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While the claims continue to mount against powerful men (so far they’ve all been men) accused of sexual harassment and assault, our phones continue to ring for clients requesting “one-on-one sensitivity training”. While I always thought this kind of coaching should be called “appropriate behavior training” in order to clarify that decent behavior doesn’t require anyone to be “sensitive”, we’ve
 always provided this service and find it to be an effective prevention measure against sexual harassment and assault.
In addition, however, we always ask clients what consequences have been delivered and recommend that they provide harassment training for the entire group. Without those steps, we find that other leaders and employees will simply not believe that the culture has changed, that complaints will be addressed seriously and without retaliation, and that there will be consequences for inappropriate behavior.
“appropriate behavior training”… doesn’t require anyone to be “sensitive”
Many years ago, we did a series of harassment trainings around the country for a large organization where an executive had grabbed a woman’s private parts at a holiday party. There were many witnesses and no dispute about the facts. The executive was not fired but did have both his salary and stock options cut significantly. These actions were considered private “personnel” issues and were not disclosed to the general employee population. When we did these sessions, we always received a question from someone about whether the organization’s policies applied to executives. Of course we responded that they did and the room would laugh. That did, however, give us the opportunity to explain that there were many severe consequences that usually remained confidential when organizations dealt with these matters. Executive accountability continued to haunt the organization but at least we could deliver that message.
In many organizations, of course, the executive would have been fired, but as frequently happens, he was considered too valuable for them to lose.
What Should You Do?
1) Make sure that the consequences are severe enough so that the behavior stops. Realize that you will be sending a message to the entire organization, especially if the behavior was well known (as it usually is).
2) By all means, provide individual and effective coaching for the alleged harasser.
3) Provide effective harassment training for the entire affected group, and preferably for the entire organization. Effective harassment training is not a thirty minute video. It should be long enough to address awareness, questions about the allegations and provide skills practice. When addressing questions about rumors, we always respond in a sanitized way about the general legal and policy rules for handling complaints, investigations and consequences, without revealing confidential information about this particular claim.
For employees, skills practice should include some kind of assertiveness exercise, so that they’re familiar with how to tell someone to stop inappropriate behavior. For managers, the skills practice should include how to receive complaints and how to intervene.
 Did You Know
We provide both one-one-one coaching as well as conducting investigations and training.
Call or write us at: 303-216-1020 or Lynne@workplacesthatwork.com
Learn more about our training offerings and check out our team members at:
Be sure to read Lynne’s book on sexual harassment.
3985 Wonderland Hill | Suite 106 | Boulder, CO 80304
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November 13, 2017