The Omissions That Make So Many Sexual Harassment Policies Ineffective

If 98% of organizations in the United States have sexual harassment policies, why does sexual harassment continue to be such a persistent and devastating problem in the American workplace? One reason is revealed by a field experiment in which researchers asked employees to read and interpret sexual harassment policies. The employees’ interpretations bore very little resemblance to the actual words. For example, although the policy clearly focused on behaviors of sexual harassment, the participants almost universally claimed that the policy focused on perceptions of behaviors. The policy was perceived as threatening because any behavior could be sexual harassment if an irrational employee perceived it as such. To avoid this issue, make sure your policy uses emotional language (like calling harassment “predatory”); if it doesn’t, employees may impose their own. Second, sexual harassment policies should include bystander interventions as a required response to predatory sexual behavior. Mandating bystander intervention rightly puts the responsibility of creating a healthier organizational culture on all members of the organization.