Why Sexual Harassment is a Business Issue

Why Sexual Harassment is a Business Issue

Well, you have to ask - what is it with these men? Russell Brand publicly assaulting women on recorded TV. Bigwig Spanish Football Man grasping footballer firmly round the head to prevent avoidance of his unwanted smackeroo. Surgeons being touched up while scrubbed up. Kevin Spacey, the thinking women’s actor, revealed as a predator of young men? And on and on. Maybe rather than thinking this is aberrant behaviour we should just accept that...

Men + Power + Opportunity = Possibility of Sexual Abuse (That is, abuse, of power, of women, of men, of children, of position, underlings and on and on)

Are women exempt? Of course not, power is power. As Naomi Alderman’s fantastic book The Power makes clear. But, unlike in that science fiction, here on earth, in the main, men still hold the power.

So, very unpleasant for the abused, assaulted, shamed, harassed etc. person. But does it do any further damage?

The research answer is clear. Yes, it does.

What does it mean for business?

First some facts and figures. 60% of women report workplace sexual harassment. But an estimated 90% of incidents go unreported. Meanwhile approximately 94% of organizations have a policy about this in place. Hmm the maths is beyond me but, put these figures together, and I would say the policies just aren’t working.

There are psychological explanations for this, but common sense reveals them just as well. Speak up and you open yourself to other dangers. Danger of victim-shaming. Danger of job loss. Danger of escalation of the problem. Equally unhappy witnesses can find it too risky, too hard to find their voice for similar reasons. This isn’t individual aberrant men, or individual cowardly women, this is a workplace culture matter.

As for all change, first the business case needs to be made.

Business case for tackling workplace sexual harassment

Here are the costs of creating, allowing, facilitating or ignoring an environment where targeted and opportunistic sexual harassment is the norm.

Effects on the individual

While recognising that these vary person to person, these are common consequences...

·      Decreased psychological wellbeing.

·      Increase in depression and anxiety.

·      Social identity threat, the devaluation of a person’s social identity in a specific context (let’s call this not being taken seriously at work or being treated like a child).

·      Feeling silenced, unable to speak up about the abuse. This is associated with higher depersonalisation and emotional exhaustion. Burnout in other words.

For the business this means health costs, possibly employment costs if people quit, and decreases in performance. And I’d hazard that all those other things that help organizations excel, commitment, citizenship behaviour, being unpaid ambassadors of the brand, suffer.

Effect on the team

·      Decreased workgroup productivity and performance

·      Increased task conflict

·      Increased interpersonal conflict

·      Decreased team cohesion

For the business this all adds up to a loss of team functioning, productivity and performance

Effect on the organization can be Increased workplace withdrawal

·      Absenteeism

·      Failure to complete work

·      Avoiding other people at work

·      Not attending meetings

·      Not meeting deadlines that others rely on

·      Skipping work altogether

·      Failing work relationships

·      Avoiding certain areas at work

·      Avoiding certain people

·      Not joining certain project teams

·      Quitting

The business costs are clear to see

All of these survival-in-a-hostile environment behaviours have an effect on organisational social capital, goodwill reserves, productivity, profitability and general effective functioning.

In this way, sexual harassment at work effects everyone at work. Your bonus is at risk because of your colleague’s harassing behaviour. Your ability to shine at work is adversely affected if you can’t get stuff done, or you can’t attract a star to your special project. Your future reputation may be at risk when your association with an abuser later comes to light.

Protect your assets, learn how to intervene effectively. This is known as bystander intervention.

Effective Bystander Behaviour

I called out some unwanted touching when I was running a three-day workshop one time. The guy in question was ‘handsy’ with the young women on the course. Arms round shoulders, many hugs etc. It didn’t look right. I asked the young women about it. No, they didn’t like it, but he was a manager, and they weren’t, what could they do but grin and bear it? My male co-facilitator backed me, as did our employer, to do something.

We spoke to the man, just asking him to cease and desist. He vehemently denied there was a problem, he was just a touchy-feely friendly guy, everyone knew that! He chose to leave the training rather than change his behaviour. We spoke to the women in Human Resources at the company. Yes, they said, he’s well-known for this. They were glad we had called it.

What happened to the man after that I don’t know.

For myself, I do know it wasn’t a comfortable thing to do. I do know I couldn’t have not noticed it, felt uncomfortable about, felt compelled to try to stop it, because of my strong sense of right and wrong in this area. And I also know it went a whole lot better, and I felt a whole lot safer taking him on (he was a big chap) with another big man sitting beside me. And I was lucky to be working for a company that backed me.

A supportive culture

We could call this a supportive culture I was working in. One that was willing to take the risk of upsetting a client, a colleague who was willing to take the risk of disrupting the workshop, evoking emotional discomfort. The workshop went fine after that, by the way, and we didn’t lose the client. And I felt good about what I’d done.

This is known as bystander behaviour. With all those conditions in place I felt able, as a bystander (from memory he didn’t try it with me, but then, I was in a relative position of power), to call him out.

Eli Kolokowsky and Sharon Hong, from whose article the factual information in this one is gleaned, recommend training in effective bystander intervention as the way forward in this area. But along with the training in ‘how’ to intervene, people need everything in place that I had

·      A set of values that doesn’t see causal harassment as acceptable behaviour

·      Supportive colleagues

·      Supportive employer

To give them the courage to intervene.

Causal sexism, sexual harassment and abuse is everywhere. On the streets, on the buses, and for many in their homes. All we want is for women to be able to feel safe and to be able to give their best to work, and to themselves.

Maybe the workplace could become a safe space for women?

With many thanks to

Kolokowsky, Eli, and Sharon Hong. "Bystander Intervention: A Positive Approach to Sexual Harassment Prevention." Positive Organizational Psychology Interventions: Design and Evaluation (2021): 141-157.

Other Resources

Sarah Lewis is the owner and principal psychologist of Appreciating Change. She is author of ‘Co-Creating Planning Teams For Dialogic OD’, published by BMI Publishing, ‘Positive Psychology in Business’, published by Pavillion, ‘Positive Psychology at Work’ and ‘Positive Psychology and Change’ both published by Wiley. She is also the lead author of 'Appreciative Inquiry for Change Management', published by Kogan Page.

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