Employers should not limit online ethics, compliance, and harassment training solely to supervisors or managers. Many companies think that training management is enough but based on our employee training best practices, it’s not nearly enough. Every employee can commit harassment, such as the 911 Director in Augusta, GA who was investigated for sexual harassment.  (Click here to see sexual harassment statistics from the EEOC.)  By the same token, any employee can be subjected to harassment, so it stands to reason that every employee should be trained to recognize harassment, learn how to avoid committing it, and understand how to report internally if he or she becomes a victim of harassment in their work environment.

 

 

Typically, companies do one round of training when new employees join the company or when an individual gets promoted to a managerial position. However, it is critical to reinforce and retrain employees every year, or at least every other year as mandated. Some states, California for example, require bi-annual training for supervisors under state law (For more information about AB 1825 training, please visit our Training Course Library).

 

It’s important to remember that ethics and compliance violations are not static. We’ve seen huge changes in the landscape with the use of social media and personal communication devices in the workplace; Brett Favre’s recent alleged use of a cell phone to send inappropriate photos is a perfect example. How many anti-harassment policies and code of conduct training take into consideration the use of mobile phones with cameras in the workplace?   New media means new opportunities for misunderstanding and potential abuse by employees so we need to keep ethics and compliance training up-to-date and relevant  

 

 

Make sure that supervisors, managers, and executives lead by example. One of the most important things about harassment is that it’s really part of the culture of an organization. It’s typically black or white: either it’s not tolerated or it’s winked at and an open part of what the company accepts. The Chicago Tribune, when it was recently taken over by Clear Channel, sent out a notice warning employees that the atmosphere was going to be different and they might hear inappropriate jokes or other statements , but that’s the way it was going to be. (Click here to read more from the NY Times on this story). What message do you think they were sending to the organization with that memo? They were clearly setting a tone that this organization is going to be something akin to a locker room or fraternity house. They should only expect that, in such an atmosphere, they’re going to end up with a lot more ethics and compliance problems.

 

 

One of the biggest mistakes that employers make is to deliver ethics and compliance training by talking about statutes, literally presenting what the law says. Or they talk about headlines and big jury awards, which might be interesting, but unfortunately says nothing to the employee about how they ought to behave. What training really ought to focus in on is behavior; what do you want people to do, what do you want them not to do. Spell it out. Give real life examples – and train employees how they should behave in their work environment.

 

 

This is perhaps the most important guideline for successful anti-harassment policies: how do you teach principles that employees can apply to make better decisions? If you don’t equip them employees with the proper tools, you can’t expect them to make informed decisions. And that’s really important when it comes to harassment because you need to engage employees to think about their work environment from different perspectives – and guide their behavior so that they do make better decisions when confronted with potentially new and uncomfortable situations.