10 Questions to Ask Your Employees About Harassment & Discrimination
The Facts
Q&A
So you’re going to train all of your employees on harassment & discrimination prevention in 2019. That’s great news.
For most employers, we’re seeing a shift away from manager-only harassment & discrimination prevention training. Thanks to new legislation like SB 1343 and Stop Sexual Harassment in NYC Act, there are, for the first time, mandates requiring that ALL employees must be trained either annually or biannually.
We’re also seeing employers outside of NY and CA following suit and requiring employee training initiatives for all employees.
See full list and timeline of sexual harassment training mandates here.
But like other company wide initiatives, there's also more scrutiny than ever on outcomes.
Why did we pick this vendor? Is the training good? Is it working? Should we be doing more?
And while there are numerous ways your organization can approach training (See: what’s the best way to train on sexual harassment prevention), there’s not been a standardized way of measuring the quality or impact of harassment & discrimination training and policies.
The Rise of the Workplace Climate Survey
If you’re reading this article, our assumption is that you want to go beyond training in 2019. You actually want to make a difference-- and improve your workplace-- not just check the box.
So let's talk briefly about how to measure the efficacy of your current or new harassment & discrimination prevention training (read: if you aren't measuring it, how will you improve it?).
The very short answer to "how" is that you need to administer employee surveys in conjunction with your harassment prevention training. These survey questions are designed to measure knowledge and climate related to harassment & discrimination. To read more on how to measure, click here>>
Now, as promised, here are the 10 questions Impactly recommends you ask (anonymously) to your employees after completing harassment & discrimination prevention training.
10 Questions to Ask Your Employees About Harassment & Discrimination
Question 1: How knowledgeable are you about how to make a report of sexual harassment or discrimination
Question 2: How knowledgeable are you about what happens when an employee reports an incident of sexual harassment or discrimination
Question 3: Have you ever received training or materials that covered the legal definition of sexual harassment & discrimination?
Question 4: Have you ever received training or materials that covered your company’s policy on sexual harassment & discrimination?
Question 5: Have you ever received training or materials that covered how to report sexual harassment & discrimination?
Question 6: Have you ever received training or materials that covered how to intervene as a bystander to protect other employees from sexual harassment & discrimination?
Question 7: Do you believe there is a clear sense of appropriate and inappropriate behavior among employees at your company?
Question 8: Do you feel empowered to report inappropriate sexual conduct by a coworker at your company?
Question 9: Do you feel empowered to report inappropriate sexual conduct by a supervisor at your company?
Question 10: Do you believe your company does a good job at preventing sexual harassment and discrimination from taking place?
For a full list of Workplace Climate Survey questions, email us at support@getimpactly.com.
If you want help in administering a Workplace Climate Survey, we have a free platform you can use: link here.
The Impactly team is launching a free national Workplace Climate Survey in January for companies and higher ed institutions. It’s a free resource that enables year over year performance tracking and industry benchmarking. Irrespective of how you train -- whether you switch vendors every year -- whether you do in-person for some employees and virtual for others-- our recommendation is that you institute this survey (or one like it).
How we developed the questions?
These questions were developed first based on the AAU and White House Climate Surveys that were developed and deployed for Higher Ed institutions (for students) in 2013.
We then worked with HR, legal and prevention experts to convert these questions into a workplace relevant format.
Our Workplace Climate Survey is benchmarkable -- and whether you use our free platform to track and report-- or just use our questions (hint: you can still benchmark against our data, even if you deploy on your own).
Have more questions about our Workplace Climate Survey? Read more here>>
Extra Reading:
How Do Your Workers Feel About Harassment? Ask them: https://hbr.org/2018/01/how-do-your-workers-feel-about-harassment-ask-them