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.

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organisations. Find out more by looking at how we help with Leadership, Culture change and with employee Engagement.

For further information on these alternative approaches to change, please contact us or phone 07973 782 715. A selection of strength card packs are available from our online store.

If you want to know more about implementing approaches and processes that positively affect people’s happiness, engagement, motivation, morale, productivity and work relationships, see Sarah’s positive psychology books.

More blog posts categorised as ‘Diversity/Equality’ 

The Hidden Costs Of Rudeness

We all know rudeness is an unpleasant aspect of life, did you also know it has a cost attached? Two researchers, Porath and Erez (2011), have spent years exploring the effect of rudeness on people at work, this is what they have found:

Between 1998 and 2005 the percentage of employees who reported experiencing rudeness once or more in a week doubled from almost 25% to almost 50%. Indeed in 2005 25% of employees reported experiencing rudeness at least once a day.

Surveys reveal that after experiencing rudeness most people lose time and focus, make efforts to avoid the person, work less and slack off more, and think more about leaving the organization.

Experiments by Porath and Erez have demonstrated direct adverse effects of experiencing or even just observing rudeness on cognitive performance e.g. problem-solving, flexibility of thinking, creativity and helpfulness. Experiencing rudeness also increases a propensity to aggressive and violent thoughts and actions.

In addition 94% of people get even with the rude person, or with their organization (88%)

It seems that ‘processing’ the rude encounter engages brain resources so that less is available for attention and memory, making us temporarily ‘less clever’.

These affects occur even in a culture of habitual rudeness, in other words even if a level of rudeness or incivility is normal in your organization it doesn’t mean people are inured against the effects.

Rudeness has a contagion effect: it makes us less likely to help people not even involved in the incident, and to be ruder and more aggressive than we might have been.

So, a culture of rudeness in an organization has hidden costs of:

Reduced performance

Poorer problem solving

Rigidity of thinking

Less ‘citizenship’ behaviour e.g. general helpfulness

Reduced creativity

People avoiding contact with certain others (who might have information they need)

Heighten tendencies to aggressive words or even actions

‘vendettas’ of getting even being played out in the organization

The effect of this on suppliers and customer relationships, as well as internal relations, is not hard to imagine.

Politeness pays

Interestingly Kim Cameron and others at the University of Michigan have been examining the effect of ‘virtuous behaviour’ on employees and organizations. They have found a similar but polar opposite effect, that is, the more people experience virtuous behaviour from others – helpfulness, forgiveness, generosity, courage, honesty support etc. – or indeed just witness it, the more likely they are to demonstrate such behaviour themselves. Such behaviour also has the effect of raising levels of ‘feeling good’ which is strongly associated with flexible and complex thinking, creativity, good team work and so on.

How much are poor manners costing your organization? And what can you do about it?

1. Create a culture of civility and politeness, led right from the top

2. Treat ‘manner’ of management as a performance issue, as well as outcomes

3. Keep stress levels down for people – stressed people are more likely to ‘lash out’ at others

4. Have a code of conduct that makes it clear that people have a right to be treated in a civil manner, and act on complaints

5. Taking bullying seriously

6. Help those who have a hot head to develop compensatory tactics, particularly the ability to eat humble pie and to seek forgiveness after an uncontrolled outburst

7. Encourage managers to recognise power as a privilege, not a stick with which to beat others

8. Beware those who are deferential to those above them and demonic to those below

9. Emphasis that difficult issues can be tackled without resorting to shouting or belittling, and model how

10. Beware of the hidden costs of the ‘high performer’ who is also known to be consistently aggressive and rude to his or her staff: the cost of the means might actually outweigh the benefits of the ends

Further resources

Christine L Porath and Amir Erez (2011) How rudeness takes it toll. The Psychologist Vol 24, No 7

Cameron K (2008) Positive Leadership: strategies for extraordinary performance. Berrett-Koehler. San Franciso

Lewis S (2011) Positive Psychology at Work. Wiley

Other Resources

More on using Appreciative Inquiry and other positive psychology techniques at work can be found in Sarah’s book Positive Psychology at Work.

See more about Leadership and Performance Management in the  Knowledge Warehouse.

Appreciating Change Can Help

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organizations. Find out more by looking at how we help with Leadership, Culture change and with employee Engagement.

For further information on these alternative approaches to change, please contact us or phone 07973 782 715