London, April 1: More than one in eight people admit to being bullied at work, according to a study that also revealed that some were bullied by subordinates.

Ganging up against the boss, often a middle manager, is becoming increasingly recognised as a problem and companies need to nip it in the bud, experts told the annual conference of the British Psychological Society.

Bullying by subordinates took many forms. Not delivering messages, hiding notes, changing documents, excluding people from social groups and not delivering papers for meetings in time were all designed to make the bullied manager seem incompetent, said Noreen Tehrani, a counselling psychologist and management consultant, and Charlotte Rayner of the business school at Portsmouth University.

In one case, a woman, new in her job, had her life made so unbearable that she left.

?No matter how early she got in to work, her answer phone had been tampered with. Her actions were left off the minutes of meetings, so she appeared not to have done anything,? said Rayner.

Tehrani said another woman, ?Sally?, faced similar bullying when she got a job that an internal male candidate failed to win. In this case, another woman employee close to the man set about undermining Sally. ?Material was not produced on time, she was not told about important phone calls. She looked as if she could not do her job. She was then told by another member of staff that the woman had used similar tactics in the past.?

?Yelling or screaming at someone is relatively rare. Often it is more what people do not do. It can be very hard to say you are being bullied until the pattern emerges,? Rayner said.