Anti-Harassment Training Doesn't Work
But let's keep it up so we can feel like we're doing something. (More on that below.)
By the way, as I've written before, referencing the work of evolutionarily-driven law professor Kingsley Browne, men give each other shit -- in the workplace and as a way of competing with each other.
Sure, there's a point at which this can become toxic, but if you can't take a joke or a bit of teasing, maybe you need to strengthen up so you can make it in the work world, as opposed to demanding that the work world conform to nursery school niceness standards.
Then again, you can always stay home and just care for the kiddies while your spouse braves those, "Hey, nice pants, dude!" jokes.
By the way, men's competitiveness comes out of evolved sex differences -- how men are the warriors (and competitors) of the species and are comfortable in competition with each other and with hierarchies in a way women are not.
Sex differences research Joyce Benenson explains that women group in "dyads" -- twos -- and are covert competitors, engaging in sniping and casting out any women who seem to stand out as better than the rest. (Women seem to have evolved to show vulnerabilities rather than strengths to other women in order to show they are trustworthy -- which may be why women tend to be apologizers and put themselves down.)
As for the latest news on anti-harassment training in the workplace, Christina Folz writes at SHRM.org:
Harassment is generally defined as any unwelcome conduct based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age (40 and over), disability or genetic information. It becomes unlawful when employees are forced to endure offensive behavior in order to keep their jobs or when the conduct is severe or pervasive enough to create a hostile work environment....The biggest finding of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's (EEOC's) Select Task Force on the Study of Harassment in the Workplace may be what it failed to find--namely, any evidence that the past 30 years of corporate training has had any effect on preventing workplace harassment. "That was a jaw-dropping moment for us," said EEOC Commissioner Victoria A. Lipnic in a Sunday Session at the Society for Human Resource Management 2016 Annual Conference & Exposition.
Lipnic and Chai R. Feldblum, the Select Task Force co-chairs, shared a preview of the research and recommendations that have come out of the group's work over the past 18 months. They expected to formally present their findings at a public commission meeting June 20 in Washington, D.C. The Select Task Force was convened in January 2015 by EEOC Chair Jenny R. Yang and comprises academics, social scientists, plaintiff and defense attorneys, employer and employee advocacy groups, representatives of organized labor, and others.
Despite finding no data that harassment training works, Lipnic and Feldblum advocate that HR professionals build on the foundation of their organization's existing policies. "We're not suggesting throwing out the old," Lipnic said. However, "what we want people to understand is that if you are thinking training alone is a panacea to helping out any type of harassment, [it's not]. It doesn't work," she said.
It's effective to take a holistic approach that starts with getting the buy-in of senior leaders. "For [training] to matter, employees have to feel their leaders are being authentic," Feldblum said. "They have to believe that leaders mean what they say" when they claim to want to stop harassment.
One of the key purposes of the task force's work is to give HR professionals the tools and talking points they need to educate leaders and help shift their organizations toward becoming more-respectful work environments. "We're trying to change behaviors," Feldblum said. "The best way to do that is to create a culture where it's just not cool to sexually harass someone or racially harass someone."
What they're trying to do is create a culture where speech is curtailed, jokes are off-limits (beyond, "Say, why did the chicken cross the road?"), and white men are considered pre-criminals.
Oh, and best of all, harassment training may have the opposite effect that's desired -- possibly provoking a backlash in males. Sam Levin writes at The Guardian:
Studies testing the effects of harassment training are very limited, but some research has suggested counterintuitive and troubling consequences - that after men complete trainings, they may be more inclined to brush aside allegations and discount victims.
I find these trainings demeaning, with the notion that, as a woman, I need some sort of fragile flower treatment.
"The purpose of sexual harassment policy is to make men and women more equal in the workplace," said Justine Tinkler, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Georgia and co-author of the study. "If the policies are sort of activating gender stereotypes rather than challenging them, they may not be promoting that broader goal."
EEOC link via @overlawyered
Where does one draw the line? I've seen people fired, for cause, who damn well should have been. I've seen others get away with conduct that should have gotten them fired.
Unfortunately, I've heard of people being fired for stuff that a rational person would have shrugged off.
MarkD at July 12, 2016 6:49 AM
MarkD, that's not an accident. I've come to realize that it really isn't about sex or race at all. It's about class. In the workplace, there are people of privileged classes and people of non-privileged classes. Harassment is anything a non-privileged person does that a privileged person doesn't like. That's it. The actual nature of the offensive speech or action doesn't matter; what matters is the privileged person's reaction to it. That's why, by any standard of objective moral behavior, the results don't seem to make sense. It all lines up if you look at in terms of who is the complainant and who is the victim.
Note that you can't necessarily tell who is privileged and who is not by looking at them. The wealthy white male executive may well be of the privileged class, if he has the right political connections. The young black woman may be of the non-privileged class, if she has had the temerity to go off of the reservation in terms of her political or personal views, or she may just be from circumstances that the privileged class regards as a disqualifier (e.g., she is British or Caribbean or mixed race). Similarly, the white woman is probably disqualified if she is married and Southern.
The privileged person's loyalty is not to their employer, or their community, or their nation. It isn't really even to their race or ethnic group. The privileged person's loyalty is to their class. And their class regards the law as being a tool to privilege them and defend their class against interlopers. Equality before the law is, in their view, counter to law's purpose.
Cousin Dave at July 12, 2016 7:32 AM
The premise of this post is wrong. Training does exactly what it's supposed to do: keep the problem simmering away so there will forever be jobs for anti-harassment trainers.
dee nile at July 12, 2016 8:30 AM
The training doesn't "work" because most people who cross the line /know/ they're crossing the line, but they believe they have enough capital to pull it off. So no, the training isn't going to stop these people; it just improves the employer's ability to take corrective action and ultimately defend themselves in a lawsuit.
Amy, re your example: Do many sexual harassment lawsuits stem from environments where men are trash-talking each other? I'm sure it's happened, but yours is a relatively benign narrative. I don't know how "Hey, nice pants, dude!" would be parlayed into a hostile environment claim. Sexual harassment training is not, in my experience, addressing stuff like this.
The training has come a long way since the early 2000s. It's no longer embarrassing examples of what not to say, and it no longer presumes that harassment is mostly male-on-female. It doesn't tell men to treat women like fragile flowers.
It covers things like your responsibility to tell someone directly if their words or overtures are bothering you, giving them an opportunity to stop. (I think that is how adults should handle these things.)
For managers it covers how you need to respond to complaints--and this is critical if your company gets sued. It's even more important than stopping the harassment at its source.
Dee, at least in my industry all sexual harassment training is done electronically now, and the content has been static for several years, so it can't be employing armies of people.
Insufficient Poison at July 12, 2016 9:33 AM
MarkD,
You nailed it.
The WolfMan at July 12, 2016 9:48 AM
The lesson of "harassment" training?
If you are a white man, minimize your interactions with "people of color" and women. Treat them as though they have a communicable disease.
Jay R at July 12, 2016 10:09 AM
I work in a pretty manly field. Most of the attendees at committee meetings are men who hunt and fish, build their own airplane, repair their own house, etc. The teasing and joking is pretty much reserved for those who garner the most respect. It is a way of signaling who is the top dog and who is liked without being all mushy. Only drunks say "I love you man"--otherwise, guys poke and joke around. If you are not one of the top dogs, no one ever insults or jokes about you in the group. Special snowflakes cannot understand this dynamic, and it is NOT how groups of women operate.
Craig Loehle at July 12, 2016 11:18 AM
I work in a pretty manly field. Most of the attendees at committee meetings are men who hunt and fish, build their own airplane, repair their own house, etc. The teasing and joking is pretty much reserved for those who garner the most respect. It is a way of signaling who is the top dog and who is liked without being all mushy. Only drunks say "I love you man"--otherwise, guys poke and joke around. If you are not one of the top dogs, no one ever insults or jokes about you in the group. Special snowflakes cannot understand this dynamic, and it is NOT how groups of women operate. In the group in question, women are fully included in this type of joking around, which is not sexual, but could be considered harassment by an imbecile.
Craig Loehle at July 12, 2016 11:25 AM
Instruction exists to get you to do behavior you would not normally do.
Nobody needs to be told to do what they're going to do anyway.
Once that is understood, you then have to go to your relationship with the person giving instruction: Do you like them, or do you hate them?
For example, if you believe in God, and you hear instruction from God, and you have a positive relationship with God, you are going to do those instructions counter to your nature.
If you don't have that positive relationship, and instead, you have a negative one, you're going to at best ignore the instructions, but more likely, you're going to actively not do them.
The clip-haired, mean-faced HR czarina is unlikeable. By these very training, she accuses you of things that you do not do. Therefore, she is a target of hate. Human nature then suggests - you are going to actively go against her instructions.
What's the effect of "listen and believe"? Well, if you're demonized as a likely rapist by the people who promulgate that, you're going to hate them, so you're going to not be disinterested or indifferent anymore - you're going to actively refuse to listen and reflexively question.
It's why feminism is a self-defeating philosophy unless the goal is to spread women's unhappiness; it has done a bang-up job at making women unhappy and alienated from any sort of family.
ElVerdeLoco at July 12, 2016 1:10 PM
Without harassment seminars, how would people know what kinds of harassment to claim?
Conan the Grammarian at July 12, 2016 2:13 PM
Cousin Dave -
I meant to say YOU nailed it.
The Wolfman at July 12, 2016 3:15 PM
I recall my first experience with sexual harassment.
The girl next to me was being flirted with by a guy in the cubicle on the other side of her from me.
He was accused of creating a hostile work environment by some fat cow he declined to date because she could overhear their banter and it made her "feel" uncomfortable
lujlp at July 12, 2016 9:56 PM
Luj, the spurned woman complained and your employer counseled him? Fired him?
Insufficient Poison at July 13, 2016 6:10 AM
Fired
lujlp at July 13, 2016 6:56 AM
IP, my own encounter with the third party complaint went like this: A male co-worker and I were having a private conversation, in a conference room behind a closed door. During the course of the conversation, we made some comments about a female mutual acquaintance, someone who was not an employee of the company nor of any company that we did business with. Unknown to us, a female co-worker was eavesdropping with her ear to the door. She reported us, and the next day we were convicted and disciplined without being permitted to offer a defense. One week suspension without pay, and loss of privileges.
But the big thing was unofficial: we were forever off of all promotion lists after that. It was effectively a career-ender with that company. We both eventually saw the light and took new jobs elsewhere. The female employee got a promotion. Later, she filed charges against a number of the male employees because she wasn't being invited to go out to lunch with them. I left the company before that happened so I don't know how it came out.
Cousin Dave at July 13, 2016 10:44 AM
MarkD and Cousin Dave, EXACTLY.
qdpsteve at July 13, 2016 3:05 PM
Sorry you went through that Luj and CD, but yeah, that is standard operating procedure these days.
Ben at July 14, 2016 3:10 AM
Horrifying. In both cases I'm guessing management had a knee-jerk reaction out of fear of being sued.
My experiences have been egregious and in the other direction, back when I worked for a small company with very little infrastructure.
I don't think training would have led these people to stop of their own accord. Like I said, I think most real harassers already know they're doing something wrong. BUT it would have equipped their managers to address it before we got sued.
Training should also help management understand that they don't have to make extreme decisions for a first "offense," and that you don't have to conclude illegal harassment occurred just because someone was offended.
Once we were bought out by a much larger company that did formal training, the truly shocking behavior was stamped out because managers (by that time I was one) were told it was our job to enforce company policy, per the training, and that included proper escalation procedures. Sometimes this just meant a conversation.
I have yet to see anyone fired for something less than egregious--e.g., deactivating another employee's logins and replying to all her emails with "I'll turn them back on when you pleasure me orally."
Insufficient Poison at July 14, 2016 10:33 AM
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