How Can I Prevent Workplace Harassment?

Question

Answer

• Avoid protected characteristic related jokes, epithets, comments, and e-mails.
• Respect a person’s wishes when he/she indicates that conduct or attention is not welcome.
• Inform those engaging in offensive behavior that you find it objectionable.
• Report behavior that you believe qualifies as harassment.

So what do we do to prevent harassment? Employees are expected to maintain a productive environment that is free from harassing or destructive activity just as the employer is expected to maintain that. It's really important that we stand up and let people know that any form of harassment will not be tolerated. Avoid protected characteristic related jokes, epithets, comments, and emails. Respect a person's wishes when he or she indicates that conduct or attention is not welcomed. Make sure to inform those engaging in offensive behavior that you find it objectionable. A statement you can use is, "This is making me uncomfortable. Please stop ______ (fill in the blank of what that specific behavior is)." Definitely inform and then report behavior that you believe qualifies as harassment. Just to point out here, harassment outside the workplace may also be illegal if there is a link to the workplace. For example, if a coworker harasses another coworker while they're driving to an offsite training, that is a link to the workplace.

Other ways of preventing harassment include:

Avoid initiating or participating in any behavior that may be misconstrued as possible harassment which includes:

• Verbal - unwelcome comments, yelling, offensive jokes or stories
• Visual - offensive pictures, photos, cartoons, posters, calendars, magazines or objects
• Physical - unwelcome touching, hugging, kissing, stroking, ogling, or suggestive gestures
• Written - unwelcome letters, notes or emails, social media posts of a personal nature

Workplace Guidelines

Consider the following electronic suggestions:

• Think before you type & before you hit send.
• Never “hide” behind email to air frustrations.
• Consider the tone of all emails very carefully; avoid insults & being condescending in nature.
• Be polite and respectful at all times, especially when interfacing electronically.
• Remember that emails at work are not private…they last forever.

Again, think about those electronic suggestions that we talked about from earlier. This can even be applied to conversations. Think before you type and before you hit send. Think before you say it. How is this going to be perceived by the person receiving it? How is this going to be perceived by others who hear it? Never hide behind email to air frustrations. I would say as far as face to face communication, avoid the passive-aggressive. Consider the tone of all emails very carefully. Consider the tone of how you're speaking to others. Avoid insults and being condescending. Think about being polite and respectful at all times. These are the things we're teaching to our children and we need to model that. Definitely think about it as you're interfacing electronically because it's really hard to discern people's tones in electronic means. Remember the emails at work are not private. They last forever.

How do we prevent harassment, discrimination, and creating a hostile work environment? We model that workplace civility at all times. Let's recap here. What does that look like? It means you have to speak up. Really, it's a safety issue when we're talking about discrimination, harassment, and sexual harassment. If I were to violate some type of safety policy at the school, you'd say something. You wouldn't let me walk in and put the children in harm, would you? No, of course not. We're not going to walk in and let others put our coworkers in harm's way either. If you shift it in your mind as a term of safety, then you can think about it in those ways as well. We want to speak up about harassment. Even though it's hard to do, responses can be very direct. "Hey, this is making me uncomfortable. Please stop ______ (fill in the blank of what that specific behavior is)." Then report that behavior to your supervisor and/or human resources immediately. You want to do that before it escalates.

This Ask the Expert is an edited excerpt from the course, Fundamentals of Human Resources: Non-Managerial Early Childhood Staff, by Katie Ryan Fotiadis, MS.