Social Networking and Bullying in the Workplace

The Minister for Education, Ruairi Quinn, spoke on the RTE six one news recently to respond to reports that a school in Dublin was forced to expel four students after they posted abusive remarks about their teachers on Facebook.

Minister Quinn has come out and said that  “there is a problem with bullying in schools in Ireland and cyber-bullying is now a reality“. He added that this can “allow for, in effect 24/7 bullying“. Employers need to be aware of the potential impact of social networking in this area, and whilst the concept of social networking encourages interaction amongst colleagues, it can sometimes be used for inappropriate means.

Bullying is defined as the following in the LRC Code of Practice for Addressing Bullying in the Workplace

“repeated inappropriate behaviour, direct or indirect, whether verbal, physical or otherwise, conducted by one or more persons against another or others, at the place of work and/or in the course of employment, which could reasonably be regarded as undermining the individual’s right to dignity at work. An isolated incident of the behaviour described in this definition may be an affront to dignity at work but, as a once off incident, is not considered to be bullying.”

It is an area of employment law that all employers must be familiar with and have procedures in place to deal with such issues if employees were to raise them. It is important to distinguish that a claim of bullying is for repeated inappropriate behaviour and one-off instances are not considered as bullying. They are however to be addressed by the employer and in certain cases could constitute harassment (if it relates to instances concerning race, gender, age, civil status, disability, religion, membership of the traveller community, family status and sexual orientation), or as highlighted by the LRC an affront to dignity at work.

Social media has changed the scope of bullying in the workplace as it essentially allows continuous access to a person by an individual and gives them the opportunity to broadcast opinions or comments to an extended group, be it in the form of comments, or by posting pictures on the sites.

Teachers are especially vulnerable to this as in the current digital age, all students have their own social media page and usually on the same format that their teacher would, such as facebook, twitter etc. The student teacher relationship in this respect has changed dramatically and students have been given an avenue into the personal lives of their teachers via social networking, and some cases have resulted in abuse of this leading to the situation we see Ruairi Quinn in at the moment discussing cyber bullying in the classrooms and four students having been expelled after they posted abusive remarks about their teachers on Facebook.

Employers need to have policies in place to deal with such issues as an employee who potentially resigns due to a bullying claim not being dealt with by their employer, could claim constructive dismissal and submit a claim to either the Rights Commissioner or the Employment Appeals Tribunal.

The procedures should provide a formal and informal process as per the LRC code of practice, and allow for effective investigation of these issues.

It is very much in an employers interest to ensure compliance in this regard as the issue of Bullying is one which will unfortunately be consistent in workplace relations, and with the increased usage of Social Networking in the workplace it can lead to increased issues for employers.  A well-defined social networking policy is also critical in this regard, and allows an employer to adequately deal with issues of bullying or misconduct committed on social networking pages, to view our most recent article on social networking please click here.

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