Your Right to Safety

These risks may come from employees or members of the public who are disgruntled with an individual or a system. If you have any concerns for your safety because of social media activity related to your work, or if you are being harassed online because of your role as a public service employee, talk to your supervisor. WorkSafeBC legislation and the Discrimination and Harassment Policy are in place to protect employees in the event that bullying, harassment, or threats to employee safety occur.

The Occupational Health and Safety regulation prohibits BC Public Service employees from “any improper activity or behaviour at a workplace that might create or constitute a hazard to themselves or to any other person.” This includes “any threatening statement or behavior which gives a worker reasonable cause to believe that he or she is at risk of injury.”

Take Steps to Protect Yourself

If you experience bullying of any kind, either directly or as a witness, take the steps outlined on MyHR to address the bullying. In the case of bullying through social media, also see the Guidelines for Cyber Harassment/Intimidation From Clients for details on what to do.

There are steps you can take to help protect yourself and your family from risks. Managing the information available about you via social networking (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat) is one step you can take, and resources have been created to help you do that.

Consult the Social Networking Safety Guidelines for more information on documenting these types of problematic online behaviour and on protecting yourself from the possibility of people using social media to gather information about you and to harass you.

If You’re a Supervisor

When an employee is being cyber harassed or intimidated you must contact MyHR right away. You must also take immediate action to reduce or eliminate any threat as well as manage the possible effect it will have on your worker.

For information on general security topics, see the many resources linked on this Information Security Awareness page.