High employee productivity is directly dependent on the workplace environment. Businesses invest heavily in improving workplace conditions and culture to boost employee morale. Satisfied employees can commit to their work and perform at their best, while repressed and harassed employees fail to be productive.
Workplace cyberbullying can cause employees to feel excluded, demotivated, and inferior. As a result, they lose their focus, remain distracted, fail to be creative, and become unproductive.
Continue reading below to learn about how workplace cyberbullying can affect employee productivity.
What is Workplace Cyberbullying?
Cyberbullying is deliberate aggression or attack against a person, a brand, or a group using electronic devices and online media. It is meant to call out and harass the target to reprimand them or tarnish their reputation.
Workplace cyberbullying happens when an employee, an employer, or any person linked to the organization gets attacked, called out, or harassed. The employees could get cyberbullied for their work, words, appearances, background, etc. Workplace cyberbullying is often done by:
- Deliberately intimidating an employee through messages
- Offering destructive criticism through messages and emails
- Falsely accusing an employee online
- Passing humiliating and degrading remarks on social platforms
- Making online threats and blackmailing
- Sexually harassing an employee online
- Publicly embarrassing the employee on social media
- Forcing an employee to do something online that they are not comfortable with
How Does Workplace Cyberbullying Affect Employee Productivity?
Very rarely does workplace cyberbullying challenge and motivate an employee to outperform. Instead, most times, it significantly lowers their productivity and leads to them quitting their jobs.
It Demotivates Them
When employees are constantly made the victim of cyberbullying, they start getting demotivated. Exclusion and harassment can make them feel inferior and left out. As a result, they start doubting their abilities and constantly feel overwhelmed. Consequently, their demotivated attitudes lower their productivity levels.
It Leads to Poor Mental Health
Workplace cyberbullying can cause employees to feel inferior and incompetent. This state of mind affects their mental health, making them more anxious and depressed. As a result, many employees start consuming anti-depressants and drugs that affect their mobility, memory, and cognitive presence. Poor mental health causes productivity to decrease. In extreme cases, employees start harming themselves and even attempt suicide.
It Leads to a Loss of Self-esteem
Workplace cyberbullying affects employee productivity by lowering their self-esteem. It makes employees doubt their abilities and question their potential. As a result, they start removing themselves from public places, refrain from social interactions, and stop participating in discussions.
Final Thoughts
The employees of an organization are its greatest asset. However, the employees of an organization that become a constant target of workplace harassment become demotivated, which affects their mental health, and develop lower self-esteem. Consequently, employee productivity gets reduced.
