I despise sexual-harassment training. At least, I despise the kind of training to which I've been subjected and to which most of my clients workforces are subjected. You know what I mean-the boring recitation of legal standards followed by a review of the company policy stating don't do this/that/or the other thing, and if someone does it to you, here's whom to call.
For number of years, I've maintained that companies should ditch this type of universal sexual-harassment training and instead use it as a disciplinary tool. "If you send one more inappropriate email over the company server, you're going to spend three hours in sexual-harassment training." My guess is that such a practice would stop more harassment than what we do now across our workspaces.
For it's no secret that sexual-harassment training generally is ineffective. The EEOC knows it, its people have studied it, but it will probably take them another generation (based on their case processing times) to come up with any kind of remedial suggestions. So, in a burst of immodesty, let me offer a teaching paradigm that might prove helpful.
People dealing with sexual harassment in the workplace-victims, observers, human resource professionals on the receiving end of the complaint-are not approaching the issue from a perspective of what is legal, what can be proved, or how it fits within the world of Title VII or some state law analog. They are not asking whether the harassment is quid pro quo or hostile work environment. What people confronted with sexual-harassment are trying to do is solve a problem, a problem of a bad employee, customer or manager acting outside business norms or even societal norms for personal conduct. Most sexual-harassment training does not come at this problem solving directly, but only tangentially. We don't approach the issue the way somebody in the workforce does, namely, in a way that looks for means to stop the conduct.
And so when I train on sexual-harassment in the workplace, my focus is on how a line employee, manager, or a human resources professional can deal with the problem conduct. The legal definitions, recognizing sexual-harassment, company policies, all get wrapped up in the problem-solving angle. but the problem solving remains the focus. Typically I do this through a series of scenarios that are tailored to the work environment of the company. Is it predominantly female? Then I describe settings and interactions more familiar to women. Is it a manufacturing operation or an office environment? That drives the likely problems and possible solutions.
These solutions are not couched in legalese or evidence-based language, but rather in commonplace terms that show a logical connection between cause and effect and cause and solution. Because they focus on things like workplace culture rather than legal analysis, this way of solving problems is generally more memorable and effective at the same time.
So, for example, a response to an employee having a scantily clad picture of her spouse on her desk is not approached as a hostile work environment issue, but rather as a professional workplace issue. Telling someone that the office is not an appropriate place for what amounts to soft core pornography is an easier solution to conceptualize-because it makes sense-than an analysis of who might be offended and why after seeing the picture. Similarly, advising employees on how to respond to bullying conduct-by telling the bully things like, "This office doesn't work that way", "Did you really mean to say that?", "I don't think you thought about what you were going to say before you said it", "I don't want to be treated like that and I'm pretty sure no one else does either", can be an effective way of defusing bully behavior at an initial level, before it escalates into a harassment problem. Sketching out possible approaches to human resources when making a report also is effective. Conducting a make-believe dialogue between the reporting employee and the human resources director, in my experience, works to ease the awkwardness that most employees feel when talking to HR.
Rather than trying to make pseudo-lawyers of our workforces, we should be addressing human resource issues like this for what they are-problems seeking solutions. Our presentations should provide solutions, first and foremost. The rest of the high concept training will take care of itself.
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