Canadian Safety Reporter

3 Canadian HR Reporter, a Thomson Reuters business 2018 News | January 2018 | CSR Sexual harassment in the workplace Newsmaking incidents have organizations considering the implications of the problem and how best to deal with and prevent it BY MELISSA CAMPEAU THE past few months have seen an unprecedented wave of sexu- al harassment claims against lit- erally dozens of high profile men including Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey and Matt Lauer. Employers are reacting to the claims with increasing speed. The Weinstein Company fired Weinstein after months — by some accounts, years — of speculation. Netflix suspended production on House of Cards one day after the first claim of sexual harassment surfaced against Spacey, and NBC ap- pears to have fired Lauer almost immediately, before the first complaint became public. As the depth and extent of the problem comes to light, there's a growing awareness among em- ployers of the need to address it. "All the focus in the media is encouraging many of our clients to take a good long look at their policies and practices around sexual harassment and revisit any strategies they have for pre- vention," says Cissy Pau, prin- cipal consultant with Clear HR Consulting in Vancouver. Workplace impact The impact of sexual harass- ment in the workplace can be devastating to an individual, and costly to an organization. According to research by Equal Rights Advocates in the United States, 90 to 95 per cent of sexu- ally harassed women experience anxiety, depression, headaches, sleep disorders, weight gain or loss, nausea and lowered self es- teem, among other symptoms. The organization estimates that results in 973,000 hours of un- paid leave each year in the U.S. When harassment is witnessed or even just whispered about within an organization, it takes a toll on the workforce as a whole. Barbara Bowes, president of Leg- acy Bowes Group in Winnipeg, says, "Sexual harassment can lead to staff turnover, low productivity and low morale, as well as a hos- tile work environment." And then there's the reputa- tional hit. "Social media being what it is, somebody will hear about it and put it on Facebook or glassdoor.com and the reper- cussions can be huge," says Pau. "Customers see your company differently and candidates will think twice about whether they want to work there." Underlying causes Tackling the problem means understanding its causes. A 2009 study by researchers at the University of Minnesota found women supervisors were 137 per cent more likely to be sexually harassed than women who did not hold manage- rial roles. Primary investigator Heather McLaughlin com- mented, "This study provides the strongest evidence to date supporting the theory that sexual harassment is less about sexual desire than about control and domination." She added, "Male co-workers, clients and supervisors seem to be using harassment as an equalizer against women in power." Change, in some cases, hap- pens slowly. Sexual harassment wasn't recognized as a form of discrimination when parlia- ment passed the Canadian Hu- man Rights Act in 1977. It was added to the act in 1983 and the Supreme Court confirmed its definition in 1989. If mindsets can be slow to change, actions can lag further behind. "What was once tolerated isn't okay anymore," says Pau. "You might assume people know that, but sometimes they don't." Still a mainly silent problem An organization not flooded by sexual harassment com- plaints might assume it doesn't have a problem, but that's not necessarily the case. A recent survey by Cosmopolitan maga- zine found one in three women surveyed between the ages of 18 and 34 reported they had been sexually harassed at work. However, only 29 per cent of the women who had experienced harassment reported it. Ignoring the problem doesn't make it go away, however. "If you have a workplace that doesn't take steps to address the problem, then the issues fester and they don't go away," says Heather MacKen- zie, principal with The Integrity Group: Respectful Workplace Solutions, in Vancouver. "That's when you really start to have neg- ative impacts," she adds. Address and prevent the problem Experts suggest several mea- sures to encourage employees to come forward, to address the problem and to deter sexual ha- rassment in the first place. First, an organization needs a clear policy that outlines what is and isn't appropriate work- place behaviour, then they need to update that policy regularly, says Kerry Wekelo, managing director of human resources and No complaints > pg. 8 Credit: Shutterstock/thodonal88

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