Dive Brief:

• Workplace bullying is an important HR issue, and a possible example of it may have led to a young firefighter paramedic's suicide, according to the Washington Post.
• The Post reports that Fairfax County firefighter Nicole Mittendorff, 31, killed herself in Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park, the state medical examiner concluded last week. Cyberbullying by co-workers, which continued past the young woman's death, may have played a role in it.
• The article explains that if those harassing Mittendorff online both before and after her death happened to have worked at her location (there is an investigation), then it serves as a prime example of a "new form of workplace harassment," which happens publicly online, rather than face to face.

Dive Insight:

As the online and offline spaces continue to merge, HR leaders must ensure their anti-harassment policies cover both and are enforced over both. 

Angela Hughes, a Baltimore County fire captain and also president of the International Association of Women in Fire and Emergency Medical Services, told the Post that cyberbullying on social-media outlets is a new form of harassment. Her organization receives frequent requests for help from firefighters who believe they are being harassed, threatened or mistreated because of their gender. Recently, the group has seen more online bullying, including some Facebook pages that actively harass female firefighters.

While there have been cases in the media of cyberbullying by anonymous posters on Twitter of late (not related to the workplace), harassment is particularly dangerous in traditionally male-dominated areas such as the military, law enforcement, science, tech and "even the women who work for the National Park Service," the Post notes.