Business SA

Case Study

When the supervisory position within their team became available, a number of team members applied for the position. However, all were surprised when Jane got the promotion, which none of them felt that she deserved.

Throughout her first week in the position, Jane tried to implement a number of changes within the team such as a change in seating arrangements and work distribution that she felt would increase productivity in the team. However, the team was very unimpressed with the changes and decided to put some pressure on Jane to maintain the current situation.

They began to spread rumours through the company about why Jane was given the promotion, saying that she was having an affair with her manager. The team refused to comply with her orders and remained in their current seating positions. The employees also began to work less productively, sometimes being downright rude to Jane when she mentioned their performance.

This behaviour went on over a number of months, gradually getting worse. Jane was at a loss as to what she was able to do. She felt that she had a responsibility as a supervisor to deal with the situation on her own.

Finally, Jane decided to take action against the behaviour and held a disciplinary meeting with the ringleaders to discuss the problem. Two days later her manager told her that a formal complaint had been made against her by the employees, who stated that she had unreasonable expectations and was using bullying behaviour to try and drive the employees to perform to a higher standard.

After months of bullying Jane felt that she was no longer able to work with those employees any longer and resigned from her position immediately.

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