HR is full of sensitive topics, and anti-harassment is a big one. It’s absolutely necessary, but how do you introduce it without people starting to whisper about who did what to bring this on? You want to train your team without feeling like you’re turning into a big corporation. So how do you do it?
When should you start training employees?
Once you have a team it’s never too early to introduce standards of conduct including anti-harassment and other related topics. Small teams are usually made up of friends and there’s a strong sense of camaraderie. That makes it easy to forget that there are still boundaries at work. If your team includes people who are new to the workforce and working in a professional environment for the first time, training is even more important.
What are the benefits?
There are legal benefits of having the right policies in place, and educating people about acceptable behavior. Employers reduce their own legal risk if they have taken steps and can demonstrate that they told employees what kind of conduct is inappropriate and won’t be tolerated. Beyond reducing legal risk, you will reduce your actual risk of employees saying or doing the wrong thing.
All too often, people over-step what seem like common sense boundaries in the form of banter and jokes. The people around them take offense. Yes, this really happens. They don’t realize that intent matters far less than impact. Unprofessional behavior can lead to disruption, hard feelings, a fractured team, and having to let go of otherwise valued and high performing employees. Your goal is a workplace where everyone feels safe and included, so that they can be happy and do their best work.
Are there cultural drawbacks?
Leaders of small companies with quirky and informal cultures may believe this kind of training spoils the fun. But nothing spoils fun like having employees mistreat each other. My advice is to choose the right firm that can approach anti-harassment training in a way that your employees can relate to. Training doesn’t have to feel heavy handed – it can be done with sensitivity, practicality, even humor, and still get the point across.
What’s our approach?
We’ve created a workshop called Professionalism at Work that educates employees about anti-harassment and related topics.
- We recommend proactive training – the tone is much different when training follows a negative event or employee termination.
- We use a common sense approach. Employees and managers aren’t expected to be legal experts, so simple guidelines are best. Would you want that email published? Is this something you would say or do in front of your parent, sibling or spouse?
- In the majority of cases, respect and common sense work well.
- We remind people who to talk to, whether it’s their manager or HR, if they’re stuck and need support.
For help with anti-harassment training, unconscious bias, leadership development and more please visit us http://uniquleyhr.com.
