If you want to prevent harassment in your workplace, then you can’t wait for someone to complain. Harassment prevention is being pro-active. But not all supervisors, managers or staff are up-to-date on human rights issues in the workplace, even though that can cost them big-time in the courts. Supervisors who participate in or look the other way regarding questionable behaviour aren’t usually stupid; they just have plenty of other issues on their plate, and the complexities of human rights and harassment issues need explaining. Of course, there are always some supervisors who don’t agree with the law and therefore feel justified in flouting it.

The bottom line, however, is that senior management is responsible for ensuring that supervisors don’t put the business at risk by violating human rights legislation.

Harassment issues can form part of probation, discipline or dismissal decisions. They can be an integral part of a labour arbitration, a court case on wrongful dismissal, an application for employment insurance or a WCB claim. Whenever they are raised, decision-makers often rule, or are expected to rule, on human rights procedures and law properly, or appeals will arise. And since human rights legislation in Canada is given a preferred status, anyone deciding these issues must give them a lot of weight. In other words, when an employer’s actions affect the human rights of employees and clients, these can be judged in many different venues, not just through a human rights commission.

I’ve seen many reported cases of harassment and human rights violations occur due to supervisors and managers not doing the right thing. I found this to be the case with many years of working in the fields of human resources, labour/employee relations, and human rights. Why do some supervisors who are aware of a problem, fail to act on it or prevent further trouble? Here are my theories.

• Not enough skills – Ever since my first managerial job, I discovered we don't give supervisors enough support or training, especially when it comes to how to deal with people, conflict and human rights. Despite the plethora of courses on this topic today, many managers don’t seem to have access to them. Instead, a select few seem to go to all of them.
  
  
• Conflict averse – Most people don't want to deal with conflict. Superior species or not, when it comes to settling conflict, I think we're at the bottom of the food chain. You'll find me hanging out somewhere with the worms on this one because I hate conflict and prefer everything being smooth. When someone is saying offensive things, or not accommodating a religious need, most people don't want to rock the boat. Even with training on conflict, it ain't easy to take on difficult issues.
  
  
• Lack of support – When a supervisor tries to do the right thing, he or she can often get blind-sided by a lack of support from the boss. My sister used to call up her "employment-specialist" brother for advice. We'd go over, in detail, a letter or a strategy to deal with a problem employee, but when all was said and done, I'd have to ask why she bothered. She knew her boss would cave in, and nothing would get done. Supervisors at a higher level are just as conflict averse as the rest of us.
  
  
• Office politics – Who's related to who or whose friends are associated with whom are factors that often get in the way of dealing with harassment and human rights issues. Reported harassment cases are stuffed full of examples of an employee not bringing an issue to a supervisor, manager or owner because the problem employee is close to the boss. If, as a result, the boss had no idea what was happening, does that excuse him or her? Nope. Lots of tribunals will conclude that the boss should have known what was going on in the workplace, that he or she was willfully blind.

Harassment prevention isn’t that hard to do. If your business or organization takes on the obvious harassment and human rights issues that come to the attention of a supervisor or manager, you will be far, far ahead of most workplaces. And you'll be surprised how easily many of the problems can be resolved. A simple comment like "Knock if off" when someone makes a sexist joke, or an effort to chat with a colleague about the potential liability in refusing to hire a certain employee, can go a long way to resolving real or potential problems. The law books are full or cases where people didn't take on the simplest of problems when they arose.

If a workplace environment is such that people feel comfortable bringing up and dealing with issues, a simple explanation is often all you'll need. Some situations, however, will call for a greater deal of explanation and understanding. For example, referring to "native time" might seem harmless or even light when one is referring to an Aboriginal co-worker being late, but to your Aboriginal colleague, it can be offensive, because it buys into the stereotype that they are lazy.

To prevent harassment in the first place, frontline supervisors and managers at all levels must ensure that their basic day-to-day dealings don't offend the important, liberal and ever-changing principles of harassment and human rights. When one employee makes inappropriate sexual comments to a colleague: piece of cake. Easy one. When an employee, weeks in advance, asks for a vacation day to celebrate a significant religious day, another easy one. But what if during a typical lunch break at which employees are sharing tales of their dating successes and failures, a gay employee starts talking about his romantic life, and a straight, religious employee objects? How do you deal with these competing rights? What if a female employee flirts with all her male colleagues but one? In fact, what if he tries to join in and she accuses him of sexual harassment? What do you do with those?

The laws spell out answers, but without easy access to legal journals or the company lawyer, most supervisors wouldn’t know. The problem is not a lack of legislation, but a lack of discussion of harassment prevention and human rights issues generally. Or it can be a lack of discussions that go beyond simple textbook cases. Most people are intimidated by the complexities and legalities, and this leads them to refuse to do anything, or to make very arbitrary decisions that don't take rights into consideration.

By all means, consult company lawyers or other human resources specialists when you feel it's important to do so. But go the next step, too: Endeavour to train all levels of supervisors and managers on the basics, then challenge them to think about common-sense ways to deal with less traditional problems that arise. That’s good and simple harassment prevention.