Email bullying on the rise

If you're the victim of email bullying, you're not alone. A survey of 3,400 people by job site reed.co.uk found that bullying in the workplace by email is on the rise with one in six of staff claiming to have been victimised in this way.

Curiously, it's senior workers who claim to be bullied more - with one in four of all directors owning up to being bullied, while only 15 per cent of secretaries said they had experienced email bullying.

However, only four per cent of workers actually admitted to being email bullies themselves.

So, what counts as "email bullying"? Said one victim: "I was bullied by my boss who would send me insults and belittle me by email. In the end I resigned".

Said another: "I was harassed by another girl in the office who kept emailing rubbish about my personal life. I reported her to the personnel department."

In three per cent of cases workers said that the victimisation got so bad they decided to jack in their jobs rather than face more abuse.

In a statement Dan Ferrandino, director of reed.co.uk: "It seems that email bullying is getting worse, as economic pressures raise office temperatures across Britain.

"The real problem lies in the medium itself, however. It is just too easy to send an email while tempers are running high, ignoring the effect it might have.

And he warned that everyone needs to take care they don't become an email bully themselves.

"It's always worth taking time to reflect what you have written before pressing the send button," he said. ®