Population of the UK: 60,000,000
Number of workers / employees: 28,000,000

The majority of Advice Line cases involve a manager bullying a subordinate in a professional or semi-professional context.

The average wage for a subordinate lower-middle level manager or professional is around £20,000 pa.

The effect of bullying on a targeted subordinate is to cut their work rate and effectiveness by 50% (at least), therefore the annual cost of bullying is £10,000.

The serial bully impairs the effectiveness of other employees, so say a further four employees earning £15,000 pa have their performance impaired by 33% (4*£5000), plus a further eight employees earning £10,000 pa have their effectiveness cut by 20%. i.e. 8*£2000 = £16,000.

Target: £10,000
+4*£5000: £20,000

+8*£2000: £16,000
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£46,000
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Experience from over 4000 Advice Line cases suggests these estimates are conservative.

The majority of bullying is carried out by a superior, so say the bully is a grade higher on a salary of £25,000pa. The serial bully is a dead weight so his/her annual cost is £25,000. Although glib and plausible, only when the serial bully leaves will it be discovered how little work that person completed - and much of that will be to a poor standard.

The lowest estimate of bullying, an IPD survey, estimated that 1 in 8 workers bullied which equates to around 3.5 million people. For safety, take my estimate of 1 person in 100 being a serial bully, therefore 1/100 of 28 million is 280,000 (less than 1/10 of the IPD's estimate).

This doesn't include consequential costs, legal costs, insurance costs, compensation costs, staff turnover costs, re-recruitment and re-training costs, loss of investment in training and experience, loss of employee potential, benefit costs, injury to health, loss of revenue due to employee being out of work and no longer paying tax, family breakdown, costs to society, etc.

Reprinted with permission from Bully Online at www.successunlimited.co.uk.