Handling harassers in the workplace.

This is simple - if someone assaults another employee - they should be terminated. Period.  It should not matter that the assault was of a sexual nature. It's illegal and you have an obligation to protect your employees from the abusive individual.

More importantly don't view it as a one off situation. As the various harassment scandals have rocketed through our news, one thing is very clear - sexually predator males - are predators. They have way more than one victim.  The person coming forward is just the person with enough courage and - an "ah heck no" attitude to say - what happened is wrong. The women and men who speak out - are heroes. The abusers - are not.

The reason companies retain the abuser and fire the victim is usually because the abuser has convinced the employer that they are essential. And it may seem like it. After all - they seem to be the most productive. What managers aren't seeing and paying attention to is just how much time, energy and resources everyone else is spending to cater to the needs of the abuser.

If you have to spend 25 to 50% of your day catering to the needs of an abusive person - yeah - your work productivity suffers. It's not that the abuser is so productive, it's that they are making everyone else - less productive.

Can you fire them? Yes - if you have conducted an investigation and found reason to believe the allegation is true. That should be the end of it. The person should be fired. Yours is a workplace - not a court of law. The standard is not - guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. It's - are they contributing to the workplace or not. If they are harassing and assaulting their fellow employees - they are a net drain and need to go.

Let's stop coddling these predators and start making space for everyone else to flourish.

PS - here is a legal run down that was posted in the wake of the Matt Lauer situation at the Today Show.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1800457253526396/permalink/1984218955150224/

Dealing with Sexual Harassment - from Hillary Clinton?

It recently came to light that Hillary Clinton did not fire a man on her 2008 staff who had harassed a young lady on her team.  Hillary responded by posting an article on Facebook about what she did and why she did it in response to what happened.  I don't want to discuss the relative merits or demerits of Hillary as a political candidate, but I do think her sharing of her thought processes and how she handled it is worth discussing from an HR/humanistic business management perspective.  So here goes.

First - her essay:

Key points:

1) She believed the alleged victim and took immediate action to make sure the accused no longer had access to this person. She also gave the victim a better job - promoted her.
2) She demoted the person accused but did not fire him. She did ensure that his access to other people and women in particular was limited.  She says she took this route because as far as she knew it was an isolated incident and she believed in giving him a second chance - but in a trust but verify sort of way so that he would not be able to hurt others on her campaign.

While it is very easy to second guess her decisions given that the man in question did go on to harass someone else at another job. I will not be doing that here. Instead I want to highlight what I thought she did right.

Too often, when people complain, they are isolated to protect them while the accused is left free to do whatever they want. This has the impact of socially isolating the victim and limiting their ability to do their jobs. When we do this - we are punishing the person who was brave enough to come forward and report what happened. Hillary not only supported this young woman - she rewarded her for coming forward.

Now, before anyone gets all antsy about how if we reward people for reporting crimes we are going to end up with a lot of false reports, don't worry about that. False reports are pretty easy to spot and don't stand up to basic scrutiny and investigation. Also, the rate of false reporting is quite low. Our problem isn't that we have a bunch of false reports, it's that people aren't reporting crimes of this nature when they happen in the workplace.

The person who was isolated and demoted was the harasser, not the victim. She gave him the benefit of the doubt, but did not leave him free to hurt others. He has monitored so he would have no opportunity to hurt other women on the team. Yes, that seems harsh - but it does give the accused the benefit of the doubt.

We do not know what actions Hillary took to verify the story of the young lady. I assume she did not demote someone without first verifying the story.

What I do know is that unless you take reports seriously and verify them - you won't know. So take reports seriously. Verify. There are not 2 sides to this. Either someone behaved inappropriately or they did not. If they did - they should no longer have access to other members of the team. If you don't fire them, isolate them so that they no longer have the ability to harm others.

And, if you verify that a claim was true - reward the person who came forward and notified you.

Which is worse? Dealing with someone who has behaved inappropriately - or allowing a predator to prey on your staff for years because people are too afraid to come forward? In case you are wondering - it's the latter. Not only in terms of harm done but this impacts workflow and is an enormous legal liability. People with courage to honestly tell you what is going on and that crimes are occurring in your workplace - should be rewarded.  People who are found to have behaved inappropriately need to be monitored closely and if necessary isolated so they no longer have access to their victims and other potential victims.

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To learn more about how to stop harassment and bullying in the workplace take my online course: Workplace Bullying for HR Professionals

https://humanistlearning.com/workplacebullying1/

Reporting Harassment

Part of the process to get unwanted behaviors like harassment to stop requires reporting. What do women need to do to properly report harassment in the workplace?

1. What steps can a women take to prove sexual harassment at work? 

The number 1 thing is to document all interactions that are inappropriate.

Date, time, location, any witnesses, any proof and a very specific description of what happened exactly. Not – I was harassed, but on this date at this time in this location he said this and put his hand on my shoulder. Don’t talk about how it made you feel – just what can be validated.

Harassment is a pattern of behavior so what you are trying to prove is a pattern of behavior. Don’t omit anything. Small snide remarks, go into the pattern. They aren’t worth mentioning on their own – but in the context of a pattern of behavior – they become important.

2) What steps should they take if they want to report it? 

Once you have documentation in place, you take a good look at the power structure. Are there any allies you can recruit higher up than the person harassing you?  Get the lined up. Report according to the proper channels. It is important to realize that this – won’t stop the harassment. You do this to set up the conditions to seek monetary damages if the employer fails to protect you.  You give them the opportunity to protect you – use the system they set up. Only after that fails, can you sue.

If your main goal is to get the harassment to stop, you need to retrain the harasser to make them stop. You can use reporting and documentation to do that – but that is separate and apart from the reporting process itself. Again – you have to view this as you helping your employer so that they can put pressure on the harasser to stop. But don’t be surprised if this fails or results in escalation of behavior or retaliation. The behavioral extinction process will play out and that means – there will be an escalation of behavior as that is predicted to occur. There are ways to plan and manage this and reporting is part of that – but not the only part.

3) What if it is a he said/she said situation? 

Document anyway. Every interaction. Make sure your response to these interactions deny the abuser their reward and report – every single incident. Once you start reporting – you have to report everything. Consistently. Over time. This is the only way to make it stop. Also, this will help the company understand just how prevalent something is. What you are doing is triggering the extinction process by denying the reward. You keep denying and reporting and the abuser escalates. You keep denying them the reward and eventually – they either stop or they blow out – spectacularly. Your goal as the victim is to get that to happen as quickly as possible so – relentless consistency in denial of reward and reporting to increase cost of behavior.  What normally happens is that as the abuser’s behavior worsens, it becomes easier for everyone else to see it more clearly. You just have to remain calm and professional and allow them to blow out.

4) Why do women, even high-ranking execs, tend not to report harassment

Because most of the stuff we encounter is not actually physically threatening we just deal with it. If we raised a fuss at every single thing that happened, we would be doing nothing but that. It’s only really worth it if the behavior is aggressive and dangerous. And even then – it’s easier to extract ourselves then to fight. But we need to because – abusers always have other victims and if we aren’t going to do this for ourselves, we need to do it so that there isn’t a next victim.

If you want to learn more about how to end harassment & retaliation in the workplace - take my online course or streaming video.

https://humanistlearning.com/retaliation1/

Current events - celebrities guilty of assault is re-traumatizing people

There is no doubt that women are finally no longer tolerating harassment and demanding action. That's the good news. The bad news is all this news is re-traumatizing people who have been assaulted or harassed.

As someone who has both been harassed and assaulted and as a person who teaches people how to get harassment to stop, I thought I would weigh in on my own experiences and as an educator. Note: Some of this post is graphic. I don't believe in sugar coating what happened.

I am personally not being re-traumatized as much as remembering painful episodes of my past.
For instance: I was inappropriately touched by Bob Barker at a TV station in a room full of reporters about 10 years before that scandal broke. I reported it. I was believed. It was handled appropriately and he was blacklisted from doing things with animal welfare nonprofits in LA after that.

I had a boss who used to lean back in his chair and rub himself through his pants in front of me whenever I would go to talk to him. He only did that to me and not our secretary and not when we had customers. At first I thought maybe he wasn’t aware he was doing it – turns out he was. My position was eliminated 2 weeks after I reported him. I don’t regret reporting him.

I’ve been stalked by a past boyfriend and had to deal with the FBI on that situation.

I survived an attempted rape by an employee of a firm I was interviewing with. I didn’t go to subsequent interviews and when I told the owner a few years later what had happened he was horrified and wished I had told him immediately because that explained why he would lose female customers. It was negatively effecting his business as people like me who could hire him – wouldn’t. But he also didn’t fire the guy upon learning this.

The current news isn’t traumatizing me. But keep in mind that I’ve had therapy for PTSD as a result of the stalking incident. The coping techniques I learned may be helping me now not be triggered by PTSD. However, it is upsetting me greatly. And I do spend time crying – out of guilt that I didn’t do more in my situations to protect other women.

What this is doing is making me remember things that happened and reconsider how I handled it. In most cases, I regret not reporting more or making a bigger stink than I did. At the time I didn’t make a bigger stink because I didn’t want to deal with whatever it was. I just wanted to get away and get on with my life. The problem is because I didn’t make a big stink, other women were victimized. In every single case.

There was guy who asked me to dance at a club in Hawaii. He told me his name, told me he was an army captain, grabbed my arm and started dragging me to the door. I knew if he got me out of the club – he would rape me. I escaped, but didn’t report him. I was a regular at this club in Hawaii. Friends with all the bartenders. And still, didn’t report it. I told my girlfriends. I have no doubt that other women were raped by this man because of my inaction. Same with the guy who attempted to rape me as part of a job interview. He clearly had other victims.

Same with Bob Barker – he had other victims. I wonder what would have happened if I had turned around and slapped him in front of all those reporters. Would what he had been doing come to light sooner and more women been protected had I acted slightly differently? In the Bob Barker case – I reported him immediately upon reaching safety. I was believed and supported and would have been if I had slapped him in the newsroom. But my instinct was self-preservation. Same with the guy in the bar dragging me to the door. Self-preservation. Same with the attempted interview rape. Self-preservation prevented me from telling his boss. I didn’t know if his boss was part of the scam. This guy had contacted me in a professional capacity.

I am not having PTSD triggered. I am dealing with a tremendous amount of guilt that I should have done more to protect the women who inevitably came after me. I just didn’t think of them at the time. I knew they existed, because how could they not. But at the same time, my mental health was more important than them. And I think now that was a mistake.

I teach adults and kids how to use behavioral science techniques to stop bullies. (See my book The Bully Vaccine or any of my online courses.) To get kids to do this – you must convince them, not to do it for themselves, but to protect other kids who are also being victimized. I tell them to look around – see the other kids – because there are always other victims. Once kids get that – they become fearless. They won’t always act to protect themselves, but they will almost always act to protect others.

We women – need to do the same. We need to realize that what happened to us wasn’t about us. It is about the fact a predator is on the loose and needs to be stopped because if he isn’t, others will be victimized, just like us. There are always other victims. People hearing these reports need to take them seriously and treat them as the violent crime they really are.

Anita Hill recently wrote an essay asking the question:  what if we treated this like embezzlement or any other type of crime? We would respond to reports of harassment and assault differently if we thought of them as actual crimes. We need to start doing that. If I had my purse stolen (and I have) I would report it and try to make sure those criminals were locked up so they couldn’t steal from anyone else. We need to have the same approach to sexual predators. Both as victims and as people hearing about the assaults.

I think the main reason why people are saying me too and naming names – is exactly because of this. If we don’t name names, other people will be victimized! I don’t want to live with this guilt anymore. The only way out is to name names and start making much bigger stinks when we encounter predators.

Imagine if we treated sexual assault like we treated embezzling.

In light of the recent revelations about Harvey Weinstein and other powerful men assaulting employees and potential employees, Anita Hill wrote a very interesting essay on the subject making the case that our indifference to this crime, just because it’s sexual in nature is doing more harm than good.

Anita Hill’s essay is called Women face creeps like Harvey Weinstein everywhere was published by the NY Daily News:http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/women-face-pigs-harvey-weinstein-anita-hill-article-1.3563555 

My favorite quote from the essay is this one.

"Companies founded and led by powerful men often effectively put chronic sexual harassment by men in a separate basket, as though it was a “personal problem” rather than a serious business one. Imagine decades of rumors that Weinstein was an embezzler. Would his boards have shown the same level of disinterest and inattention? When does indifference amount to enabling? The question answers itself and the catastrophic results of the board’s flawed thinking speak for themselves."

I have 4 points I want to make on this.

1. People who abuse other people don’t just abuse one person. This is never just an interpersonal matter. It’s usually serial. Multiple victims. If you give them a pass, you are allowing them to harm other people and that makes you complicit.
2. This doesn’t just happen to women. I know men who were raped. There are men in Hollywood speaking out against the abuses they experienced, some as children! 
3. Assault is assault is assault. It’s a crime. Treat it as seriously as you would any other crime reported to you. And yes, harassment is a crime too. Every state in the country has laws against harassment. Criminal laws against harassment. Don’t just assume you only have to do something if the victim qualifies under to special categories. Everyone in your workplace has a right to not be harassed.
4. The lessons we learn from the Harvey Weinstein scandal can and must be applied more broadly throughout American society.

If you were never taught how to make this stop and how to deal effectively with these problems or you are dealing with it now, take one of my courses on how to apply behavioral science to the problem of bullying.

https://humanistlearning.com/category/bullyingharassment/

Harassment Compliance Training Done Right

If you have more than 50 employees, chances are you offer sexual harassment training to your supervisors. Such training is mandated by law in CA, ME and CT and is strongly encouraged everywhere else as a way to reduce liability if a harassment situation were to occur.

Most companies offer a legal compliance training that covers the law and basically tells supervisors – it’s against the law so don’t do it. Legal compliance satisfied. If you are ever hit with a lawsuit, you can now argue – well – we told them not to do it, it’s not our fault if it happened.

This is a REALLY cynical way of viewing harassment training.

My feeling is that since you have to offer harassment training, why not use it is an opportunity to teach your staff something useful. Like – how to deal with obnoxious people using behavioral techniques.

Bullying and harassment are normal human behaviors. They happen to be really destructive behaviors, but they work and benefit the bully, which is why they do them.  The good news is that we have decades of research on how to get unwanted behaviors to stop.

Teaching your supervisors and staff how to help shape and train your employees to behave better while at the same time teaching them how to stop harassment behavior in the workplace is a win win win!

Don’t just give your employees a boring legal training and consider your job done. Teach them how to stop harassment by teaching them useful behavioral skills that they can apply immediately to all aspects of their work.  You will be glad you did.

Check out my harassment training options at: https://humanistlearning.com/category/businesscourses/compliance/

If you are an employment lawyer or know one - consider taking this course to learn more about what specifically we should be teaching people. https://humanistlearning.com/stop-bullying-in-the-workplace-for-lawyers/

Sexual assault – in the workplace

We all hope that our workplaces are safe, but, the reality is sometimes quite different.

According to the website Workplaces Respond 8% of all rapes occur while the victim is working (see: http://www.workplacesrespond.org/learn/the-facts/the-costs-of-sexual-violence)  And this is not a crime that just affects women. 9% of rape victims are male.

For an example see: http://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/florida-farm-owners-assault-migrants-while-police-and-prosecutors-do-nothing-7530797 a recent story about women being systematically raped at a tomato processing plant they worked at.

Don’t let the shocking details of that story lull you into thinking it can’t happen in your workplace.  This story: https://bullyvaccineproject.com/how-bad-can-workplace-bullying-be/ is about a city worker who was raped with a glow stick by his co-workers and no one reported it!

I don’t normally talk about sexually abusive behavior in this blog, but I felt it was important to do so.  Sexual violence is a continuum of behaviors.  It might start with sexual bullying and harassment, progress to sexual assault (which is unwanted sexual contact that doesn't included forced penetration) and up to and including rape.

If leaders and managers don’t take sexual harassment (bullying of a sexual nature) or even workplace bullying seriously, then they are fostering a hostile work environment., because when left unchecked, harassment can escalate to assault very easily.

Don’t brush off verbal bullying as just normal interpersonal dynamics. It isn't. As much as a bully might claim they were only joking, they aren't. Bullying is an attempt to intimidate or coerce other people. When this intimidation is of a sexual nature, it is even more threatening.

If you are a manager, or an HR professional learn what it takes to get harassment to stop. This is not behavior that should be tolerated in our workplaces anymore.

In order to get this unwanted behavior to stop - we need to learn the science of how to make unwanted behaviors stop. And there is science to back up - how to do this.

These courses from Humanist Learning Systems will help you learn the science based behavioral skills necessary to curb harassment of any sort in your workplace.  https://humanistlearning.com/category/bullyingharassment/