THE TREND

Working with leaders around the world, we see organizations typically have three scenarios:

1. Employees who have not had any training on sexual harassment prevention
2. Managers who have not been trained and lack awareness of the law
3. Organizations that put themselves in a position of liability by not training and educating people on this issue.

You must provide training to educate everyone about this issue. In order to protect your organization from liability, everyone should be on the same page and make your policies crystal clear. Learn to provide team members with the training, tools and techniques to help them understand and prevent sexual harassment in the workplace.

In a recent poll by Reuters®, 3,000 American adults were asked to look at eight different scenarios and define them as sexual harassment or not. On extreme examples, all agreed that it was. On those that were more ambiguous, there was disagreement, such as:

1. On “unwanted compliments about your appearance”—38 percent said it was sexual harassment, and 47 percent said it wasn’t
2. On “dirty jokes”—41 percent said it was, and 44 percent said it wasn’t
3. On “nonconsensual hugging”—44 percent said it was, 40 percent said it wasn’t

The problem is that people come to work with different ideas about what is and is not harassment. These are your employees. In the world we live in today—it’s a scary thought.

• The great American sexual harassment quiz
• Behave yourself
• It’s all in the law
• What respect looks like
• It’s going to cost you
• Good guidance
• What respect looks like
• Action plans