It’s been less than a month since the New York Times broke the story that over the past several decades, Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein has been paying settlements to women in the film industry who have raised sexual harassment or assault claims against him. In the days and weeks that followed, the Weinstein scandal has had huge impacts across the country as the scope of the issue continues to broaden.
What started as media reports of additional Weinstein victims in the days after the story broke has expanded to public disclosure and denouncement of sexual harassment in other industries, including fashion, television and politics. And there are no signs of things stopping there. In recent days, victims from all walks of life have been using the hashtag #metoo to share their own stories of sexual harassment and assault on social media.
One thing that these media reports has made clear is that weeding out sexual harassment is on the forefront of everyone’s mind. The focus is on holding employers and perpetrators alike accountable for harassing misconduct, regardless of how senior a harasser’s position is within an organization. As such, employers must take steps to ensure that employees are protected from sexual harassment in the workplace, and to promptly address any harassment issues that come up.
As the workplace evolves in a post-Weinstein world, here are five things that you can do to reduce the likelihood that one of your employees shares a #metoo story on social media involving your organization:
1. Take a Pulse Check on Organizational Culture
Your work to eradicate harassment from the workplace begins with a realistic assessment of how permissive the company’s culture is regarding conduct that borders on harassment. Do you have employees and managers that regularly make off-color jokes and comments? Does everyone just laugh along because they don’t want to rock the boat? Are there employees that everyone knows you should never be alone with? These are red flags that can no longer be ignored or dismissed.
2. Revise and Update Your Harassment Policy and Rules of Conduct
Every company should clearly articulate its expectations regarding employee behavior and conduct using various forms of communication, including written policies. If your policies on harassment and employee conduct have been sitting on a dusty shelf somewhere in an outdated handbook, now is the time to find and update them.
3. Train Employees at all Levels on Respectful Workplace Expectations and Harassment Prohibitions
Once your policies and rules are updated, you must devote the time and resources necessary to train employees on company expectations. Employee training on maintaining a respectful workplace and the company’s prohibitions on harassment should not be handled dismissively. Distributing revised policies and spending a few minutes going over them in a staff meeting may be insufficient to get the message across, especially where a company has an established culture of being lax on correcting misconduct. Instead, employers should make every effort to present harassment training to employees and managers on an annual basis. Because managers have additional responsibilities with regard to addressing harassment, they should be trained separately from line employees.
4. Hold Employees Accountable at All Times – Not Just When a Complaint is Filed
To ensure that your organization maintains a respectful workplace that is devoid of harassment, you must regularly monitor the work environment and hold employees accountable when their conduct does not comply with work rules and policies. As the Weinstein case suggests, timing is everything. It is true that Harvey Weinstein was fired and resigned from his company’s board of directors as a result of his misconduct, but these acts only occurred after the scandal broke. There are indications that his misbehavior, though widely known, went unaddressed for years prior to the New York Times report. Employers cannot take a similar approach with managers turning their heads the other way when misconduct occurs. Instead, they should work to investigate and address any issues of potential harassment whenever they come up.
5. Respond Promptly to Complaints or Reports of Harassment
When a formal complaint or report of harassment is made, companies must take prompt action to investigate and correct harassment that is found to have occurred. An impartial company representative or third party should conduct a company’s investigation. The kind of corrective action to take when policy violations have occurred will vary depending on the circumstances. In some cases, immediate termination may be appropriate. In others, disciplinary action short of termination (i.e., written write-up, suspension) may be appropriate. In all cases, it is a good practice to retrain employees on related policies and expectations after completing your investigation of a harassment complaint.
Because each organization is different and each report of harassment is unique, a cookie-cutter approach for responding to and addressing these issues may be ineffective. HEC’s HR consultants are available to assist members in evaluating harassment training options, discussing considerations related to misconduct investigations, and revising harassment policies and work rules to ensure that your organization is proactive on these issues moving forward.