Is Your Workplace Harassment Free?

Is your organization "aware enough" to sustain a harassment-free workplace without periodic reminders? If your answer is yes, you might want to reconsider as it appears that even in 2012 it’s still necessary to advocate for dialogues and training about respecting others.

To be honest, this topic continues to be important because there are people among us that:

1. don’t know how to properly handle the power of their authority.
2. aren’t comfortable with people that are different from them.
3. don’t have the benefit of years of work experience and development of collegial relationships with people who have different traditions, customs, languages, and beliefs from the ones they were brought up with.
4. aren’t knowledgeable about improving interpersonal skills by increasing their Emotional Intelligence.
5. have problems with anger management and may not realize its potential impact on co-workers.
6. aren’t properly managing their stress, anxiety, depression, or even addiction.

Do you have any people in your workplace with these types of issues? Judging by the news reports, EEOC claims and increasing employment lawsuits each year, it’s very likely you do.

We see it everywhere: the world has become smaller, more integrated, and workplaces are global. That means a greater workplace mix of customs, accents, holidays, skin color, work and life traditions, religion, belief systems, cooking, music, sexual orientations, physical challenges… I could go on and on. The point is, everyone in the organization, from the CEO down, has a responsibility to RESPECT the person they are dealing with, internally or externally. And, because we are all human, sometimes we need a little reminding of what that really means.

Leadership Actions

HR and business leaders can best serve their organizations by assessing and building a strategy to address specific cultural needs. However, here are a few general guidelines every organization can benefit from. Consider including these in your strategy to promote civility, respect and engagement in the workplace:

Offer mandatory, updated training each year – the issues involved with respect in the workplace continue to expand. There are compliance requirements for training topics such as sexual harassment. However, a topic like workplace bullying is just as important, but not yet required. Make sure your training is inclusive of all the issues of diversity being experienced today.

Incorporate an interpersonal skills competency standard into the hiring model. Not many of us are filling jobs that are successfully performed in isolation of co-workers, vendors, agencies, customers, or distributors. Ensure your hiring model includes a component for assessing communication and interpersonal skills, and include questions regarding interpersonal relationships when completing references. Hiring the "right" skills sets can help to reduce and eliminate problems down the road.

Coach new managers on the proper use of new authorities. Businesses often assume individuals know how to be a supervisor or a leader once they receive the title, and you know what they say about assuming. Establish a coaching program based on specific leadership competencies and values and help new managers build the right foundation for respecting differences from the start of their new careers. A program like this could also be offered to existing managers struggling to adjust to the range of workplace differences they may be encountering.

Offer coaching to managers, leaders and employees struggling with workplace change or conflict – change isn’t natural. Humans are creatures of habit. Be aware of conflicts between co-workers or employees struggling to implement healthy changes to support updated business strategies. Offer coaching assistance to help them work through the changes before their frustrations become drivers for unhealthy, disrespectful behaviors.

Promote the benefits of assistance offered by healthcare and Employee Assistance Programs. Employees usually read through their healthcare benefits at enrollment time, and perhaps when they need a physical, dental, or vision procedure. But they may not remember, or be too embarrassed to ask, about assistance with stress, anger, or depression.

Continuously promote the organization’s core values. Tie the core values to everything the organization is doing through hiring models, performance goals, position descriptions, mentoring opportunities, and performance recognition. Aligning with these values should be an easy way to ensure respectful dealings with others.

Ensure job designs and performance goals are realistic. Do not unintentionally impose impractical expectations that cannot be achieved by ethical, respectful, and reasonable practices. We’re all operating in a mindset of "leaner and meaner" and sometimes we don’t realize that cliché may be delivering more than we intended. If the goal is to treat each other with respect, start by making sure the organization is demonstrating respectful practices with each of its employees, so they can pass it along.

Help workers with workplace etiquette expectations and standards. Just by virtue of the explosion of social media, instant messaging, texting, and smart phones, individuals are becoming more comfortable typing out a message rather than verbalizing it. Most workplace environments need an appropriate mix of both. Provide training and coaching to help employees be successful in both types of communication.

What’s Next?

April, I just learned, is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. Sexual assault is a very disturbing and real problem, an issue we should all be aware of and committed to eliminating. Thinking about this brought up considerations of other issues that are just as important, such as workplace bullying, and sexual harassment. Analyzing these types of workplace problems, it becomes clear that they all involve a common message – RESPECT.

The work world will continue to get smaller, meaning that we will become more and more aware of things and people who are different from us. Building a business case for zero tolerance of any act of disrespect is imperative to sustaining best business practices in areas such as recruitment, retention or sales strategies.

According to a recently updated article by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), "Employers today must have programs that focus on prevention and correction for acts that involve harassment, bullying, violence, etc. While not expressly mandated by any federal law, courts, the EEOC and many state and local laws have made anti-harassment policies, complaint procedures and workforce training a necessity for employees to successfully minimize and defend against liability arising from workplace harassment." Organizations do not have the option to wait until the government mandates training for each type of harassment. The time to ensure a sustainable zero-tolerance strategy is now.

Build a strong zero-tolerance platform that is sustainable through future refinements and updates. Consider the various types of media available for distribution of your training and zero-tolerance messages. Be clear with performance expectations, as they relate to zero-tolerance from candidates, employees, vendors and customers. If everyone is aware and is doing their part, the negative impact to your organization should be minimal to none. The "none" is our target.


As always, I welcome your comments to my posting; please share your thoughts below. I appreciate your sharing a copy of this article with others you believe will find it interesting. Have a great week.

This article was written by Deborah A. King, SPHR, CEO and Sr. Organization Effectiveness Consultant with Evolution Management, Inc. Debbie and her team are ready to assist with organizational assessments, design, development and facilitation of zero-tolerance policies, procedures, and training, and the integration of a zero-tolerance message into existing human resource practices and workplace culture.

If you’re interested in learning more about our services, please contact us at www.evolutionmgt.com or 770.587.9032.

Civility, Respect and Engagement in the Workplace

Is Your Zero-Tolerance Training Program Working?

This week the topic of harassment is again front and center in our workplaces, schools, and political arenas. As an HR professional dedicated to ensuring that the workplace is welcoming and respectful to everyone, I found myself questioning "Where did we go wrong? After all the years of training, coaching, and sensitivity training, provided by firms of all sizes, why are we still having conversations about inappropriate behaviors? In addition to our training efforts, have the laws also failed?"

As many women who went to work in the 70’s and 80’s can attest to, it was not unusual at that time for bosses (primarily male bosses) to make passes at and disrespectful comments to women in the workplace. The workplace culture up until that time was primarily male dominated, and they didn't seem to think they were doing anything wrong. But the diversity of the workplace changed, and that laid the groundwork for the culture changes to come.

Although the Supreme Court ruled in 1986 that sexual harassment was a discriminatory action and a violation of federal law, organizations didn’t pay much attention. It really wasn’t until 1991 when Anita Hill gave a face and a voice to the oppressive behaviors and negative impacts of harassment in the workplace that organizations began to look in the mirror. What they found was the demographics of employees had changed and the new workforce was demanding a shift in the status quo of male-dominated workplace cultures and behaviors. The workplace could no longer be the "club" for off-color jokes, bad language, inappropriate advances, or promotions for those bullied into granting sexual favors. Analyzing the claims of harassment that began to be more frequently reported, researchers helped us understand that sexual harassment and hostile work environment weren’t really about sex, but more about power.

The Intentional and Unintentional Consequences

The basis for harassment today remains the same, someone with power taking advantage of someone with little or no power. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission website contains information on both harassment and sexual harassment; both illegal and punishable by fines.

With courts seeing many harassment cases over the years, they now place the burden on the employer to prove that the harassment did not occur. The courts have come to the realization that people will be people and therefore, employers should be aware that some form of harassment could be occurring within their workplace at any time. Based on that assumption, each employer is required to take the appropriate steps to ensure their workplace is free of harassing behaviors, and that processes are in place to report it, investigate it and stop it. However, even with clarified roles and responsibilities regarding harassment, the EEOC reports that nearly $100M in legal settlements were paid in 2010.

Although we have gained a greater awareness of actions that make others uncomfortable and behavioral changes have occurred to improve respectful workplace relationships, unintended consequences have also resulted from attempts to stop harassment in the workplace:

• Individuals often don’t want to report the incident for fear of embarrassment or retaliation.
• Individuals have learned they can get a lot of people stirred up, create moments of media fame, and often profit financially by reporting false accusations of harassment.
• Some organizations have adopted the view that "settlements" are a cost of doing business.
• As our workplaces have grown with diversity, so have the number of ways harassment can occur; as a result, claims of harassment are on the rise.

So What’s Next?

I’m sad to share that a recent national study, to be released next week, conducted by the American Association of University Women finds that 50 percent of 7th to 12th grade students reported experiencing sexual harassment in the last school year! Eighty-seven percent of those who reported being harassed also reported negative effects such as absenteeism, poor sleep and illness. These students, harassed by other students who had more "informal" power at school, will soon be in our candidate pools. What does this growing trend in high schools across the country mean to the orientation, on-boarding, training, mentoring and performance programs in our organization?

We are exposed, if only for a nano-second of a sound bite, to the realities of workplace vulnerabilities when they impact business leaders, celebrities, athletes or schools and universities dealing with claims of hostile environments or sexual harassment. Often our tendencies are to bury our heads in the sand, not wanting to face what might be happening within our own cultures and sub-cultures. Perhaps the reemergence of harassment in the news should be viewed as a wake-up call to investigate what our organization is offering in the form of training, coaching, hotlines, etc.

Yes, people will be people, but every CEO is responsible for setting the tone for appropriate and respectful behaviors. Boards need to be holding the CEO’s responsible, and HR should be orchestrating training, surveys and coaching programs aimed not only at raising awareness but also at helping individuals unable to change behaviors on their own. Certainly offenders who do not improve their behaviors with colleagues should be fired; obviously they are not a match for the values and culture of the organization.

Today the courts are seeing more male-on-male harassment, but that doesn’t mean that women being harassed by males has been eliminated. Nor does it mean that hostile environments due to religion, age, race, color, disability, or national origin have been curtailed. Technology and the journey we have taken to a 24/7 environment also opens up opportunities for harassment in the form of text messages, social media postings, etc. (Don’t miss the Textual Harassment video on my whiteboard below). Some experts speculate that the true picture of harassment is being masked by the recession; people wanting to hold on to their jobs, regardless of the circumstances, are not reporting abuse.

I believe, especially with the conditions of a struggling economy, businesses should not take their eyes off the need to gear up and update zero-tolerance training programs. Harassment or bullying, as it’s called in the schools, is alive and well. Businesses need to be cultivating cultures of respect, engagement, and sustainability. Claims of harassment played out in the courts, newspapers, internet and around the water cooler can quickly call into question and destroy a strong and credible reputation. Strategies to ensure that inappropriate comments, behaviors and practices are not tolerated are an investment in the future.

It’s hard to believe that people don’t know how to respect the differences and values of each other, but statistics show us this problem continues. But you know what they say – if we keep doing the same thing, why should we expect a different outcome? So my question is:

If we haven’t achieved the level of success we were looking for with the training and awareness programs we’re currently utilizing, what other actions should we consider to eliminate harassment in our organizations? What’s your organization doing?

Please share your comments below.

 New Method of Harassment

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