Following my article last week on ‘Workplace Bullying and the Erosion of Ghana’s Public Institutions’, many readers have texted or called me with a chilling observation: “You have just described my office”.
These responses reveal something important. Bullying in our ministries, agencies and departments is not an unfortunate personal clash here and there. It is a pattern. It is also a warning light that something far bigger is failing: how we govern people, protect talent and run the state itself.
This follow-up piece does not simply restate that bullying exists. It asks a harder question: what happens to a nation when intimidation becomes a management style and fear becomes an unofficial policy?
When young talent meets old fear
Every year, Ghanaian universities and training colleges release thousands of hopeful graduates into the labour market. Many enter the public service believing they are joining a place of learning, mentorship and national contribution. Instead, too many encounter something else: sarcasm dressed as supervision, insults disguised as “toughening you up” and deliberate obstruction whenever they show initiative.
A landmark study of 1,273 employees in three Ghanaian public institutions found that almost one in five (19.1%) reported being bullied “often” or “very often”. Junior staff were more likely to be targets and reported higher psychological distress than their senior colleagues.
In other words, the very people who come in with fresh energy are the ones most exposed to systematic humiliation. Instead of grooming a generation of capable public servants, we are silently teaching them a darker lesson: to survive, shrink yourself.
Many respond with the only power they have left – they leave. Some move to the private sector. Others simply migrate. We talk about “brain-drain” in terms of salaries and foreign opportunities, yet ignore a quieter driver: the graduate who decides that no ambition is worth reporting every morning to an office where they are treated as a target rather than a colleague.
A governance problem, not just an HR issue
Global evidence is clear. The International Labour Organisation’s first global survey on violence and harassment at work found that more than one in five people in employment worldwide – around 22.8 percent or 743 million workers – have experienced at least one form of violence or harassment at work in their lifetime. Psychological abuse, including bullying, is the most common of all.
This is not just a ‘human resources’ concern. It is a governance crisis.
In Ghana’s public sector, bullying flourishes where power is unchecked and oversight is weak. Research on public institutions shows that bullying is closely linked to psychological distress and intentions to leave. Separate studies on harassment in Ghana have suggested that many workers – especially women – face repeated mistreatment in both public and private sectors, with negative effects on mental health and job satisfaction.
What does that mean for governance? It means the very people who are most likely to raise concerns about irregular procurement, ghost names on payrolls or misallocation of funds are often the ones being intimidated. Bullying becomes a tool not only to break individuals, but also suffocate accountability. A climate of fear is the best insurance policy for those who are mismanaging public resources.
When junior officers are punished for asking questions, when whistle-blowers are quietly transferred or sidelined, corruption does not just become easier – it becomes rational. Why would anyone risk their health and livelihood to challenge a superior who has the power to make every working day unbearable?
The mental health issue we pretend not to see
The World Health Organisation estimates that 15 percent of working-age adults globally were living with a mental disorder in 2019. Depression and anxiety alone lead to an estimated 12 billion working days lost each year, at a cost of roughly US$1trillion in lost productivity.
Bullying is not the only cause of this crisis, but it is a powerful accelerant. A Ghanaian study of public-sector employees found clear associations between bullying and psychological distress, including symptoms of anxiety and depression. Research in Ghanaian health facilities shows that bullying and workplace violence affect a large proportion of staff, with estimates in different facilities ranging from about one-fifth to more than four-fifths of workers reporting some form of bullying or violence.
Behind every statistic is a human story. The officer who cannot sleep on Sunday night because Monday means another public shaming. The nurse who walks into the ward with a knot in her stomach, not only because of difficult patients but also because of a supervisor who uses insults as a daily instrument of control. The administrator who lives with constant headaches and rising blood pressure because every email can become a weapon if it displeases the wrong person.
We often tell such workers to “be strong” or to “pray about it”. Yet untreated mental distress eventually turns into sick-leave, medical bills, resignations and, in the most tragic cases, self-harm. The workplace may not see the tears, but the health system does.
Digital-era bullying and the Meta case
Bullying is no longer confined to the physical office corridor. In the digital age, WhatsApp groups, email loops and internal platforms have become new theatres of humiliation and exclusion. A “mistakenly” omitted name on an email, a sarcastic comment in a staff chat, a deliberate refusal to add a colleague to an important online group – all of these can be subtle forms of intimidation.
Recent lawsuits filed in Ghana against Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, have brought global attention to psychological harm at work. About 150 content moderators in Accra have alleged severe mental health problems – including depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress – after being exposed to disturbing online content without adequate support.
Although this case is about the tech industry, it raises a fundamental question for every employer in Ghana, including the state: when does psychological injury at work become a legal issue, not just a private sorrow? If courts begin to treat mental harm as seriously as physical injury, the cost of tolerating bullying will no longer be limited to low morale. It will appear in legal judgments, compensation claims and international headlines.
The culture of silence – and its data problem
One of the reasons bullying thrives is that it is badly measured. Ghana has detailed statistics on road crashes and cholera outbreaks, but there is no national indicator for bullying in the public service. Researchers therefore provide the little we know.
Academic work on Ghanaian workplaces has documented widespread experiences of harassment and bullying in sectors as varied as oil and gas, health care and education, often linked to unequal power relations and cultural norms around authority.
Across Africa, the ILO’s global survey shows that victims in the region report some of the highest frequencies of repeated violence and harassment compared with other regions.
Yet even these studies tell only part of the story. Many victims never fill in a questionnaire; they simply keep quiet and endure. The global survey on violence and harassment found that the most common reason for not reporting abuse was the belief that speaking out would be a “waste of time”. That phrase will sound painfully familiar to many Ghanaian civil servants who have watched complaints disappear into filing cabinets.
Without good data, bullying is treated as anecdote rather than evidence. Without evidence, there is no policy. And without policy, there is no protection.
What a ‘bully-proof’ public institution would look like
If bullying is a system, it must be confronted with another system – one designed around psychological safety, not fear. A ‘bully-proof’ public institution in Ghana would look and feel very different from what many workers know today.
First, psychological safety would be recognised as a core workplace right. The ILO has emphasised that decent work includes freedom from fear, violence and harassment.
Ministries and agencies should therefore treat emotional security as seriously as physical safety, with clear standards and regular assessments.
Second, the law would catch up with reality. Ghana’s Labour Act currently says little about psychological harassment. Amending it to define bullying, set out responsibilities and protect complainants would signal that emotional harm is not an informal matter best handled in the corridor, but a legal concern with enforceable consequences.
Third, Human Resource units would be independent custodians of fairness, not internal postmasters of management instructions. HR officers should have legal protection when handling sensitive complaints against senior staff, with reporting lines that include external bodies such as the Public Services Commission, Labour Commission or CHRAJ.
Fourth, reporting systems would be confidential, simple and trusted. Anonymous digital channels, clear timelines for investigation and regular public reporting of aggregate data would help convince staff that speaking up leads somewhere. The ILO’s global findings show that repeated incidents often signal a failure to act early; prompt and visible responses are therefore not optional – they are preventive medicine.
Fifth, leadership training would be redefined. Promotion into management should no longer be seen as a reward for years served alone. It should be contingent on demonstrated competence in people management, emotional intelligence and conflict resolution. Leadership development programmes run by institutions such as GIMPA and the Public Services Commission should include rigorous modules on preventing and responding to bullying, with consequences when supervisors fail.
Finally, mental health support would move from whispered suggestion to formal provision. Counselling services, peer-support networks and regular well-being checks should be standard in large public institutions. Studies consistently show that poor psychosocial conditions at work contribute to long-term sickness, absence and higher turnover. Investing in staff mental health is therefore not ‘charity’; it is basic operational sense.
The courage of bystanders
Most bullying in the workplace is witnessed by others. Colleagues see the constant belittling, the unjustified queries, the loudly delivered insults. Many feel uncomfortable, yet say nothing.
Their silence is understandable. They also have school fees to pay, rent due and retirement to plan for. But the hard truth remains: every act of bullying has three participants – the aggressor, the target and the audience. When the audience is always silent, the aggressor hears one message only: carry on.
Creating bully-proof institutions therefore demands a new ethic of solidarity. Senior officers who are not directly affected must be willing to say “This is not how we treat people here”, even when the offender outranks them. Unions must treat bullying as a bread-and-butter labour rights issue, not a private personality clash. Professional associations must make ethical conduct toward colleagues part of their codes and enforcement.
Choosing what kind of state we want
In Ghana, we routinely measure our progress by roads built, schools opened and budgets passed. Perhaps it is time to ask a different question: what is the emotional climate inside the offices that are supposed to serve the public?
Workplace bullying may seem like an internal matter, but it shapes the quality of every service citizens receive. A teacher who is constantly undermined by a head teacher will struggle to inspire a class. A nurse who is terrified of her supervisor will do the minimum necessary rather than suggest improvements. A young planning officer who is mocked for asking questions will think twice before challenging a dubious contract.
The next national scandal may not be a missing sum of money but a missing generation of public servants – people of integrity who quietly walked away because we refused to protect them.
Our public institutions do not have to be like this. They can be places where authority is firm but respectful, where supervisors correct without degrading and where HR officers are known as defenders of dignity, not defenders of hierarchy. That future will not appear on its own. It demands legal reform, organisational courage and personal honesty about how we treat one another at work.
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