Does your organization have a strong policy in place around bullying and harassment?

Bullying and harassment in the workplace is a serious issue for many Australian workers, and one that can have very negative impacts for organizations. To prevent these impacts from occurring, and protect both employees and employers, certain laws have been put in place on a state and national level.

Managers can play a significant role in preventing and addressing workplace harassment. As a HR Manager, it’s important that you’re up-to-date with these bullying and harassment laws. It’s also essential that you have a very good understanding of your company’s stance on these issues and develop solid anti-bullying policies to reflect this.

Today we’ll look at the impacts of harassment for both employees and organizations, and how a good anti-bullying policy can help prevent them.

We all want to work for a company that has a good organizational culture – in a work environment that’s open and positive, with employees who are happy, motivated, focused and productive.

If a team member is suffering bullying or harassment, they’re likely to become the opposite of these things, soon displaying unhappy, unmotivated, distracted and unproductive behaviour. 

As well as showing poor results and performance indicators at work, the effects of bullying or harassment can often also impact on an individual’s personal life and sense of self, manifesting in loss of sleep, physical ailments and serious psychological and emotional distress.

When bullying becomes a problem in the workplace, it doesn’t just affect the person or people being harassed and targeted. It can very quickly become a problem for the whole organization.

The effects of suffering inappropriate or unreasonable behaviour can result in high levels of absenteeism, sick leave and staff turnover for companies. You can also expect to see low morale, poor performance rates, reduced productivity and a negative work culture.  

This leads to poor reputation and brand name for companies, loss of profits, and the financial stresses of hiring and training new staff. 

What Does an Anti-Bullying and Harassment Policy Do?

A good anti-bullying policy can mitigate the risk of these events occurring, and works to protect both employees and the employer.

Employers are responsible for preventing bullying and harassment in the workplace, and a strong policy in this area will ensure your organization is compliant and reflecting its legal obligations. By developing a good bullying and harassment policy, you’re also showing your commitment to providing a safe and productive environment for your employees, while promoting a positive work culture for all.

For employees, a HR policy around bullying and harassment allows individuals to accurately recognize and define unacceptable behaviour in the workplace, as well as directing them to the appropriate resources and contacts for assistance.

 When you develop a bullying and harassment policy, it will apply to all individuals within your organization – from your CEO to contracted cleaners – making your workplace a more equal and fair environment.

Learn More About Preventing Bullying in the Workplace

As a HR Manager, you’ll no doubt want to make sure each person in your HR team is aware of the definitions and implications of bullying and harassment, so they can provide accurate guidance and advice to organizational staff. It’s also very important that you feel confident yourself, in developing and implementing policies and distributing the right information on this topic.

There are many great courses available online, created specifically for HR Managers and teams, that you can access to learn more about addressing bullying in the workplace. For HR Managers, Bullying: The Manager’s Role explores the role of managers in preventing bullying and abusive conduct in the workplace.

Similarly, Workplace Harassment for Managers explores the negative impact harassment can have on an organization's work environment and looks at the role of Managers in preventing and responding to all forms of workplace harassment. Both courses aim to assist you in preventing and effectively responding to incidents of workplace bullying and harassment.

You can also use online training courses to make sure employees in other teams are well-informed of the organization’s stance and policies on bullying, and know exactly where to go for information and who to contact in the event of bullying or harassment. Staff can simply enroll and complete training modules online, using the Go1 platform. With a Learning Management System like Go1, you can also upload and store all of your organization’s compliance training materials in one easy place, making it easier to access HR documents and policies quickly and conveniently.

We hope this has given you a greater understanding of the importance of strong anti-bullying policies for companies, as well as some insight into the potential of online training for HR needs.

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Why you need a good bullying and harassment policy

The August release of Go1 is here, and we have some great improvements to making your learning experience even better! In this release you'll find some updates to the Administer dashboard so you can manage your learners easier, new features and updates to user profiles; including Gradebook, and a great new feature to allow you to create new portals with the click of a button.

Find out more about all of the updates below:

This is the latest version of the Go1 admin dashboard, a faster more streamlined interface to manage Go1. We will be rolling out more functionality here in the coming weeks and months. The old admin interface can still be accessed from the link at the top of this page.

Improved profile updates with notifications

When an account profile has been updated, after clicking submit you will now be notified whether your information has been submitted or not. If you have not completed all of the required sections of your profile, you will be unable to submit your updated information.

Create a new portal from your 'My Portals' menu

You can now create a new portal directly from the dropdown menu in the top right hand corner of you screen by hovering over the 'My Portals' option and clicking 'Create New Portal' at the bottom of the list of your portals. A confirmation box will then appear to confirm this choice, and then your new portal will be created.

Another new feature that has been aded to the user profiles in this release is the 'Gradebook'. Within the Gradebook you can view all of the courses that you are enrolled in as well as their status, start and end dates, and you can expand courses to see further details on which assessments you have completed or are awaiting completion.

We love our android users and want them to have an amazing experience. We have updated our display settings for all android devices to improve display and create a better user experience.

Automatic time conversion for user’s timezone

After launching the Course Marketplace in June, the Go1 team have been working to add more and more courses to our library so that you can access the courses that you want, quicker and easier. We opened the marketplace with 25,000 courses covering a wide range of subjects from professional development, to compliance and soft skills.

As if that wasn't enough for you to learn, we have added a stack of new courses to the library once again and now have a total of over 100,000 courses for you to choose from!

The courses that we have in our marketplace aren't just any courses either. All of the content that we provide comes from some of the best learning content providers from across the world, and covers a huge range of topics and industries.

Head of Strategic Partnerships for Go1, Melvyn Lubega says "Go1’s marketplace offers over 100,000 titles from the over 300 authors. It covers topics from compliance through to professional and personal development, and boasts content in over 20 languages."

“We are very excited to be teaming up with leading training organizations globally. Through these partnerships, Go1 will be able to offer an even greater selection of leading e-learning resources to its customers.”

In addition to these partnerships, we are also an aggregator of training content with access to courses from the biggest online learning providers such as those shown below, plus many more! You can use our reviews and ratings to compare courses from a range of providers to make sure you are always finding the best course on the topic you wish to learn.

Start learning today with the Go1 Course Marketplace

Go1 now has more than 100,000 courses available online!

GO1's Head of Strategic Partnerships, Melvyn Lubega, recently took some time to have a chat with the people at DestinyMan about how the company has expanded so rapidly across the world, as well as discussing some of the challenges that are associated with having a global team.

“When we first launched the company, I headed up sales,” says Lubega. “This meant building and growing the team, while developing our sales process to be both predictable and scalable. As we grew, this meant managing people across an increasing number of geographies and time zones, which means a lot of late nights and early mornings.”

Melvyn also talks about how his time at the Allan Gray Orbis Foundation set him up for success and led him to gaining acceptance to the prestigious University of Oxford, which in turn led to joining the GO1 team.

“Through the Allan Gray Orbis Foundation Entrepreneurship Programme, I discovered that the difference between someone who is an entrepreneur and someone who is not is how they view the world,” he says.

Melvyn also has some great tips for aspiring businesspeople, which you can read along with the full article over at DestinyMan.com

Melvyn Lubega talks running a global company with Destiny Man

Part 2 of a Master Class with Joy Buolamwini

Having the ability to focus and push forward is critical to success, but it’s just as important to remember to listen to those around you who are challenging your ideas, or questioning your approach, as this may be the push that you need to take your concepts to the next level!

Creating an organization is about bringing people together to work on achieving a goal, and opening yourself up to listening to those around you. This allows your team to pursue opportunities together and create a more rounded experience for everyone involved.

In this part of our Master Class, Joy discusses how being dared to listen led to her success in creating a positive eco system that allowed her community to thrive.

You can enroll in Joy’s ‘Why Not Dare?’ course by clicking here 

Dare to listen and find out how others can help you succeed!

You can also check out the other parts of this Master Class here:

Introducing The 'Why Not Dare?' Master Class 

‘Dare to Ask’: Part 1 of a Master Class with Joy Buolamwini

‘Dare to Listen’: Part 2 of a Master Class with Joy Buolamwini

As technology has advanced over the past decade, recording your own videos has become easier than ever! We all have a device that can record high definition video sitting in our pockets, yet most of us don't know how to use these devices to their full potential. Video is now the go to communication tool across the world, and with a few tricks and some basic equipment, you can learn how to shoot professional quality video.

Screen recordings are fantastic, but when you can put the face of your instructor into the video, engagement levels are going to rise. Speaking in front of a camera can be tough to begin with, but like anything; the more you do it, the better you get, and it's a great skill to have.

With the use of a green screen you can transform your home office into a production studio, creating a more engaging and informative environment to present your content, and record videos or interviews that can be included in your course modules. Once you have mastered the basics that we cover in this tutorial, you can then move on to more advanced editing techniques that will allow you to increase your audience engagement.

In this post we are going to tech you how to record your own green screen video and audio, as well as walking you through how to edit everything together.

To set up your own studio similar to the one featured in the video above, you will need the following items that can easily be ordered online through Amazon:

A Green Screen back drop; These can be ordered online or purchased from a photography/video store. If you are looking for a cheaper alternative, you can head to your local craft store and make your own green screen. When doing this just ensure that the material have a matte finish so it's not reflective at all, and will provide an even color when lit up with your lighting equipment.

Two LED light panels; These are used to light your screen as well as lighting your presenter. As per the above video, to light the green screen you should have one light set up down low pointing at the space behind the presenter, if you have enough lights, one on each side is even better! Your second LED panel should be set up next to your recording device as high as your stand will go, and on the opposite side to your back light (if you are only using one)

For this recording we used one Condenser Microphone, or room mic, as well as a Lapel Microphone. Lapel mics are very cheap (Under $20) and are a great investment, because what you're saying is the most important part so people need to hear it!

Any Apple computer with iMovie (this should be standard on all Macs)

Any iPhone, Android or mobile device with video recording functionality

A tripod with adaptor to hold your device

If you have any questions about how to set up your green screen or other equipment, feel free to contact me on Twitter and I'd be happy to hep you get up and running!

How to use your mobile phone to record video with a green screen

So you've signed up to Go1 and set up your portal through the onboarding wizard but now you want to make some changes to your portal settings. No problem! You can quickly and easily make changes to all of your settings and display options through our 'settings' tools. 

To access the settings information simply click on your name in the top right corner of your screen and then click on the settings option within the dropdown menu.

You are now taken to the Portal Settings page where the General Settings are displayed. There are three sections to your Portal settings, General, Advanced and Billing.

Let's take a closer look at what you can find within each section.

Portal admins can update or edit the name of their portal

Portal admins can specify the welcome message that will appear on the learner dashboard for all of their users

Portal admins can specify their own terms and conditions and privacy policy if required

Portal admins can update or edit the primary and secondary colors for their portal

Portal admins can select which blocks  should appear on the learner dashboard for all of their users

Portal admins can specify whether the "Create new account" form is accessible to anonymous users, meaning if a user can register for a new account themselves, as well as specifying whether the Go1 Marketplace is going to be available to all users on their portal

Portal admins can specify whether all users can add credit card details for self purchases outside of the content provided to them through their portal

Portal admins can add a credit card to be used to pay for the portal subscription

Portal admins can view the agreement with Go1 for the current portal

If you have any questions about your portal settings or would like some help in getting set up, our Customer Success team is on hand to help you out 24 hours a day!

At Go1 we are proud supporters of the local community and not-for-profit businesses, and by using Go1 to learn you will also be supporting the community. With the launch of our new website we will be giving back to those organizations that are working hard to make the world a better place by donating all funds from our user fees for our starter plan directly to charity.

Every month in our customer newsletter we will be announcing how the previous months’ funds have been distributed. If you are a not-for-profit and would like to be considered for our charity donations, please contact us and tell us more about your organization.

In addition to donating the starter plan user fees, Go1 also offer free portals for not-for-profit and charity organizations. We love helping people who are doing great things in the community, and want to provide you with your own custom portal for no charge so that you can help more people! Community projects (including open source projects) also can qualify for a free Go1 portal. To find out more and apply for your free portal click here.

We are currently donating to the following charities:

Doctors Without Borders / Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)

You can read more information about our charity donations, as well as finding out about each of the charities that we are currently donating to on our website.

Part 1 of a Master Class with Joy Buolamwini

Have you ever had an idea, something you wanted to know, someone you wanted to meet, or some place you wanted go but didn’t know where to start?

At some point, we all reach the limits of our knowledge, resources, and connections. To move towards our goals we must dare to ask for what we aspire towards.

In this part of the ‘Why Not Dare?’ Master class, Joy takes a closer look into how you take a concept from an idea jotted down on a notepad, all the way through to a finished product by using the 3-S approach.

Find out more about how Joy’s determination and drive took her organizations from ideas, through to world changing innovations!

You can enroll in Joy's 'Why Not Dare?' course by clicking here 

To find out more about Joy, check out her Master Class Introduction

Dare to ask how you will change the world!

The way the we learn is constantly evolving, but as new tools that allow us to incorporate virtual and augmented reality into our learning become more accessible, we are entering a new age of learning. The Microsoft Hololens has just been released to developers and is a huge step forward in the augmented reality, but how will this impact our learning? We're going to take a look and find out.

After unboxing, the Hololens is very quick and easy to get set up. The adjustable straps make fitting the headset very quick and easy, and it is quite comfortable to wear. The only downsides are that the unit is still quite heavy and can be tough to wear for extended periods of time. There is a great tutorial to run through all of the basic commands to get everything set up and working according to your eyes and body size which takes around 15 minutes, and once you've completed that you're ready to start playing!

Although I was skeptical at first, the Hololens is very impressive. The range of view can be tough to adjust to however, once you get into using the device, you will quickly become used to the headset. When getting started, working in 15-20min blocks is the best way to allow your eyes to adjust to focussing on new objects appearing in your range of view. Working beyond this can put a strain on your eyes as they work to adjust to new objects appearing in your field of view, but after a few days you'll be a pro and happily wear the headset for extended periods of time.

Once you're all set up and using your Hololens, it quickly becomes easy to see why virtual reality, and augmented reality are going to be the way of the future. Imagine being able to train your employees on dangerous situations or simulating emergencies without ever putting anyone in danger. This is the future of training.

The immediate training impact will be seen in industries where there are many dangerous moving parts in the workplace that can be highly dangerous, but the classroom will also see huge improvements. Being able to place screens or interactive objects around a room will allow instructors to achieve a highly immersive learning experience without even being present in the room. Each student can have their own teacher to interact with their filed of view and guide them through exercises, allowing them to be completely absorbed in the learning experience.

This is an amazing breakthrough for the regular student, but it's even more of a breakthrough for students with special learning needs such as those with hearing impairments. All learners can now get the attention that they need, in the form that will help them the most.

The way that we communicate with each other is set to change forever too. Gone will be the days of video calls, as you can be standing in a room interacting with a person who is on the opposite side of the world with the use of a Hololens. Skype integration and collaboration is the beginning, but as you can see from some of the other demos below, that's just the tip of the iceberg.

At this stage, the Hololens has only been released as a developer version. As an entry point to the augmented reality market, this is mind blowing. A lot of the things that are still a touch clunky at this stage will very easily be resolved, and the first consumer versions of this product, which is yet to have a release date, is likely to be an affordable and eye-opening look into the future of human interaction that anyone can afford.

To watch some more of the Microsoft demos or the Hololens, check out these videos:

Why the Microsoft Hololens will change the way we learn

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