Harassment Training Ideas: 3 Ways To Train

Harassment is an unwelcoming and unhealthy activity that can disturb the mental peace of any individual. Such activity shall be prohibited in a workspace to ensure productivity. As a company supervisor, you need to take care of the employees to ensure a healthy environment in the workspace. This is referred to as a legal obligation and aids in making a good space for the employees. 

This keeps the morale higher and increases the productivity of the employees. If somehow such activity is overlooked, it will bring nothing but lawsuits. Hence you need to take care of the employees to avoid this kind of a legal mess. The United States government has updated many laws to outlaw discrimination and sexual harassment. Under the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, it acts as the main federal law that is amended to prohibit sexual harassment by any chance.

What is Harassment?

It refers to any unhealthy and unwelcoming behavior directed towards anyone. It is a gender-neutral term, as anyone can fall prey to such activities. People confront a variety of incidents based on their gender identity, sexual orientation, age, skin color, and caste. Hence, such cases need to be stopped anyhow. For that, you need to take action yourself. 

Whenever you feel like someone is trying to harass you, ensure that they know you do not like the behavior. Moreover, if they are still not through with it, call for action and take the necessary steps. First of all, approach the supervisor and ask them to investigate. You can also take help from the policies the government has amended for the same. 

Harassment can be of various types; it can be sexual harassment, which involves rape and assault. Then there are visual, verbal, and spoken types of harassment too. All this can hamper the mental peace of any individual, followed by the deterioration of the quality of work they produce. Hence, this activity needs to be prohibited. 

Harassment Training

As a result, it is felt that a training program should be implemented for staff to know what to do if they experience a similar circumstance. California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, and New York State have altered the necessary legislation for employee training programs. Rules such as local law, state law, federal laws, and regulations, as well as court rulings, are unequivocal in stating that every firm's employees should be supplied with a harassment training program.

State Laws for the Training Program

At least once, states such as Connecticut and Maine altered their laws to require sexual harassment training for individuals. Followed by many states, gradually all the states generated the laws for the sexual harassment training of the employees to ensure their safety.

State laws

Some of the state courts have passed laws that make harassment training mandatory in an office setting. The court states the training program to be mandatory for the supervisors and managers and should be available for every individual working in the firm.

EEOC

A law known as the EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) has been passed, which includes guidelines that every employer should regularly provide harassment training to all employees to ensure they are aware of their rights and responsibilities if they are confronted with such a situation.

Federal courts

The decision undertaken by the federal courts exhibits the ability of the employers to lose to the punitive damages in a harassment lawsuit if they are not providing the required training to the employee.

Importance of Harassment Training

It counts as a human right to feel safe in the work environment. Hence the workspace should be free of any harassment activity. It is important for the employee and the company, too, that the employees feel safe. Because if they feel secure and sound, they will be more productive. It also helps in creating a respectful environment with inclusion. Any incident related to harassment can impact someone's state of mind to a large extent and, as a result, ends up hampering mental peace. Such activities will bring nothing but enormous costs to the individual involved. Penalties like;

• Fines.
• Lawsuits and legal fees.
• Decrease in the levels of productivity due to low morale.
• Ever-lasting impact on the reputation of an individual.
• Many liabilities also follow, and possible criminal charges may also get involved based on the activity.

And hence such training activities led to the safety of the employees by letting them know of their rights. Since conducting a training program in the office is a strenuous task. For this reason, professionals like HRs are being hired. These sessions are most effective when they include the engagement between the employees. Because effective engagement allows you to understand your coworkers better, it leads to improved coordination and reduces the likelihood of misunderstandings. Also, if the employees are not actively participating in the training process, you are not at fault and hence are not impacting the company. You need to make the impact to ensure the optimum level of safety and soundness in a work setting. Hence, here are some of the ideas which will help you to execute the training program effectively.

1. Four corners

It is considered as one of the best training programs to keep the employees engrossed. You need to make instructions, like four walls that are named, agree, disagree, strongly agree, or strongly disagree. And then, you have to read out the questionnaire, which will state certain situations. The employees will start from the center space of the room, and each time the question is read out, they move towards the wall they believe.

For instance, a question is read out like 'if one of your colleagues comes to you every day and checks you out from top to bottom', do you think it is appropriate behavior? Then the employees have to run towards the wall they believe the answer is. Since this training pattern involves individual participation and employee interaction, it is considered an effective activity.

2. DIY Videos

It is another interesting activity to involve interaction along with learning. In this particular activity, you have to divide all the members into small groups and provide them with a harassment situation. You need to ask them to prepare a scene that will depict the scenario and the consequences. By repercussion, I mean the reflexes one will follow to protect themselves. Once the scene is ready, you have to ask them to film it. Finally, you will show all of the movies to everyone to make them aware of what should be done in such a case.

3. Point-based games

This type of training is primarily for the one who prefers in-person training. In this game, you need to segregate all the employees into small groups, and in those teams, you will put some of the harassment scenarios as questions. And if they answer correctly to the question, they will get the point, and consequently, the team with maximum points will win a small hamper. In this way, you made them learn everything and kept them engrossed.

Conclusion

Hence harassment training is necessary for every employee, and to support this, the US state governments have amended various laws. Employee harassment training is required to make the worker aware of their rights and regulations. Since a behavior depicting any harassment is not acceptable and shall not be promoted.