an employee or several employees are bullied. It causes a decrease in productivity and impacts the targeted people’s professional life badly. Any employee can become a target of bullies. No matter whether you work in a bank or as listed at Jatapp software development digital projects. Cyberbullying in the workplace is a relatively new form of cyberbullying. Thus, it does not have much information or analytical materials to read about.
What is Cyberbullying in the Workplace?
When you just learn about the cyberbullying issue, it is important to know how can cyberbullying affect someone. Sure, being one of the modern forms of bullying, the effects of cyberbullying are never positive. What is more, in the workplace it can become a reason for numerous work-related problems.
Workplace cyberbullying implies repetitive behavior that intimidates, harms, offends, sabotages, and in general negatively impacts the victim’s professional life. Cyberbullying has a prolonged character. These negative actions against an individual, digital network, or platform always bring negative effects.
Among the negative effects and results of cyberbullying, the most pronounced one is the decrease in work productivity. If the person becomes a victim of repetitive cyberbullying attacks, you cannot expect a high productivity level from the victim of bullying. There are many forms of bullying, thus the results are different. At the same time, all of them are negative and impact the professional life of a person undesirably. For instance, if the person gets lots of email spam or emails with insults, it always affects the person’s emotional state and ability to concentrate badly. Email spam attacks can be arranged against a group of people or a digital platform as well. It could also mean one person bullying a workmate to get their password to a system the bully isn’t entitled to access. Thankfully, zero trust security helps prevent this kind of breach.
Main Means and Ways of Cyberbullying
There are many ways bullies can attack the victims. It can be through email, social media, text messages, etc. For that individual who does cyberbullying definition affect matters. The bullies always expect to bring negative changes to the victim’s life or force a victim to proceed with certain actions. No matter the means or methods of cyberbullying, it always affects the victim’s work productivity badly.
Email Bullying
Email bullying is a set of repetitive attacks on a person or a digital platform by the means of email. In most cases, email spam or emails with condemning or patronizing language used are the most common forms of email bullying. Email spamming can be repetitive and take a reasonable amount of time. Thus, it affects work productivity severely. If the offender uses an untraceable email address, it will not be possible to figure out the person who sent it. Moreover, the spam attack can take place with a plan and routine. But in some cases, it can force a victim to change his or her email address and other contact information.
Social Media Bullying
Bullying in social media is a quite popular phenomenon. But how does social media affect cyberbullying? With the development of numerous social media, bullies have found a great place to target their victims. On social media, you can stay anonymous or use fake account information. Once unrecognizable, many people allow themselves lots of insults to be directed at other people. If you have an account on any social media, you surely join numerous groups and communities online. The moderators of the mentioned groups must be the ones to take care of cyberbullying cases. They should ban those who tend to offend or insult other users. It must be done in workgroups consisting of employees as well.
Text Messages Bullying
The bullies can use any available means to target their victims. They can send numerous text messages if they know the personal number of their victim. Many applications do not allow tracking text messages. Thus, bullies can feel safe once sending insulting or threatening messages. It brings huge stress to targeted people and does not allow them to feel safe. In the end, it affects both the personal and professional life of a victim negatively.
Conclusions
Cyberbullying definition brings only negative effects in the workplace. And it makes the targeted person or group of employees more reserved, indecisive, and inefficient. There are numerous problems with the attention span of the targeted employee. Besides, once being bullied constantly, the person has no will to come up with proper measures and take care of a problem. Also it affects work productivity greatly.
Because of being constantly stressed, scared, and emotionally injured, the victim of cyberbullying is not capable of completing his or her work efficiently. Cyberbullying victims often lose their self-respect and faith in a prosperous personal or professional life. The helplessness as the result of cyberbullying makes the person indecisive and vulnerable. It never ends in good work efficiency or productivity. Therefore, the impact of cyberbullying on work productivity is always disastrous. That is why cyberbullying cases must reach a solution fast to let the victims live their life happily and grow professionally.
Adhar Dhaval is experienced portfolio, program and project leader with demonstrated leadership in all phases of sales and service delivery of diverse technology solutions. He is a speaker sharing advice and industry perspective on emerging best practices in project leadership, program management, leadership and strategy. He is working for the Chair Leadership Co.
