Mary has recently joined Gemini Solutions, she has been feeling uncomfortable at work. Her co-worker, Allie has been constantly belittling her skills, making snide remarks about her during presentations and even spreading rumours about Mary being hired only because she went to the same college as one of the leaders. Mary doesn’t know if these behaviours are something she should raise with HR but this constant pattern has made her dread even coming to work.
A safe workplace is essential for each team member to grow and achieve their goals. Experiences of harassment have a severe impact on people’s sense of safety at work. Studies show that 80% of employees at the receiving end of harassment have lost work time worrying about the incident and 63% lost time from avoiding the offender.
This was exactly like Mary’s experience – a sense of dread, anxiety, and a lack of motivation to come to work. It is important for organisations to identify harassment in the workplace and understand its impact to ensure a safe workplace.
How can harassment be identified?
Harassment in the workplace is any unwelcome or offensive behaviour, either physical, verbal, or non-verbal, that creates a hostile, intimidating, or uncomfortable work environment for an individual or group. It can take various forms including actions, comments, or gestures that target a person’s identity such as race, gender, age, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or any other protected characteristic.
The behaviours we saw from Allie towards Mary can fall under the scope of harassment. Her actions create a hostile, intimidating, and uncomfortable work environment for Mary.
What is the impact?
Harassment at the workplace has a tangible impact on output. In a study conducted with 800 managers and employees across 17 industries, 66% of participants said their performance declined due to experiences of harassment and 78% reported losing their commitment to the organisation.
Harassment isn’t just about not wanting to perform at work, the study also found that 12% of employees left their jobs due to being subjected to constant harassment.
It can also impact a person’s ability to be their authentic self and express themselves at the workplace but beyond that, harassment at the workplace can be correlated with workplace stress, anxiety, headaches, low self-esteem, interruptions to sleep cycles, and feelings of isolation.
What role can organisations play in preventing harassment?
At an organisational level, creating a structure to prevent, prohibit, and redress incidents of harassment is essential to ensuring safety at the workplace.
The system can begin with an anti-harassment policy that prohibits any form of harassment in the workplace. The policy plays an essential role in clarifying and setting standards for appropriate workplace behaviour.
Creating awareness of the policy and standards of behaviour can also be important in creating an effective anti-harassment system. Awareness can be raised through regular training that clarifies and engages employees regarding what harassment at the workplace can look like and how to manage these scenarios.
Setting up redressal mechanisms to handle complaints of harassment at the workplace plays an important role in implementing the other inclusive processes. Designating committees to receive and redress complaints of harassment will ensure that behaviour that is not in line with the policy is addressed and the safety of each employee is prioritised.
By creating the above process, Gemini Solutions can give Mary the option to contact the anti-harassment redressal committee to file a complaint against Allie’s behaviour.