Experts: Policies alone not answer

Enforcement needed to handle sex misconduct

NEW YORK — Sexual misconduct happens at work not because companies don’t publish anti-harassment policies, experts say, but because managers don’t enforce them — and because people fail to apply them to themselves.

While the floodgates on reporting abuse and sexual harassment have opened with high-profile cases in Big Tech, Hollywood and Washington, it’s not yet clear whether the effects of the #metoo movement have trickled down to day-to-day offices, factories and other places regular people work.

“I do think it will be a lasting movement,” said Roberta Kaplan, an attorney who won the Supreme Court case that legalized gay marriage in the U.S. But while Kaplan—

who is defending a woman who is being sued by Hollywood produced Brett Ratner after accusing him of rape — thinks “most companies have policies that are pretty good,” there’s still a problem: Many people don’t truly comprehend them.

“They understand the English language, and what the words mean in the abstract sense, but I don’t think most people understood it in everyday life,” she said.

In an unusual move for a large company, Facebook on Friday publicly released its policies against workplace harassment and bullying, including its enforcement procedures and how it investigates complaints. The company says it wants to help other companies create better policies, and ideally prompt them to publish their own procedures too.

“We don’t think we are perfect, we don’t think we have all the answers,” said Lori Goler, the company’s vice president of people. But she said companies should “come together to make sure that we all learn from each other.”

Facebook itself has been sued for sex discrimination and harassment, in 2015 by a former employee who said she was wrongfully terminated in 2013 after she complained about being harassed. The woman, Chia Hong, later dropped the suit, and Facebook has maintained no wrongdoing.