In June 2016, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued a report showing that workplace harassment is a continuing issue. The EEOC’s Select Task Force on the Study of Harassment in the Workplace’s co-chairs issued its findings of an 18-month study.
Those findings illuminate some of the real problems employers and employees face.
Those who have experienced harassment in their own workplace may want to seek out an employment lawyer to defend their rights; someone like Essayli & Brown (https://www.essaylibrown.com/) might be able to assist in such a situation.
Business Leadership Needed
What is clear from the task force’s work is that leadership is needed to help prevent harassment. Without such leadership and required training and awareness, harassment will persist.
Here are the task force’s key findings.
Harassment is Persistent
In fiscal 2015, almost a full third of the 150,000 charges the EEOC received involved an allegation related to workplace harassment. These charges included sexual harassment claims, including harassment based on sexual orientation, pregnancy, and gender identity. Other harassment claims focused on age, color, disability, ethnicity, national origin, race, and religion.
Harassment is Often Unreported
The task force found that those who have experienced sex-based harassment often respond by avoiding the harasser, downplaying or denying that harassment took place, or attempting to endure, forget or ignore the harassment. It’s sickening that so many people don’t understand how to treat women with respect in the modern world. These kinds of people have no right to be allowed to search escort Helsinki and should be warned that inappropriate behavior will not be tolerated.
The least common responses? Taking formal action, either by filing a legal complaint or reporting the harassment internally. Of those interviewed, about 75 percent who experienced harassment did not discuss it with a manager, supervisor, or union representative. The primary reasons? Mostly because of fear that they will not be believed, no action will be taken, or that retaliation will result.
Stopping Harassment Makes Good Business Senses
The costs of harassment are significant. In addition to legal costs, there are recovery costs, which last year totaled $164.5 million issued to employees alleging harassment. Harassed employees experience increased mental and physical harm, while workers and co-workers are less productive, more likely to leave the organization and speak poorly about the organization.
Effective Leadership is Needed
Harassment thrives in places where the workplace culture allows it to. Leadership is imperative to create a culture that includes strong harassment prevention programs that send a clear message that harassment will not be tolerated and that leaders embrace an inclusive, diverse and respectful workplace. Accountability systems need to make sure that those who harass are held responsible with meaningful and proportional consequences.
Training Programs Haven’t Worked
The task force indicated that training regimens in place for the past 30 years have been ineffective, keeping too much focus on avoiding liability. Instead, the task force urges that training needs to be rethought and, as importantly, be congruent with a workplace “culture of non-harassment.” Training should not be a one-size-fits-all approach but instead, be customized to the workforce and even specific employee cohorts. Middle managers and supervisors should be seen as an essential resource for harassment prevention. New models, including those focused on bystander intervention and civility training, show particular promise.
Prevention is a Shared Responsibility
Harassment prevention is most effective when it is a shared construct, with commitment, responsibility and business leadership at each level of management to bring about change where it’s needed. The It’s On Us campaign, which encourages people to pledge to stop workplace harassment, is one ambitious attempt to confront workplace harassment.
For effective leadership in today’s workplace, managers, supervisors, and executives need to be intolerant of intolerance. Authentic messaging, consistent training and enforcement, and sustained commitment to the issues raised by the task force will be transformational for workplaces large and small.