Cyberbullying is common at work. Here’s how employers can help.

Every worker deserves to be treated with care and dignity. International Workers’ Day, celebrated annually on May 1, is a moment to reflect on the more than three billion workers worldwide. It is also the day to acknowledge that the most basic level of care begins with safety.

Some of the earliest worker battles during the late 19th century were fought for a workday of no longer than eight hours — a key protection for workers whose exhaustion put them at heightened risk for occupational accidents. But as the nature of work is changing, so, too, are the hazards. We have moved into an era in which occupational safety must expand to include workers’ digital well-being, specifically protections from cyberbullying and other forms of online violence.

Workplace cyberbullying — repeated incidents of online harassment with an intent to do harm — is a relatively new and understudied phenomenon. The Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General says that examples of cyberbullying include sending cruel, vicious, or threatening emails or creating websites that have stories, pictures, and jokes that ridicule.

Cyberbullying is a growing phenomenon. A 2021 study on bullying and remote work from the Workplace Bully Institute found that 61.5% of workers surveyed reported either being bullied or witnessing bullying, especially during online meetings. Cyberbullying, even more than face-to-face bullying, allows perpetrators to detach more easily from those they have harmed. And it is often worse for women and people of color.

Pennsylvania continues to be a state with a large contingent of hate groups, and social media has allowed them to flourish in our urban and suburban communities. According to the FBI, the state reported over 80 hate crimes in 2020 — and that doesn’t include the unknown number of incidents that go unaccounted for.

The uptick in cyberbullying is coming amid a growing concern over hate groups taking to social media to spread their influence. It is also coming at a time when there is a growing concern for workers’ mental health. According to the employee management platform Qualtrics, employees are more emotionally exhausted, sad, irritable, angry, guilty, and confused than they were before the pandemic. Employers must develop clear cyberbullying policies that alleviate mental health stressors for an increasingly vulnerable workforce.

Since 1955, the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission has dedicated itself to making workplaces safer and less discriminatory for all. We’ve learned that punishment and litigation have their place. Employers can be held liable for an employee’s online activity — be it gossip on a social media site or cyberstalking.

However, to be truly effective at halting hateful practices, prevention is key. This means that no matter where your position falls on the company’s org chart, each person has the same protections against harm.

There is an African proverb that cautions you to look not where you fell, but where you slipped. The message is a call to reflect upon the source of the accident. Cyberbullying may be the result, but a culture that allows hateful interactions to flourish is what will always trip us up.

Groups like the Anti-Defamation League, local chapters of the NAACP, and the governor’s Commission on Asian Pacific American Affairs are all fighting against hate, including cyberbullying. At the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, we are now basing our advocacy efforts on the “beloved community” principles, as popularized by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

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The beloved community is any community where its members are passionately committed to the work of peace-making, leaving hateful interactions — whether face-to-face or online — with little room to flourish. “The aftermath of nonviolence,” King once explained in a 1957 speech, “is the creation of the beloved community.”

Such a transformational community will require leadership that encourages critical conversations while ensuring that they don’t devolve into incivility. Each May 1 we must be reminded that without social justice, without engaged employers, and without understanding that workers are not commodities, there can be no decent places to work.

Chad Dion Lassiter is the executive director of the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission and National Association of Social Workers, Pennsylvania Chapter social worker of the year for 2021. @Chadlassiter