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Welcome to this week’s episode of the HRDQ-U In Review Podcast, where we bring you the latest insights and practical tools for enhancing soft skills training within your organization. This podcast is brought to you by HRDQU.com, and I’m your host, Sarah, Learning Events Manager at HRDQ-U. And today, I have Peter Garber joining me to discuss the webinar, Preventing Sexual Harassment in the Workplace.

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Peter is a retired human resource professional with over 35 years of experience working for Fortune 200 Corporation and was responsible for harassment policies for over 20 years in his role as manager of EEO for the corporation. So thanks so much for joining me today, Peter. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Peter, you’ve been here with us before, which is great. So you’ve been on the podcast before. But for any of those folks that are tuning in that are new listeners, can you just share a little bit of

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you know, about yourself, your background, you know, where you came from, a little bit more in depth. Sure. ah I am a retired HR professional. I’ve been retired for about nine years, but I still am active in writing and presenting webinars, which is the one that we’re going to talk about today. uh As you know, today I’m very interested in training activities that are uh

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more interactive where people have to do things. I think when you do things that you learn as opposed to uh other types of learning presentations. So I’m really into the interactive, participative types of training experiences that I can provide to people. And so you began the webinar sharing some statistics on sexual harassment concerning the number of incidents that are being reported over the past few years.

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Could you review some of those statistics for us today and the impact that these numbers might have had on the victims of sexual harassment today? Yeah, sure. I think that these statistics tell a story in themselves about what is happening in our workplaces concerning sexual harassment. For example, it is estimated that 98 % of US organizations have a sexual harassment policy. And that’s great because that’s the first step. You have to have a…

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a strong policy that’s clearly communicated and accessible to all employees. But I would also add that just establishing a uh policy is probably the easiest part. And there’s nothing really easy about administering a sexual harassment policy. the first step is having oh that policy in place.

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And then next, according to a 2019 study, 34 % of women reported having experienced sexual harassment during some time in their career and 10 % of men experienced some kind of sexual harassment. it’s almost three times more frequent for women than men. And according to the US Equal Opportunity Commission of the EEOC in 2020, 55.8 % of victims of sexual harassment

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experienced some form of retaliation after reporting sexual harassment, including demotion, exclusion from staff activities, or unfavorable reassignment, just to name a few. It’s also estimated that 70%, 70 % of sexual harassment incidents are not reported. And that’s a real problem. And during the webinar, I talked about a number of reasons why that might be.

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the case, and we’ll touch on some of those again during this podcast. 72 % of victims were harassed by someone senior to them in the workplace, either their supervisor or someone at a higher level. And according to ABC and the Washington Post, in cases where victims have reported harassment, the majority, and I’ll add the vast majority, the great majority of their harassers go unpunished, which is the greatest fear that a victim of sexual harassment

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has is that they’ll report it, that she’ll report it in most cases, and that she and that nothing’s done about it and then she has to live with the consequences afterwards, which might be worse than it was before. And according to a 2017 study by the National Women’s Law Center, victims of sexual harassment are more likely to experience anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder, understandably. It can be a very traumatic.

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experience having this happen to you. And that from 1997 to 2021 sexual harassment reports to the EEOC have steadily declined and very dramatically have declined. And so based on these statistics, it should be no surprise that the number of sexual harassment reports have been decreasing over the years or go unreported, especially considering that over half of those

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reporting sexual harassment experience some sort of some form of retaliation in that most alleged harassers go unpunished. I believe that this is something that organizations can address themselves by establishing clear workplace harassment policies and enforcing them, implementing stronger retaliation policies and practices, as well as taking more aggressive actions, investigating sexual harassment incidents and taking appropriate actions against those who found to have sexually harassed others.

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including those who report to them either directly or indirectly. So I think the statistics really lead us to all of those conclusions.

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And so had a lot of great questions come through during the webinar that we, and some of them we didn’t have the time to answer. So we’ll be able to go through those today. And we did answer this one in the webinar, but I’d love just for a little bit of a recap on this one. What do you think is the most important thing that organizations can do to prevent sexual harassment in their workplaces? Yeah, that was a question that came up, but it’s certainly worth repeating. And again, the first thing that they needed to do

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as an organization is to establish or update their harassment policies and communicate those policies as I just mentioned. uh But uh then next they should provide sexual harassment training for all of their employees on a regular basis, should be updated. It should really be an annual event so everybody’s clear on the latest versions of the policy and sometimes things change. But perhaps most importantly, they need to enforce these policies, which is the greatest challenge. That’s why I met.

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When I said, you know, just establishing a policy and writing a policy and publishing it is the easy part. Enforcing these policies is the greatest challenge. And having these policies in place is important, but putting them into practice requires much greater challenge and commitment concerning protecting their employees from sexual harassment or any form of harassment. And as I said during the webinar, we used to just call these policies our sexual, our company’s sexual harassment policy. But today,

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Today, those policies are generally called workplace harassment policies, reflecting that there can be other forms of harassment other than just sexual. It could be based on national origin or a number of different things like that that are also illegal and uh should be listed and uh addressed as well. And you mentioned in one of your statistics that the number of reports of sexual harassment are decreasing.

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Why do you think that that’s happening? Is this good news? Is it bad news? Can you talk a little bit about that for me? Yeah, as you mentioned, they have been dramatically decreasing. And I don’t think it’s good news. It may mean that there is less, it may not mean that there’s less incidents of sexual harassment occurring, but rather the perception on the part of victims that there may not be an equitable resolution to other complainants if it’s reported.

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see that from, again, the statistics show, tell the story. And this is believed by the majority of incidents of sexual harassment, that’s why I think that the majority of incidents of sexual harassment do not get reported because oh the victims, oh you know, through experience or hearing the experience of other people have said, it won’t do any good and it may even be worse. So that’s a very serious problem.

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And what about, you what are the possible consequences to organizations if they’re not adequately addressing, you know, these sexual harassment complaints made by their employees? Well, you know, I think this was demonstrated in the answers from some of the polls that we did during the webinar that victims will be much more likely to seek remedies outside the organization, which could end up being decided in a court of.

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The goal should be for any organization to create a workplace culture in which all employees feel comfortable and confident that their complaints to the company will be fairly addressed and brought to an appropriate resolution by their employer without the need to seek assistance outside of the organization. And you you want uh your victims of sexual harassment to get a resolution and a solution or resolution to the issue.

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it’s always best if you can deal with it yourself rather than losing control of that situation uh and allow it to proceed into a uh court situation which can be much more difficult uh and uh controversial uh to deal with. So uh best if you do it yourself and you do it well. And from the victim’s perspective, to ensure that

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it’s understood that a harasser’s behavior is not welcome. Should victims be told first that they should confront their harassers before making a formal complaint against them? Yeah, sometimes you hear that, companies, may feel, you know, to be fair, they should make it clear that what the harasser or alleged harasser is saying or doing to them is unwelcome.

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began the webinar by defining sexual harassment as unwelcome behavior. And so in attempt to make sure it’s unwelcome, some might suggest, well, you got to tell the person that it’s unwelcome not to do it. And I don’t agree with that based on my experience. Many victims may not be comfortable dealing directly confronting harassers, especially if it’s someone in a position of authority or their supervisor or boss.

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And once a complaint is made, the accused harasser should be told not to confront the victim themselves or do anything that would be retaliatory or even would appear to be retaliatory until an investigation concerning the complaint is completed. And then at that time, any necessary action concerning the complaint should be taken, as we discussed during the webinar.

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And during the webinar, you discussed how, um you know, harassment is still very much so prevalent even in this remote workspace that we tend to live in today, which is, I feel like initially would be kind of quite surprising, but should organizations update their harassment policies to specifically address the rights of employees that do work remotely? Definitely. As discussed during the webinar, reports of sexual harassment involving remote workers

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is on the rise. There are a number of factors that may make those working remotely more likely to experience sexual harassment. Perhaps harassers are more comfortable sending inappropriate messages to victims from a distance rather than face to face, or feel emboldened by the lack of supervision present in this work environment. And also, they may not understand that their actions would be considered sexual harassment and a violation of their organization’s policies or even the law.

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And there could be serious consequences for their behaviors. So they need to be, and that’s where that training aspect comes in. And besides updating sexual harassment policies to address remote work environments, it’s also uh important to provide the training and education for everyone working directly or even indirectly with remote employees today. And I’m afraid that they may be a group that’s maybe being ignored or not given as much uh education and training as they need.

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And also uh remote employees need to know who to call for help and to report any sexual harassment they’ve been experiencing, even when they’re working from home or any remote location where they may be. Well, great. And then before we conclude our conversation today, Peter, where can folks go to connect with you? Yeah. My uh email address is

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prgarber2110@ yahoo.com. I’d love to hear from them, and I promise that I will respond. Well, thank you, Peter, for your time today. My pleasure. Thank you, Sarah. And if you have yet to watch the recording, make sure you uh click the link below, become a member of HRDQ, and you can check that out there.

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