What is workplace harassment?

And more importantly - how do we make it stop?

Harassment is defined by law in most states as a pattern of behavior that upsets or harasses the target that serves no legitimate purpose.  It’s this last bit that is most important. Does the behavior serve a legitimate purpose or not?  If the only purpose of the behavior – is to upset or annoy someone, it’s harassment.

Workplace harassment is harassment by colleagues or managers. Again – the key to understanding it is whether or not it serves a legitimate purpose. Annoying someone is not a legitimate purpose. 

How can harassment negatively affect the workplace environment?

Harassment in the workplace is a form of bullying.  Bullying is done to gain advantage.  Basically – it helps to understand the dynamic as the creation of in groups and out groups. Humans are tribal animals. We want to belong to a group. If someone shows they have the power to say who is in or out of a group, they wield a lot of power.  The reason this is a problem in the workplace is that – harassment creates in groups and out groups. People in the outgroup are prevented from getting their work done because they are denied support and resources from their colleagues. No company hires people to not get their work done, obviously. Harassment in a workplace, prevents work from being done. Unfortunately, it’s usually the person who is having their work sabotaged that is let go while the person doing the sabotaging is kept. So the cycle tends to repeat itself. 

Additionally, because bullying and harassment can and do cause mental health problems and because it’s illegal, it can also create legal liabilities. But the main reason to stop it is because of it’s negative impact on work flow. All work is problem solving. All employees should be engaged in that problem solving – ideally – collaboratively. When bullying/harassment is present in a work environment – the problem solving process is distorted and that has negative cascading impacts on workflow as people begin to hoard information or withhold it to protect themselves.

How to prevent workplace harassment 

First is to decide to not tolerate it anymore.  So many companies and managers just view it as a normal but unfortunate part of the work environment so – they tolerate it.  Decide to not tolerate it.

Second: Educate yourself on how exactly to get unwanted behaviors, like bullying and harassment to stop. This requires behavioral training.  The short version of this is – you have to be very strategic in what behaviors are rewarded and which aren’t.   It’s a good idea to review workplace policies to ensure they help eliminate harassment.  Most policies treat harassment as an interpersonal problem and try to mediate it. It’s not a conflict. Instead, companies should be looking to document a pattern of behavior and encourage individuals reporting and being accused – to document interactions so that you can see whether there is indeed – a pattern of behavior that serves no legitimate purpose.   If you do see that – eliminate the person engaging in that behavior. Don’t allow someone engaging in inappropriate behavior to claim their inappropriate behavior was justified by some conflict. It’s not.

Basically – the only way to see it happening, is to look for the patterns and to ask questions and keep an open mind. Just don’t treat it as a one off problem. If it’s happening, it’s a pattern. And the behavior will escalate if they get caught – this is called retaliation. It’s predicted to occur when you are using a behavioral model to understand what is happening, so -  ask for ongoing documentation to capture that – if it happens. If it’s just a conflict, asking people to document things – will help them behave more professionally. It’s only people who are used to getting away with harassing others that will escalate.  

The idea is to switch from using a conflict mediation model and move yourself to a behavioral elimination model instead.

What should companies do when they get a report of workplace retaliation?

Take it seriously and work to educate the person reporting problems, to document everything.  Evidence of retaliation is evidence of harassment. It’s pretty much tells you what you need to know about who is the problem.  Often, what happens is – when someone starts reporting harassment, and they report retaliation, they are seen as troublemakers who are filing too many reports.  Instead, you should welcome those reports because – harassment – is a pattern of behavior and to show that pattern, you need the documentation of ongoing problematic behavior.  A single instance of harassment, may seem insignificant, but when you see the pattern of everything that’s going on – that’s when it comes into focus.

Let me know if you have any questions.  I teach how to stop this using a behavioral science approach over at Humanist Learning Systems: https://humanistlearning.com/category/bullyingharassment/