Bullying - RodneyOlsen.net

A ruling from the Fair Work Commission means that you might need to be a little more careful next time you decide to purge your Facebook friend list. While you might think that deciding who you ‘friend’ or ‘unfriend’ on social media is a matter of your personal choice, but it could have much wider consequences.

Employers around the country will be scrambling to update their social media policies after a decision by the workplace tribunal found unfriending someone on Facebook can constitute workplace bullying.

Rachael Roberts, an employee of real estate agency VIEW Launceston, went to the Fair Work Commission (FWC) in February this year alleging she was being bullied by sales administrator Lisa Bird and her husband James, the business owner. – News.com.au

Of course there’s more to the story than just unfriending someone on Facebook but the act of removing someone from a list of Facebook friends was significant in the commission’s findings.

When I first started using Facebook I would accept most friend requests. I later decided that I needed to maintain a little more privacy and so I created a new public Facebook page to give me the opportunity to interact with many more people while keeping my personal page a little more … personal. (Feel free to connect with me on my public page.)

What’s your policy regarding who you ‘friend’ or ‘unfriend’ on Facebook? I’m sometimes tempted to remove friends who post offensive and ill-informed statements and articles about other people groups, faith, politics and other issues but I generally resist because I know that I don’t have to agree with everything someone believes to be a friend. I also realise that I need to hear what others are thinking, even when I can sometimes feel the anger beginning to rise.

Are you ‘friends’ with your work colleagues? If you friend one or two colleagues do you feel you should friend them all? I’d be really interested in your thoughts.

Do you think some of your friends would enjoy reading Unfriendly Workplace Bullying? Please use the buttons below to share the post. Thanks.

Today in Australia it’s the National Day of Action Against Bullying and Violence. It’s an annual day which provides a focus for schools who want to say no to bullying and to strengthen the everyday messages that bullying and violence at school are never OK.

Thankfully we’ve made a lot of progress in the area of bullying but there is a downside. Teachers and parents have been so effective in reducing bullying behaviour in schools that it has gone ‘underground’, with young people who bully turning to covert methods to avoid detection.

Covert bullying includes spreading rumours and lies, revealing secrets, excluding others and cyber-bullying. It affects around one in six (16 per cent) of Australian students.

Professor Donna Cross, from ECU’s Child Health Promotion Research Centre, said covert bullying behaviours cause a great deal of distress and psychological harm.

“Our research has found that students who were covertly bullied, or who covertly bullied others, reported higher levels of loneliness at school, felt less safe at school and were more likely to experience difficulties such as emotional symptoms, conduct problems, inattention and peer relationship problems,” Professor Cross said.

“We know that covert bullying can have an extraordinary impact on the ability of students to learn effectively. The difficulty is that covert bullying, by its very nature, is difficult to detect.”

“Rather than seeking to punish the behaviour, our research has identified strategies to help schools to reduce the likelihood of it happening in the first place.”

I spoke to Professor Donna Cross on my radio program this morning about the issue. You can hear our discussion by clicking the play button on the audio player below.

Have you been a victim of bullying at school or even at work? Have the effects stayed with you? Were you able to deal with the bullying?

Do you think some of your friends would enjoy reading Beating Bullying and Violence? Please use the buttons below to share the post. Thanks.

Tag - Bullying