Often victims of workplace bullying suffer silently due to the fear of being ostracized at work or being labelled as a crybaby or a whiner, according to a research recently published in the Management Communication Quarterly. The study involved in-depth interviews with nearly 50 victims of workplace bullying and they discovered that many don't want to speak up.
The study authors believe that awareness and support must be established so that victims would bravely come out in the open. However, the lack of acknowledgement on this issue has pushed victims back from telling their story, scared that no one would believe them. This is what Anshul Malhotra and the team at People Innovations Australia, a human resources organisation, wants to change.
"We want to create awareness and promote better workplace conditions for employees. At the same time, we want to make employers understand the effects of workplace bullying and its effect on productivity," Anshul said.
Their idea of promoting this advocacy as well as the People Innovations brand is through a series of interactive videos to be uploaded on video-sharing website YouTube. "The video would speak to employees, telling them to stop suffering in silence, and that we're ready to listen to them. Also, to promote our business, we also want to let them know that we can help them work for the best employers in the country in the best conditions."
Anshul tasked their in-house creativity team to draft a skeleton story. Unfortunately, none of them were skilled enough to draw a professional short-film script that would fully explain their requirements to videographers. "Not many similar interactive advertisements exist on YouTube so we believed that the project objectives might be really hard to do accomplish," Anshul said.
To expose their project to a global pool of talent, Anshul posted the project on Freelancer.com. "We used to source people traditionally and it was really difficult to find the best people for this job within our budget. Not wanting to go through that process, we opted to find a freelancer for this project."
Their project on Freelancer.com had attracted more than a dozen bids. After communicating with various bidders, they awarded the project to Sarah who came up with great ideas to transform their story into a script. "Sarah worked tirelessly to improve the script while creating draft video versions. The project was delivered and exceeded our expectations. Through her scripts, we're now working on our video advertisements that we expect to go viral on YouTube!"
Anshul had been a member of Freelancer.com for a year and has consistently outsourced projects. "We started out really small so we had limited resources. We were able to complete several projects – including a brand jingle, a web portal, and various marketing campaigns. Freelancer.com has helped us greatly and this recently concluded project is just another out of the many we're planning to outsource in the future," he said.
You can experience People Innovation’s interactive Youtube adventure here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDwaaBLNJbc
Favorite features on Freelancer.com
Free Project Posting – "It saves us money as we only pay fees when we find the right freelancer for the job."
Milestone Payment System – "Allows us to file a dispute or not release payment if expected results are not met by the freelancer."
Chat – "It makes the communication fast and easy for both parties."
Freelancer.com Mobile App – "Initially, we had issues accessing the site properly on mobile devices. Thanks to the introduction of the new Freelancer.com app, it's now effortless to visit the site wherever we are."
