Firms, legislators address sex harassment
Training: Companies looking for guidance to avert misconduct
Some years, Theodora Lee, whose law firm offers anti-harassment and bullying training, receives just one request in November, when companies are winding down and preparing for the holidays. This year, she’s received 10, after scandals engulfed prominent men from film mogul Harvey Weinstein to Sen. Al Franken and Pixar’s John Lasseter.
“It takes a high-profile individual and prompt action such as termination to
really get people’s attention,” Lee said.
As the allegations continue to tumble out against male media figures, business leaders and politicians, more companies are seeking training and guidance to prevent misconduct in their workplaces. Firms that offer online or in-person harassment training have seen an uptick in interest.
In California and Connecticut, employers who have 50 employees or more are required by state law to offer harassment training to supervisors. In Maine, companies with as few as 15 employees must provide a program. While other states do not require training, companies can obtain more legal protections under federal law if they provide it, attorneys say.
Some queries are coming from smaller companies that are not legally required to offer training, and larger firms that want to extend the training to their whole staff — not just supervisors. Other businesses are seeking more ways in which they can educate their employees, by providing services like unconscious-bias training.
“I believe that these stories (of sexual misconduct) should be a wake-up call to every employer in every industry across the country,” said Chai Feldblum, a commissioner with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a federal agency that investigates harassment charges.
Harassment training can vary among companies. Some opt for in-person training, while others use an online program. Both can include stories and examples of what is considered harassment.
Lee said that after Anita Hill accused Clarence Thomas during hearings to confirm him as a Supreme Court justice of sexual harassment in 1991, more employers requested harassment training.
Paul Simpson, who practices employment law at Simpson, Garrity, Innes & Jacuzzi, P.C. in South San Francisco, said harassment training can be helpful.
“It’s like anybody that attends training or class,” Simpson said. “Some folks pay attention, others don’t. Not paying attention has its consequences.”
Last year, the EEOC released a report that said companies should do more than just train supervisors on harassment. The report encouraged firms to take a more holistic approach, which would include looking at their business culture and how seriously their leaders take harassment complaints.
“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,” the report said.
In fiscal year 2015, the EEOC said it received about 28,000 charges from employees who said they had been harassed at work, with 45 percent based on sex.
Training won’t have meaningful impact “unless the people at the top mean it,” said Allen Noren, CEO of Kantola Training Solutions in Mill Valley, which has a growing business selling online harassment training to businesses.
“If they are doing it to check a box and take care of the liability aspect of it, it’s not going to make a difference,” he said.
Companies’ reasons for offering the training can vary.
“The most cynical answer is they don’t want to get sued, but there are a lot of very good people in organizations that don’t want to be associated with workplaces that have hostile environments to employees,” said Colleen Keough, a clinical professor of communication at the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.
Online training can cost less than $50 per person, while in-person training can cost a total of $1,500 to $5,000, analysts said — but those costs are still much less than hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars it could cost to investigate improper behavior at a company and deal with lawsuits. “Certainly everything in the news is raising awareness of the issue and really letting people know that they need to do something about it,” Noren said.
Kantola offers online harassment training that ranges from $9 to $29 a person, with discounts offered if lots of people take the course, Noren said.
Alison Banks-Moore, chief diversity officer for Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey, said her health insurance company planned a year ago to bring interactive online training on harassment, as well as a course that covers civility and how to react to harassment as a bystander, to roughly 5,000 employees. The company had been offering aspects of these trainings since 2010, but it is now updating and enhancing them, she said.
The training is mandatory, and if employees skip taking the courses, it will affect their performance evaluations, said Banks-Moore, who hopes the discussions about harassment in the media will encourage more companies to offer training.
“If it were offered a long time ago and reinforced, perhaps these things would not be happening,” she said.