More than half of young Poles experience bullying at work

Polish Radio reported that more than 53% of Poles aged 18 to 35 have experienced signs of bullying at work in the past six months, based on a survey by UCE Research.

The most commonly reported incidents are shouting, swearing and insults, according to the study. The report’s authors focused on the phenomenon of bullying among young Poles.

A total of 800 respondents, who were interviewed online using the Computer Assisted Web Interview (CAWI) method, were asked whether they had encountered any of the problems mentioned in the past six months while performing their professional duties.

More than half (53.1%) of the participants in the national survey had experienced a situation or problem from the list described (22.2% denied having had any of these experiences, more than 8% were not sure and more than 6% could not remember whether they had had such an experience).

The most common forms of bullying were shouting, cursing and insulting (21.4%). This type of oppression was reported more often by men (24.7%) than by women (18.5%).

The survey also found that 15.5% of respondents reported being the subject of gossip and rumors in the workplace, 14.9% experienced verbal abuse, including being called insulting names or other derogatory language, and 13.7% were given meaningless tasks.

In addition, 11.1% of participants reported incidents of harassment, either over the phone, by email, during or after work hours.

The least frequent reports concerned physical violence and abuse (1.5%), as well as sexual harassment, exploitation or receiving sexual advances (1.5%).