When it comes to sexual harassment training, only 17 of the 50 U.S. states have a legal mandate in place that requires employers to offer it. But what do companies do? Do they offer sexual harassment training anyway, despite it potentially not being mandatory in their state?
Not all of them. In a new report on sexual harassment at work, by TalentLMS and Purple Campaign, that surveyed 1,200 U.S. employees, 25% of people had to be screened out because their employers had not provided them with any sexual harassment training. Which means that 1 in 4 employees across the US are currently not getting any anti-harassment training from their employers.
Yet sexual harassment is a prevalent problem in the workplace. And without the training that offers employees a framework of how to deal with it, it often goes unreported. In fact, a recent survey by Zety has found that 36% of workers wouldn't report being victims to sexual harassment in the workplace and 38% wouldn’t report witnessing it — half of them because they fear retaliation if they do.
Within the companies that do provide workplace harassment training however, employees feel much safer. Eight in ten respondents of the TalentLMS and Purple Campaign survey say they feel safer at work as a result of the sexual harassment training they received. While 71% feel more valued and more likely to stay within the company thanks to it.
Sexual harassment training should not be optional; it should be a part of every company’s yearly training program.
Here’s how to best utilize it to create a work environment that’s safer for everyone.
Offer ongoing sexual harassment training
From the 1,200 US employees who answered the TalentLMS and Purple Campaign survey, the majority reports receiving sexual harassment training on a recurring basis. Specifically, 54% of the respondents receive it once a year, and 25% once every six months.
But if all employees get is a one- hour session once or twice a year, does it have an impact on them?
To answer this question, substitute the training subject of sexual harassment for any other training subject pertinent to your business. Would you offer customer service or sales training so infrequently? Chances are, if you’re invested in creating a positive and healthy work environment which nurtures teamwork and collaboration, you’d offer more than that.
Human beings are not programmed to learn something once and remember it forever. According to the Ebbinghaus forgetting curve, learners forget almost 90% of what they’ve learned within just one month. Ongoing education is necessary to combat the forgetting curve and help with information retention.
This is even more crucial when what you’re trying to teach your employees is not a skill — but new habits and behaviors. Positive behaviors need to become a part of the daily workflow in order to stick. Sexual harassment training falls into that category as well.
So consider this when you’re building your program: instead of offering sexual harassment training once every six months or more, add short, related lessons to your continuous employee education.
Keep training materials up-to-date, specific, and relevant
Just as the frequency of your sexual harassment training should be optimized for information retention and user engagement, so should your content. Companies are known to rehash the same training materials (usually a lengthy video or PDF) they’ve had for a decade or so. But that’s neither engaging nor effective. Employees go through them without paying attention — and they most likely don’t get an understanding of unacceptable types of conduct.
So what do we mean when we say that sexual harassment training materials should be up-to-date, specific and relevant? Here’s the breakdown:
“Up-to-date” means taking into account the current state of work. Such as the changes that the pandemic brought and the shift to hybrid work. Has sexual harassment gone away now that colleagues mostly interact online? Unfortunately, it hasn’t. And your training program should account for this, expanding the examples of what warrants as an inappropriate behavior to include (if not center) online etiquette.
“Specific” means using real-life examples and scenarios. You can do this by creating a series of animated videos where the characters go through several iterations of behavior that can be deemed problematic — and offer concrete examples of how to respond and report it.
“Relevant” means delivered in a way that will be compelling to different learning habits, generations, backgrounds, and specific needs of your employees. Relevant training is inclusive and it's applicable to everyone in the room. In addition, people learn in different ways and there are four main learner types — visual, auditory, reading and kinesthetic (learning by practicing and being hands-on). So you need to account for people’s different needs and learning styles. Ideally, you want to have a mix of different content types and delivery methods, to appeal to all employees.
Understand and address online harassment
The decline in face-to-face contact doesn’t mean that workplace sexual harassment has disappeared. Instead, the shift to remote and hybrid work models have brought the rise of online harassment since the start of the pandemic.
Twenty nine per cent of the respondents of the TalentLMS and The Purple Campaign said they have experienced unwelcome behavior over video calls, text messages, email, or other online platforms.
Online sexual harassment can be equaly destructive as face-to-face harassment, especialy in the times of uncertanty. Employees have had to navigate an uncertain landscape for more than a year now. Industries have pivoted, positions have changed, company culture has been more difficult to maintain. Incidents of online sexual harassment make employees feel even more alone and unmoored, afraid or unable to reach out to their colleagues or to HR.
By ensuring your training program has a section dedicated to online sexual harassment, you’re creating a blueprint for desired behaviors and are making it clear to new employees what your sexual harassment policiy is.
Focus on Prevention
Your sexual harassment training should be strategic — not reactive. Instead of waiting for an incident to take place before addressing it via your policy or training, put together a program that is focused on preventing them from happening in the first place.
Training can help with preventing harassment from happening in the first place: 90% of the respondents of the TalentLMS and The Purple Company survey are more aware of how to report an incident post training.
Companies should be more invested in combating sexual harassment at work
Sexual harassment training is not a box you tick once and forget about it afterwards. If you want to create a program that’s relevant and engaging for all employees, you need to devote resources to keep your content up-to-date and to deliver it frequently through various formats and channels.
By launching impactful educational initiatives like the ones described above, you’re making a strong statement that your company is devoted to rooting out harassment at work.
