December 31st, 2011

Workplace Bullying Institute 2011 Accomplishments

One WBI goal is to educate everyone — the affected individuals, employers and lawmakers — about Workplace Bullying. Acknowledgment of its existence and preventability necessarily precedes corrective action. Our momentum accelerated in 2011, all thanks to new staff, new consultants and new State Coordinators who expanded our repertoire. What a year! Here’s the year-end review.

EVERYTHING we accomplished in 2011 was because of our talented staff, allied professionals and volunteers who loaned us their particular expertise.

No one at WBI does just one thing; all of us have multiple roles. New hires, Sean Lunsford and Daniel Christensen, the comforting voice callers to WBI first hear, joined Dave Phillips, our technical guru, and Jessi Eden Brown, the WBI professional coach. Sean is a techie himself, with a degree in computer science, but will serve primarily as the newest consultant on our team, with training and certification in workplace bullying from us.

The WBI technical trio — Dave, Daniel, Sean:

• redesigned, modernized and consolidated our family of 7 principal websites in 2011 with WBI as the portal site

• programmed our own online survey data collection website so that bullying prevalence can be gathered for any organization

• posted several Instant Polls and their results throughout the year

• produced training DVDs for employers (one 2 hr. video for managers, one 1 hr. video to show to employees)

• produced a DVD for bullied individuals chock full of advice from the team of WBI experts

• maintained two interactive forum websites, one of which relies on our volunteer administrator, C.A.

• maintained private websites for legislative campaign Coordinators and alumni of Workplace Bullying University

Thanks to allied professionals, Dr. Matt Spencer and Greg Sorozan, we were able to:

• design and deliver the first Workplace Bullying University (Sept) solely for Union officers (Greg Sorozan, LCSW, NAGE national officer, was co-faculty)

• educate K-12-related associations and organizations with the help of consultant Matt Spencer, Ed.D. as part of our Workplace Bullying in Schools project

Our marvelous network of volunteer State Coordinators working to enact the anti-bullying Healthy Workplace Bill:

• grew to a group of over 70 nationwide, covering nearly 40 states

• garnered publicity for the HWB via TV appearances in New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, Massachusetts, and Virginia (watch on the WBI YouTube channel, Legislative Campaign playlist)

• were able to have 12 states carry 18 versions of the HWB simultaneously

• engineered co-sponsorship of the Assembly bill in New York by 74 Assemblymembers!

• staged a compelling committee hearing for the Massachusetts bills in July

Thanks to tireless wordsmithing help from Jessi Brown, Ruth and Gary finished their third book:

• this one for employers — The Bully-Free Workplace: Stop Jerks, Weasels & Snakes from Killing Your Organization — published in May by Wiley.

Finally, thanks to too much time in airports with our groping TSA (now unionized, go AFGE) friends:

• we reached several audiences with speeches and workshops at employer, government agency, hospital, university and union meetings with the introductory message about workplace bullying

• we went on-site at more employers than ever with our industry-defining process to prevent and correct workplace bullying

• Dr. Gary met an increased demand for expert witness services in litigation by both defense and plaintiff attorneys seeking accountability for bullying.

The new year of helping people begins Tues. Jan. 3

<-- Read the complete WBI Blog

Tags: Dr. Gary Namie, Gary Namie, Jessi Eden Brown, Ruth Namie, Sean Lunsford, WBI, Workplace Bullying University

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 31st, 2011 at 12:36 pm and is filed under Fairness & Social Justice Denied, Healthy Workplace Bill (U.S. campaign). You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.