Too often people who are using offensive behavior are not even aware that their actions are offensive. High quality, engaging sexual harassment training can make a huge difference.
Sam: I used to be just like that – buff and sweaty.
George: Um, you used to be Gay?
Sam: Oh no, no! Aaah, I am so not Gay.
George: Who else would pose for poster for a Gay Pride Event?
Sam: I guess you’d have to be pretty big homo.
Ralph: Guys, you may be just joking, but I really don’t appreciate you talking down about being gay. Just letting you know.
Sam: Sorry.
George: Right.
When you are unsure if your conduct or the conduct of your team members is offensive, you can check the impact you are having by simply asking others whether or not what is being said or done is unwanted or offensive.
Not everyone will be forthcoming with you about being offended, even if they are. Be aware of when people attempt to alert you to their discomfort through body language, facial expressions, or changes in group participation.
It doesn’t matter what the intentions are – it’s the other person’s perception that counts.
If your words or behavior have been out of line, apologize and promise that it won’t happen again.
But in any case, for many years there was no law against same sex sexual harassment until a case came out of a drilling rig in the Caribbean. And what happened basically there was, this young man was hired to work on the drilling rig and some of the other men – and there were only men on the rig – some of the other men thought he was effeminate and made jokes about him, and called him homosexual, and did some horrible things like poking him with sticks and just treating him awfully.
He was so upset by it that he ultimately had to quit and he sued claiming sexual harassment. And the case went all the way up to the Supreme Court, and there were two interesting things that came out of that court, that case.
The first thing that came out of that case was the recognition, which is seemingly pretty obvious now, which is that you can have same sex sexual harassment. And in that context, they did exactly what one school had thought, which is that you can, using stereotypes, direct sexually inappropriate conduct at somebody because of how you perceive them to be. That was the first interesting thing that came out of that case.
The other interesting thing that comes out of the case, which also answers some questions people often have, is that one of the judges said that sexual harassment law isn’t there to create a civility code.
We’re really talking about conduct that’s directed at someone because of their inclusion in a protected class. So in theory, under that law, if you’re just boorish and rude to everybody, that’s not sexual harassment; but if you are a particular boorish and rude person toward certain genders or certain ethnicities, than that is illegal.
There was a manager who was great in terms of holding a high standard, he moved fast. Unfortunately he wasn’t very good in giving feedback. There was a scenario where he had an employee who wasn’t performing very well, and he wanted to give feedback and did. The employee immediately showed up at my office saying that he was just yelled at by his manager and he was told that he was going to be fired unless he improved his performance.
And when I asked the employee some questions around, you know, how has his performance been, what communication has he received from his manager up to date? The employee said, I haven’t gotten any communication, this is the first time I’m hearing about it. and I think that the reason why I’m getting this feedback is because I’m white, I’m a male, and I’m over forty. So interestingly, his manager was Asian, under forty, also male. But clearly not everything is protected classes, but still he raised the issue that he felt he was being treated differently.
We had to look into the allegations that he raised and talk to some people on the team, talk to the manager. Obviously something that cost quite a bit of time and was a distraction. And so while this manager wanted to move fast, wanted to improve his team performance, what really ended up happening was that we had to slow down, we had to backtrack and have quite a few conversations and it was quite disruptive to the team.
So the result of the investigation was we found that the employee was basically connecting the dots where there was no real harassment or hostile work environment in existence.
Sexual harassment training can help everyone in company learn to be more respectful of those who are different from themselves.
HFC is the best harassment training you can buy because it:
- Has engaging and relatable videos viewable anytime, anywhere; do some in the office, some in the airport or on the plane (LMS permitting);
- Exceeds legal requirements of all fifty US states; and,
- Is provided at a great price.
For more information, email Mike@Accelerate-LD.com.
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