Sexual harassment is happening in your workplace, now – here’s how to tackle it
Opinion
Make no mistake, sexual harassment will be happening in your business. However shocking that may seem, it’s true. As an industry, we must not stop until sexual harassment is eradicated completely.
International Women’s Day is still fresh in our minds and I know a lot of people, myself included, are energised about what it stands for, the light it shines on the achievements of women but also the change we must continue to make together for a more equal and inclusive world.
But how long will that last, before that energy and passion for change begins to be subsumed by the everyday?
It’s not dissimilar when we look at Covid-19 and sexual harassment. According to the research we undertook during the lockdown, incidences of sexual harassment dropped significantly (but note it certainly didn’t disappear, perpetrators still found alternative routes through virtual means). Here’s a verbatim from the research:
“Working from home during lockdown has meant I can work freely, without fear or even the possibility of sexual harassment.”
How shocking that it took a global pandemic for that respondent to feel safe at work.
And, as offices, transport routes, pubs and restaurants begin to fill up again, how long until some of the old, bad behaviours return? Not long, according to our research, with 49% of everyone surveyed saying they think sexual harassment will be more of an issue as businesses return to offices…
“There’s a lot of general pent-up aggression, anxiety and anger which can come out in strange ways”
Nearly half (49%) is a worryingly high amount. And this level of concern is something business leaders must pay attention to and take active steps to address, as we return to a more physical working environment.
It’s encouraging that good progress has been made in galvanising the industry into joining us in trying to eradicate sexual harassment, which is our clear mission at timeTo. We now have 295 companies signed up as endorsers of our Code of Conduct and actively making use of our toolkit but there are still so many businesses who haven’t signed up. Has yours?
Alongside the timeTo Code of Conduct and toolkit, we have developed an industry-leading, interactive training course that allows businesses and their teams to understand the issues and learn how to tackle it.
Below are two insights from our training – I’m including them here in order to help anyone hoping to address sexual harassment in their organisation, begin that journey.
1. Tackling sexual harassment needs to begin with cultural change
We know that the culture in a workplace is experienced differently by different people. Sometimes the culture can be set by the biggest personality or the person who is the most senior. But what is really needed is to create open and inclusive cultures, that every staff member can feed into equally and feel able to speak out, to call out behaviour that is unacceptable or makes them feel uncomfortable.
One of the key elements of the training is to demonstrate how sexual harassment in the workplace is often about escalation. And how mostly it doesn’t start with the perpetrator doing something shocking or public. Often, the first incident will be something small and innocuous such as a lascivious look or a crude side comment.
These perpetrators often have a specific set of tactics such as those mentioned above that allow them to “test the water” with small behaviours, showing them what they can and can’t get away with.
If the small actions don’t elicit or draw any response from those around them who notice it but don’t necessarily call it out, they will see that as a sign that they can continue to escalate their behaviours.
This is why it is vital to not let these small actions go unnoticed or unreported. If these small acts of harassment become the norm, it gets infinitely more difficult to challenge as time goes on, and those acts can become bigger and more dangerous.
2. Don’t make people feel like it’s an inconvenience for reporting sexual harassment
While this might sound obvious, you would be surprised at how often this mistake is made. Based on our experience, two of the main emotional responses people who have suffered sexual harassment are:
- Feeling like they have had their boundaries crossed
- Feeling like they have had their choices taken away from them
It takes a lot of courage to step up and report sexual harassment. So if the person they are reporting it to starts asking the wrong questions, or makes the sufferer feel like they are causing a problem for the company, then the act of reporting can become more traumatising than the harassment itself.
This can then make that person feel like it is somehow their fault, that they themselves are the problem, rather than the perpetrator.
An analogy we use in the training is to think about disclosing harassment in the same way as tackling a very difficult obstacle course. . We ask participants to try and visualise the hurdles that the person reporting sexual harassment has already had to overcome, just to get to this point. Reporting sexual harassment should not become another obstacle for them to face – they deserve to be praised for their bravery.
I hope that’s given you a flavour of some of the steps you can take in your organisation in order to end sexual harassment.
Since launch, we’ve trained 1,622 people in the industry and more have already signed up for courses between now and the end of April.
But we still need many more of our endorsers to book their first training course, which is now an essential part of maintaining endorser status. I can’t recommend it highly enough – there are flexible options for companies, virtually, in-person for small groups and we are launching a brand new version of the training which enables us to train teams at a much larger scale, still offering the same quality of experience. And we will be piloting a programme for individuals to book and attend.
So, if you take anything away from this, remember that almost half of the industry is worried about sexual harassment. And timeTo’s training is an active step you and your organisation can take to better understand how to drive change and end sexual harassment in our industry for good.
Please, take action now – you can find all the details you need at https://timeto.org.uk/training/.
Pippa Glucklich is CEO of independent media agency Electric Glue. She was WACL President (2018/19) and is a timeTo steering committee member