Making a commitment to tackling sexual harassment in your workplace is a brilliant start, but working out the practical steps to take next can be a bit of a leap into the unknown.
One of the most important is to make sure everyone in your organisation is on the same page and understands why it’s necessary to tackle sexual harassment. It’s easy to overlook your HR team here, as it’s understandably expected that they will have the knowledge and skills to deal with this complex issue. That’s not always the case though! So one practical step is to train your HR team.
Even with the best policies and procedures, supportive, well trained management, and a workplace culture that challenges sexual harassment, if the HR team are not on board, any workers making a report will risk having a negative experience and may even see their reports dismissed and minimised, and the impact on them in their personal and work lives misunderstood.
Your HR team should be up to date on legal issues of course, but should also receive training on listening skills, how to respond to disclosures, on the impact of sexual harassment, and on ensuing that staff get appropriate ongoing support from their employer. This will ensure a well rounded, empathetic response from your HR team that will produce better results for both workers and the employer.
Depending on the size of your HR team, you may wish to identify a small group of staff for additional skills development, and direct staff who wish to report sexual harassment directly to this team. This will allow you to provide excellent support around sexual harassment without needing to provide in depth training to your whole team. That said we would still strongly suggest that all HR team members receive some basic training in this area.
What steps has your organisation taken to tackle sexual harassment? How effective has it been? We’d love to hear about what you’ve been doing!
Speak! Training & Consulting 