ILately, in my travels, I’m hearing more of this: “I know someone who is being harassed but they aren’t willing to come forward for fear of repercussions.”

I’m torn these days because the last thing I want to do is re-victimize the victim. Also, I understand there are plenty of reasons why people won’t speak up. They don’t want to rock the boat; they want to fit in; they don’t like conflict; or they don’t want to jeopardize promotional opportunities. And the most common reason I hear is that they can’t afford to lose their job. These are very valid reasons and until you’re in someone’s shoes, it’s all too easy to judge.

Across Canada the human rights tribunal decisions are full of small businesses where the boss is a tyrant, harasser, or bully (remember, these don’t represent the majority of good employers). Any effort to resolve these problems is met with harsh repercussions.

When it’s the owner of the business who is doing the harassing, or who’s favourite employee is doing the harassing, then speaking up about rights should be done in conjunction with dusting off a resume. This type of employer doesn’t care about his or her employees and really doesn’t care about improving the bottom line, because he or she is willing to lose good people.

But my work is never in the workplaces of these few rotten owners or bosses. My work is with mid-sized and large organizations in the private, public, and non-profit sectors. When I hear the stories of people not wanting to come forward because of repercussions, every one of these workplaces has a good, clear policy that gives employees lots of options if they are dealing with harassment.

Some workplaces have unions where these policies are usually spelled out very clearly in the collective agreement. All of these workplaces are within either a federal, provincial or territorial jurisdiction that spells out the legal protections. In other words, on paper and often in the hearts and minds of senior management, anyone should be able to bring up a concern and have it satisfactorily resolved.

So why the fear?

There are many reasons and those in management are well advised to understand them. Here are a few:

Playing against the odds
When people think seriously about speaking up regarding harassment, most people wonder, “what are the odds that I’ll end up paying a bigger price than I’m paying now by putting up with the harassment?” They may be 20 to 1 in favour of getting a better result. They may be 50 to 1. However, as long as people see the 1, they’re not paying attention to the 20 or 50.

I’ve seen what gets rewarded around here
You may have all kinds of policies, but at senior management levels there are people who get their jobs, keep their jobs, or get promoted to their jobs while bullying or harassing employees. After all, they’re performers, so their lack of “social skills” will be overlooked as long as they get the job done. And in this day and age of doing more with less, many workplaces will turn a blind eye to bad behaviour. Employees aren’t stupid – they can figure out very quickly what is really important and they’re not going to speak up when they know, or suspect, a harasser will get support.

No one else knows
This is often a problem with sexual harassment. A senior person in the organization (almost always a man) is very touchy, or makes suggestive comments, when no one is around. When it comes down to “his word against mine”, the whole power structure goes through a person’s mind and she’s thinking it can’t be proven, so I don’t have a chance. The problem with this line of thinking is that there may be other women being harassed, but if no one comes forward, each person doesn’t realize they may have an ally, who together, could put a stop to this.

With these and other fears, what can a manager do? Here are some suggestions:

Do the dirty work
It’s not easy, but since supervisors and managers are paid to manage the workforce, it’s your duty to take on the harassment and inappropriate comments. When you do this, you might not have to deal with anyone coming forward, because everyone will know the rules and will be angels. Ok, that might be going a bit far, but there won’t be as many problems. And then for those times where you don’t see what’s going on, an employee won’t be thinking about playing any odds, because they’ll know it’s not a gamble to come and talk to you.

Be open to criticism
You may be the boss that is causing the problems. We all have different personality types and sometimes you might be saying, doing or even touching, with the best of intentions, but someone else might not like it. If you’re anything like me – someone who gets into trouble occasionally due to his/her quick “wit” – then you might have some apologizing to do. You might not intend any harm, but the definition of harassment doesn’t need intent, so be open to criticism when an employee tells you she/he didn’t appreciate your comments.

Look for signs
You don’t have to become a super sleuth, but use your common sense and if you notice strange behaviour in your employees, ask questions. One case I often talk about involved an owner testifying in his defence against a harassment complaint. Part of his defence was that one of his supervisors was doing the harassing, but he asked the employee “is everything ok?” When she said nothing was wrong, he didn’t go any deeper. He lost the case. His query was along the lines of “how are ya doin’?” No one really expects a response, so none was given. If you think something is wrong, be sympathetic and ask a few more questions.

Friends can still be bosses
There are too many cases where an owner or manager is friends with the harasser. They may be completely open to correcting the behaviour of their friend, but a victim of harassment wouldn’t dares say anything because they suspect the allegiance will go to the friend and not the victim. To cure this problem, you have to make it clear that you can be friends or friendly with anyone you want, but that won’t interfere in your ability to manage the workplace. And more important, if that time comes when you have to correct harassing behaviour of a workplace friend, then you must take the same action as you would for anyone. These actions will speak much louder than words and you won’t have any problem getting people to come forward when new problems arise.

If you really want a productive, enjoyable workplace where people actually want to come to work and you want your policies to be more than the paper they’re written on, then take action. Be sure your employees know they don’t have to fear talking about harassment. When the fear’s gone people will be honest and that’s the sign of a great workplace.

Stephen

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Stephen Hammond, B.A, LL.B, CSP, is a speaker, trainer and author working in the field of workplace human rights. Articles, tips and his books Managing Human Rights At Work: 101 Practical Tips to Prevent Human Rights Disasters and Steps in the Rights Direction: 365 human rights celebrations and tragedies that inspired Canada and the world are available on his website www.stephenhammond.ca. Contact Stephen at 866-685-8338 or stephen@stephenhammond.ca