It’s Anti-Bullying Week  so school children across the country are getting involved in activities to highlight how damaging bullying is and to help stamp it out. You can find resources for school aged children here:  Beat Bullying

Bullying in the workplace is also of course very damaging to adults and the organisations that they work in. In fact bullying is responsible for 30% – 50% of all stress-related illness in the workplace and costs employers up to £2 billion in lost revenue every year.

… Continue Reading

I’ve came across a free course on e-learning accessibility that will be of interest to those developing  e-learning courses. It’s ‘masters’ level content from the Open University which is available as a free trial module on the OU’s Learning Space site.

The module is wide ranging but some of the key areas it covers are:

• Overview of Accessibility and disability.
• Different types of impairments
• Assistive technologies
• Reasonable adjustments (and avoiding disadvantaging non-disabled students)
• What to do when a learning objective can’t be achieved

To see the full content of the course and try it for yourself  follow this link: http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=3049

The following is a roundup of  key changes to employment law for 2011. It’s vital that business owners and managers are aware of these changes to ensure that they don’t fall foul of them. For some of the new acts like Bribery and the Equality Act for example it’s important that all staff understand their implications.

Equality Act

This came into effect in October 2010 and many employers are still working on getting their staff up to speed with the changes. The Equality Act brings together several pieces of existing legislation with some significant changes and additions. For example, if an employer is undertaking a recruitment or … Continue Reading

If (despite the doom and gloom out there) you’re recruiting staff for your business then you should know that there have been some significant changes to what you can and cannot ask following changes to UK law in October 2010. And one of them in particular may surprise you.

Some old favourites still persist though. Candidates at job interviews could pretty much guarantee to get asked three things below. In fact part of the reason some interviewers ask these or similar questions is to check … Continue Reading

October of this year saw the introduction of the biggest single piece of Equality legislation in the UK. The Act brings race, disability, sex and other grounds of discrimination within one piece of legislation. It also makes changes to the law.You’ll find more information here: http://www.equalities.gov.uk/equality_act_2010.aspx

Here’s some approaches you could take to dealing with the implications of the ACT:
* Do nothing, it’s never been an issue
* Workshops/briefings
* e-learning
* Documentation (intranet, email or web)
* Blended Learning

Let’s take a closer look at each approach.

Do Nothing, it’s never been an issue
“History is no guarantee of future performance” as any … Continue Reading