Canadian HR Reporter

Canadian HR RepoRteR december 1, 2014 8 News IT PAYS TO KNOW Professional Development Mark your calendar for payroll education! With more than 190 federal and provincial regulations and changes each year, staying payroll compliant is one of the biggest challenges employers face. Improve compliance and reduce the risk of audits and penalties with help from Professional Development seminars from Canadian Payroll Association (CPA). CPA offers seminars for all levels from beginner to advanced. On a variety of topics covering Learning Payroll, Taxable Benefits, Employment Standards, Pensions and more. Check our calendar for a seminar in your area. Learn more at payroll.ca. Call 416-487-3380 ext 118 or 1-800-387-4693 ext 118. Become a CPA member and get preferred rates on seminars. Stay Current Stay Compliant www.payroll.ca CPA_PD Ad 9.625x7_MarkCalendar-Nov'14.indd 1 14-11-11 1:19 PM sexual harassment to have this discussion," said Scott. Wynne said she is open to doing whatever is necessary to address the issue, but would not yet com- mit to a specific process. If one thing is clear, it's that sim- ply having a policy in place is not enough. "What we're talking about is whether the culture of enforce- ment and the culture of ongoing review and training is actually tak- ing place," said Wynne. Most employers have anti-ha- rassment policies on the books, which cover sexual harassment. And in Ontario, Bill 168 makes it abundantly clear workplace ha- rassment is not to be tolerated, said the province's labour minis- ter, Kevin Flynn, during question period on Nov. 5. "What men and women in this province need to know is if they are suffering violence or harass- ment in the workplace, they have the right to refuse that work," he said. But having the rules written out in black and white isn't enough if employers don't act on them, said David Whitten, partner at Whit- ten & Lublin in Toronto. With Bill 168, every employer in Ontario went and put violence and harass- ment policies in place, he said. "But I think a lot of them… didn't do much more with it, so the policies really don't have a lot of teeth. ey're either unknown or they were glossed over and people were not properly trained on them. And, absent training, they're really not that effective. So I think that is a big gap that exists. "ese policies, as we say in employment law, are really only as good as they're promulgated." Power dynamics Policies can be particularly inef- fective when there are significant power imbalances, as in the Gho- meshi case, said Holly Johnson, associate professor and criminol- ogist at the University of Ottawa. "Women are often afraid to come forward because, in the workplace, their jobs are precari- ous or the person who's harass- ing them has power over them, has power over their career, has power over their promotions, their reputation. It's very often someone with a great deal more power," she said. "So women are reporting to management and management are the problem — or somebody in management is the problem. "We've got all of these poli- cies but they get swept under the carpet." In most cases, the harasser is someone in a position of power — which can have a real impact on enforcement, said Whitten. "It's (a definite) factor when you're dealing with a superior. And oftentimes — I would say, in my experience, 60, 70 per cent of the time — it is a superior or a manager that is harassing a subor- dinate. It's not as common for it to be peer-on-peer," It's rare for a complaint to be made to a group or individual who is totally independent of the per- petrator, said Johnson. So it's easy to ignore the problem or simply shuffle the complainant off to a different department. "She's just got to put up with it or leave… so the message to the guy is that it's OK. And it contin- ues," she said. Sexual assault and harassment is much more common than most of us realize and we're really be- hind the times on collecting data about it, said Johnson. "We think we've made a lot of progress but, in this one particular area, we haven't," she said. It's a critical issue that affects us all, said Wynne. "It affects every single one of us in the sense that we all have to be vigilant and not pretend that somehow this issue has been re- solved because it's 2014 and we've moved on. It's very real." Creating accountability So how do you create a culture of enforcement, where perpetrators are actually held to account? at's the critical question, according to Elizabeth Sheehy, vice-dean of re- search and a law professor at the University of Ottawa. "Obviously, it takes great and strong leadership but it also re- quires moral courage on the part of employers, to stand up to those bullies," she said. "It's really hard also in certain environments when you know that the person who you're accusing will have the support of a union or of many oth- er senior men in an organization. So I think employers have to fig- ure out what it is they can possibly do to equalize the playing field so that women can report and have access to a fair process." We need to make sure women have advocates and those in pow- er positions stop protecting per- petrators, she said. e accountability piece has to come first if we want women to be unafraid to report incidents, said Johnson. "Accountability has got to come first. If there isn't a place to report that's going to have some benefit or some effect, there's no point in reporting," she said. "Yeah, we need policies… (but) we also need commitment. And, very often, the senior managers are putting the priority on some- thing else, or putting the priority on economics. Or they're bud- dies with the guy or they're in the same kind of strata as the guy. So you need commitment from management." at commitment to account- ability is the key, said Sheehy. "Perpetrators do perpetrate in part because they know they can get away with it. In fact, they count on it. People like Ghomeshi count on our disbelief of women, or failure to support them," she said. "This isn't just requiring in- dividual perpetrators to be held accountable, but it's also a much broader deterrence message that women and their lives matter, and that we will not play a role in enabling or hiding or sheltering these perpetrators." Harassment policies often 'swept under carpet' eNForcemeNt < pg. 1 policies can be particularly ineffective when there are significant power imbalances, as in the Ghomeshi case.

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