Reduce risk, avoid headaches and drive culture during the silly season

By Jevita Nilson

Christmas is just around the corner and most businesses are feeling the urge to loosen their ties and let their hair out in preparation for the ‘silly season’ celebrations. Although Christmas parties are a great way to reward your employees and collectively celebrate the year’s achievements, poorly planned and executed Christmas parties can lead to sticky situations that may undermine strong organisational cultures and potentially lead to legal issues.

Cyber bullying: the hidden dangers of social media for organisations

By Jevita Derby

WHAT IS CYBER BULLYING?

Workplace harassment and bullying are terms which most employers are aware of and understand to some extent. Federal and state legislation in Australia provides guidelines on what constitutes harassment and bullying within the workplace:

• Unlawful harassment occurs when someone is made to feel intimidated, insulted or humiliated because of certain characteristics (for example: race, ethnic origin, sex, disability, etc) and can also include working in a ‘hostile’ or intimidating environment;
• Workplace bullying occurs when there is repeated less favourable treatment of a person by another or others in the workplace, which may be considered unreasonable and inappropriate workplace practice.⁴

Cyber bullying or “E-harassment” as it has recently been termed, is a more recent concept which involves the use of communication technologies such as email and social media to harass or bully another person.

Is your organisation social media proof?

By Jevita Derby

INTRODUCTION

Embracing social media can have a variety of benefits for organisations (see our article “Using social media to enhance your recruitment process”), but social media also has many inherent risks associated with it. Organisations must be proactive in their management of this dynamic technology in order to mitigate the risks and harness the technology to gain a competitive advantage.

This article outlines the risks that social media creates for organisations and what organisations can do to moderate these risks.