Businesses flounder on harassment

Training ignores victims’ rights to focus on risk to firms’ reputations.

I’m no practiced DIYer, but I seemed to spend a lot of time at Bunnings over the summer. Loitering at the back of the queue one day, I saw a notlong-married couple I know at the checkout, bickering gently over the beginnings of their new herb garden as they passed the seedlings over to be scanned.

It was a sweet picture of domestic life. I knew their couple backstory because their romance blossomed at our mutual workplace, in one of this country’s biggest newsrooms. This is unremarkable in the extreme. A much-quoted recent survey in the US has 41 per cent of people dating a coworker at some point in their work life, and one third of these relationships end in marriage. However, our story today revealing details of a harrowing case of sexual harassment at the Human Rights Commission (HRC), bleakly lays bare the other side of the equation.

When CFO Kyle Stutter ‘‘misread’’ the ‘‘signs’’ from an unpaid intern and

stepped way over the line without consent, he clearly showed how the abuse of a power imbalance (like theirs) can wreak havoc.

Workplace romances are boringly common. Where else are you supposed to meet someone? The old equation of bar/social-or-sports club = pool of potential partners can still work, yet most single-and-looking people have taken their search online.

Tinder and Bumble are the most popular dating apps in New Zealand, but users of both are starting to feel a common frustration; New Zealand simply isn’t a big enough gene pool for this kind of carry-on.

So, back to work we go. Asking a co-worker out has always been a potentially awkward move; if it’s someone you work with every day and they turn you down, that’s going to hang in the air for a while.

It can also be a dangerous move. You would hope most adults know the difference between the question ‘‘would you be interested in going out with me sometime?’’ asked from an appropriate physical distance (no less than half a metre, don’t be a creep!) and an uninvited lunge. But, huh, turns out that’s not true.

Companies are struggling to formulate policy that matches the times. This week both Google and Facebook were reported to have brought in new sets of rules. Both businesses now give their folks one chance to ask a co-worker out, and one chance only. Once turned down, there’s no going back for another try.

The really interesting bit is that even an ambiguous answer counts as a ‘‘no’’. So if you’re told ‘‘I’m busy’’ or ‘‘I can’t that night’’, then strike one, you’re out.

There’s been a lot of discussion about whether this is a good, or a terrible idea. Some say it infantilises women, presenting us as ‘‘essentially weak creatures who can’t stand up for themselves.’’ Others writers have drawn exactly the opposite conclusion, saying it empowers both because it gives space for the asked, to become the asker at a later date if they change their mind.

I think it sounds like a sensible policy, one that actually might help keep the office from becoming a hostile workplace. But I doubt very much that it’s been put in place for the right reasons.

In its report on the new policy this week the Wall Street Journal said ‘‘US companies are trying to keep romantic relationships from spiralling into a risk factor.’’ And right there, you have the problem with modern sexual harassment policy.

Back in the 1980s and 90s, when sexual harassment training was first introduced, it focussed on the victims, explaining the impact the behaviour was having on women in the wider context of the challenges women face in the workplace. Over time the focus has shifted away from the survivor and towards what employees need to know to avoid breaking the law.

Not how to be a good person for the safety of your fellow employees, but how to keep yourself out of legal trouble and ‘‘avoid undermining the company’s reputation’’.

In a wide-ranging study released just last December law professor Elizabeth Tippett argued video and training sessions have morphed to cover liability rather than preventing harassment in the first place. The result? Boring, overcomplicated material full of legalese that does not help, and can even make the problem worse.

Like the HRC staff member in this case, this bias can leave survivors without a satisfactory result, as they often exit the company under a gag order, while their harasser stays and gets promoted.

That’s not good enough. The HRC does magnificent work promoting equal opportunity for all New Zealanders. If an organisation like that can stuff it up, any organisation can.

If major organisations are serious about creating workplaces where everyone can come to work without fear, and in the knowledge that speaking up will result in a fair hearing and outcome, then they need to look again at their sexual harassment policies and training, and start to walk the talk.

Over time the focus has shifted away from the survivor.