Workplace harassment and rumination among government and private sector employees: role of personality traits

Abstract

Workplace harassment is one of the job stressors that not only affect the job performance of an individual but also proves fatal for the mental health of the well-being. Job stressors affect many employees in the organization, whereas, in the case of harassment, a particular individual is targeted as a result of which the employee fails to concentrate on its work and organizational turnover increases. Rumination further worsens the mental state of the sufferers. Due to job security in the public sector of Pakistan, the harassment cases are low in government organizations as compared to the private sector. This study aims to find out the impact of workplace harassment and rumination among government and private sector employees, along with its impact on personality traits. The convenient sampling technique is used to gather data from both public and private sector of employees. Results revealed that there exists a positive correlation between workplace harassment and rumination, and a negative correlation among workplace harassment and personality traits. Women tends to suffer more from workplace harassment, as depicting significant gender differences in personality traits among public and private sector employees. These findings suggest that individuals experiencing workplace harassment ruminate over their unpleasant experiences. Moreover, workplace harassment tends to increase neurotic traits and decreases openness, agreeableness, extraversion, and conscientiousness of the employees. The findings of this study will help organizations to update their policies regarding workplace harassment to protect their employees from psychological distress and to enhance their perception of personal and professional security at the workplace