The essentials in 30 seconds:
→ Targets of workplace bullying carry a markedly elevated five-year risk of changing employers, becoming unemployed, or leaving working life altogether (Glambek et al., 2015).
→ Perpetrators, in the same research series, show no elevated risk of actually losing their jobs — they stay (Glambek et al., 2016).
→ For the organization, that means a double loss: the person who leaves is often a strong performer, and what stays is a behavioral pattern that repeats. The lever is the process, not appeals.
What the Bergen studies show
Bullying helps decide who leaves an organization — just not the way you'd hope. The research group around Ståle Einarsen at the University of Bergen followed a nationally representative sample across five years and three measurement points, asking two questions — and answering both.
First question: what happens to the targets? The study "Take it or leave" (Glambek, Skogstad & Einarsen, 2015) shows that those exposed to bullying at baseline carry a markedly elevated risk, five years later, of changing employers, unemployment, and disability benefit recipiency. The researchers call it "expulsion in working life" — being pushed not just out of a job, but out of the labor market.
Second question, published a year later with a title that says it all: "Do the bullies survive?" (Glambek, Skogstad & Einarsen, 2016). The counter-check on the same data: perpetrators initially report more intention to leave and more sickness absence — but across five years, no elevated risk of actually being pushed out. The answer to the title question is yes. They survive. Later work adds context: on average, perpetrators hold more resources than targets — position, network, standing.
Why organizations lose the wrong people
Because the process systematically declares the wrong person the problem. Escalation research (Einarsen, Leymann, Zapf) describes the mechanism precisely: in the advanced stages, targets appear withdrawn, irritable, uncooperative — exactly the signals managers read as a performance or character problem. The standard literature documents the result soberly: management, colleagues, and at times even staff representatives adopt the prejudices produced by the process and treat the targeted person as the source of the problem.
This is rarely malice. It's a predictable perception error that becomes almost inevitable without structure: the person who has been under pressure for months delivers the "difficult" behavior that confirms the reading, while the person creating the pressure appears composed. The flaw sits in the process — not in the people running it.
What this means in business terms
Bullying is not a soft topic; it's a cost position. A Finnish hospital study using official absence registers (Kivimäki et al., 2000) found a 51 percent higher risk of medically certified sickness absence among targets; UK data (Hoel & Cooper) show an average of seven additional sick days per year. Add turnover: whoever leaves creates a vacancy plus a re-hiring risk — and a mis-hire costs CHF 80'000 to 280'000 depending on the position. Meanwhile, the perpetrator who stays repeats the pattern with the next person.
For scale: depending on the measurement criteria, 3 to 4 percent of employees report bullying under strict weekly criteria, 8 to 15 percent under broader ones — enough that, statistically, it's happening in your organization too, while nobody talks about it.
Three levers that change the process
Leadership that looks
Laissez-faire leadership — looking away, sitting things out, "they should sort it out among themselves" — ranks among the strongest organizational predictors of bullying (Skogstad, Einarsen group). Sitting on conflicts breeds them. More on this: why sitting things out is the most expensive leadership style.
A defined process instead of case-by-case improvisation
A clear reporting path, documentation, both sides heard separately and in a structured way. Structure protects against the credibility gap: it forces you to examine behavior instead of impressions. The same principle that makes structured interviews more valid in recruiting makes conflict resolution fairer.
Treat exits as data
People who leave know why — if you ask and can bear the answers. Systematic exit interviews and regular team pulse checks reveal patterns before the third strong performer resigns. The most expensive information is the kind that walks out the door with the resignation.
The one question that remains:
Who has left your organization in the past two years — and how certain are you that you know the real reason?
Sources: Glambek, Skogstad & Einarsen (2015), Industrial Health, 53, 160–170 · Glambek, Skogstad & Einarsen (2016), Industrial Health, 54, 68–73 · Einarsen, Hoel, Zapf & Cooper (2003), Bullying and Emotional Abuse in the Workplace · Kivimäki, Elovainio & Vahtera (2000), Occupational and Environmental Medicine.
Is your team losing the wrong people?
30 minutes, no sales pitch. You describe the situation, I listen — then straight talk. Often, what looks like a difficult person is a process that rewards the wrong signals. And processes can be changed.