Preventing Harassment in the Workplace

- If you're a male watching this course, ask any woman you know at work or your daughter, your wife, your friend, or your mom and she'll tell you she's experienced sexual harassment to some degree. And if you're a female watching this course, you've likely been sexually harassed. Harassment isn't just about females, though, so it's probably safe to say that anyone watching this course has has some experience with sexual harassment, which we should all find odd, right, because the law prohibits it. Yet, here we are, harassment is still very pervasive.

In the 90s, Anita Hill was subjected to bullying and humiliation when she testified that Clarence Thomas has sexually harassed her. Afterwards, she was forced to resign from her job while Thomas went on to a successful career as a Supreme Court Justice. This was a good warning for anyone being harassed. Don't report it. A warning that still rings true all these years later. So, how do we create a culture where it's comfortable to say no, even to those people who have power because people are going to ask each other out at work.

People are going to make comments that hurt someone. People are going to step out of line. The answer goes much farther than your anti-harassment policy and training. Policies and training ask employees not to engage in discrimination and harassment because it's the law rather than because creating a safe workplace is the right thing to do. Truly preventing harassment requires conversation about the nuances and seemingly minor things because as long as those things go on, the bigger events will never end.

That's what we'll do in this course. Let's talk about real prevention.