#MeToo delivers bonus for video makers

The #MeToo movement has inspired women to share their stories of discrimination or assault. It’s also spurring demand for a specialised kind of video programming.

In the US, companies which make anti-harassment training videos have enjoyed a surge in demand. One such video-maker, Traliant, has experienced a 150 per cent rise in business since the Harvey Weinstein scandal broke in October.

“We get literally dozens of inbound inquiries a day,” says Andrew Rawson, Traliant’s cofounder. “What #MeToo has done is moved something that was important and made it urgent.”

Another company, Vantage Point, “went from seeing a few clients to having four or five dozen in the pipeline,” says founder Morgan Mercer, who started the business partly because she says she was a victim of sexual violence twice.

Harassment-prevention videos vary, but they often depict a female employee receiving unwanted attention from a male boss, then ask viewers to answer questions to show they understand the correct way to handle the scenario.

Such training courses have been around for years, but they’ve taken on a new dimension lately.

The real-life cases “are so lurid now” that producers are scrambling to keep up, says Allen Noren, chief executive of Kantola Training Solutions, another producer of antiharassment videos. As an example, Noren cites the explicit language used by President Donald Trump in the infamous “Access Hollywood” video.

“We’re competing against that to make it more real and relevant,” says Noren.

While the anti-sexual harassment video has become a touchstone of American workplace culture — and such training is required in some states — critics say the clips are largely ineffective and that companies require their workers to watch them solely to avoid getting sued.

“Much of the training done over the last 30 years has not worked as a prevention tool — it’s been too focused on simply avoiding legal liability,” said a 2016 report by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Some video creators are rewriting their scripts to focus more on “bystander intervention,” or encouraging witnesses of harassment to speak up.