Why Your Company Needs Harassment Training & Who Should Conduct It

Sexual harassment in the workplace remains a pervasive problem in practically every industry, meaning that we should all perhaps start taking some even more aggressive steps towards eradicating the issue. While we cannot expect the problem to just disappear overnight, it is important for company owners to realize the severity of the issue and do their best to resolve it as effectively as possible. The ultimate responsibility of resolving the issue rests upon employers, which means that they need to get additional info on how to combat this particular problem.

One of the things you can do if you are an employer is conduct a sexual harassment training, or more of those, with the aim of getting your employees know precisely what is acceptable in the workplace and what could actually be punishable. Most of your staff members will probably know where to draw the line, but the truth is that it can be difficult to determine where the line actually is, as there’s a lot of grey area here that one party or another can refer to either when trying to make a harassment claim or when trying to defend themselves. That’s why it is extremely important to clearly explain everything to your staff and let them know exactly where the line is.

This, however, might be easier to say than to do. It’s not a straightforward topic and you definitely cannot predict every single scenario and every type of behavior that can constitute sexual harassment. Yet, what you can do is try to be as clear as possible about all of it and thus make your employees understand what they shouldn’t do if they don’t want to get in trouble. Plus, it is also important to help some of your employees speak up if they feel that they are being harassed, as most victims tend to be silent about it, which is a huge mistake.

Reasons Your Company Needs The Trainings

So, as I have mentioned above, one of the things you can do is conduct sexual harassment trainings. If you are not sure, however, that this is the perfect solution for you and that your company actually needs the trainings, I would advise you to keep on reading, because you’ll learn about some of the reasons why these trainings are actually a necessity that should not be ignored. Let us check out those reasons right now and thus help you understand everything more clearly.

1. Protect Your Business Against Lawsuits

This is perhaps not the first thing that pops in mind when someone mentions sexual harassment training in the workplace, but as the employer, you should be aware of the implications that any charges can bring about. If you are turning a blind eye to harassment claims and if you haven’t done anything to prevent it, such as conduct a training and get your employees familiar with the boundaries, then you are opening yourself up for a lawsuit. I suppose there is no need for me to explain just how harmful those lawsuits can be for your entire business and I assume that you are aware of the importance of preventing them from even coming up in a conversation and let alone anything else.

Well, if you want to do something to protect yourself while also protecting your employees, then conducting sexual harassment trainings is the right way to go. By organizing those, you will clearly state to your workers that the company does not tolerate any harassment in the workplace, while also informing those workers about all the procedures that should be taken with the aim of protecting the victims and generally ensuring that there are no victims in your particular company. Of course, the leadership should also go through a training process with the aim of understanding how to handle any harassment claims.

2. Make The Workplace Safer

Now, the most obvious reason why your company needs this training is because you simply want to make your workplace safe. If you don’t succeed in making the workplace safe, you will have a lot of unhappy employees on your hands, which is definitely not good for business. On the other hand, by organizing these trainings and informing everyone not only on what constitutes harassment but also on what to do if they notice any such things, you will automatically make your staff feel much safer in the workplace, which is a pretty big deal.

3. Increase Productivity

When people don’t feel safe in their working environment or when they have to face any type of harassment on a daily basis, it is perfectly natural for them to start being unproductive. The lack of productiveness won’t be caused out of spite, though. It will be caused by the lack of security and safety, and that’s the employer’s responsibility. Of course, you want your workers to be productive and organizing those trainings can help you in that endeavor, which is another great reason why you should think about it.

There’s a chance that these trainings should look different post-pandemic:
https://www.benefitnews.com/news/companys-sexual-harassment-training-should-have-changed-during-the-pandemic

Who Should Conduct The Trainings

After realizing the importance of keeping the workplace safe and your workers even safer, you will certainly want to have one of these trainings as soon as possible. The only question is this. Who should conduct them? Well, the good news is that the employer or upper management can conduct these trainings all on their own, but that does not mean that they should just wing it, without having any programs prepared in advance.

I have some more good news for you. There’s absolutely no need to wing it or spend time trying, and most likely failing, to prepare the perfect training program, since there are a lot of amazing ones that you can find online nowadays. So, your task is to find the perfect program with the help of the Internet and then get your workers acquainted with everything that constitutes sexual harassment and with the steps that should be taken if someone becomes a victim.