As a corporate employee, I feel privileged that I'm able to work from home for most of the week. While the nature of my job allows me and my small team to carry on as usual, many other kinds of work require the physical presence of staff in a place of business.
But the more time I've spent at home, the more distressing news I've been seeing about harassment, abuse and domestic violence. Online abuse is a growing concern. In Japan, the number of people who called a government hotline to report online abuse exceeded 5,100 in the fiscal year ending in March, compared to slightly over 1,000 nine years ago, a recent report showed.
With home-bound people spending even more time on social media, some of it for work purposes, we've been seeing more cases of intimidation and abuse in the virtual world.
The conventional wisdom is that working from home should free people from exposure to toxic workplace behaviour. But the new normal approach has actually opened the door for other forms of harassment.
Harassment and intimidation based on gender or race has taken the form of being excluded from virtual meetings or bullied over video calls. Such provocations would have been harder to carry out in an office where other people are present.
During not-so-formal meetings and conversations online, the boundaries between work and private life are blurred, which can also create a climate for harassment.
Working out of our kitchens and living rooms can lead people to let their guard down and be more informal, or in some cases, improper. A comment about what colleagues, clients or other contacts see in the background at our house can all too easily be followed by unsolicited remarks about a person's appearance or by an inappropriate joke.
Some companies have postponed investigations into harassment cases due to the pandemic. This is definitely not an encouraging sign.
Virtual communication also provides a degree of anonymity that can lead people to act in ways they would not in person. The result has been the rise of cyberbullying as a global phenomenon. In Japan, the severity of the problem was driven home by the recent death of Hana Kimura, a 22-year-old professional wrestler and reality-TV star. She posted self-harm images on Twitter shortly before taking her life, implying she had suffered from cyberbullying.
Her case has drawn attention once more to the delicate balance of regulation versus free speech. The bullying culture in Japan is so pervasive that Covid-related school closures and telecommuting have given rise to jokes about the unexpected benefits of staying at home -- a reprieve from school and workplace bullying. But the bullies are still there, lurking behind their screens.
While those who have been defamed online can ask telecom providers and website operators to voluntarily disclose anonymous attackers' IP addresses, names and street addresses, the fact is governments have struggled to come up with effective solutions.
Early this month, regulations to protect workers in Japan from abusive bosses and colleagues took effect. Large companies now must combat so-called power harassment, which includes such acts as striking an employee with one's bare hands or an object.
Firms are legally required to have strict policies against workplace bullying. They must train employees and have a contact point for reporting cases of abuse. Companies allowing egregious abuse to occur will be publicly named.
But cyberbullying is harder to police and not solely a Japanese problem. Similar cases have been reported in South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand. South Korean legislators have been pushing a bill that proposes making anti-cyberbullying education compulsory in schools, and allowing the identification and prosecution of those who post malicious online content.
Of course, laws cannot fix every problem we face. Better behaviour should start with improved education in schools about how to use the internet more effectively and ethically.
There is also no quick fix for office harassment and bullying, but employers can put more effort into offering training and following up on complaints. Companies, meanwhile, need to send a strong anti-harassment message and get more people involved in rooting out misconduct, while staff must be encouraged to speak up when they spot inappropriate behaviour. Experts also recommend easier reporting mechanisms for employees.
As company managers focus on returning to work as virus concerns ease, healthy employment conditions must be a firm priority. Among those, concerns about harassment can't be ignored.