Harassment at work: how to deal with it – or better still, prevent it
As a supervisor, manager or managing director, you can draw on all sorts of skills and techniques to ensure your business performs successfully. But however good you are at what you do, interpersonal factors play the most important role in ensuring your team works well. And when a team works well, the results are also considerably better. So that makes it especially important to encourage good social skills, and equally, good team communication in your managers.
We went to talk to Lode Godderis, a professor of occupational medicine at KU Leuven. His department is researching the relationship between work and health. He shares his specific insights and tips with us on the best ways for employers or managers to deal with harassment.
Situations involving harassment do not go away by themselves
The first aspect that plays a role in harassment at work is time, and more specifically speed. Prof. Lode Godderis explains: “It is important for managers to detect inappropriate behaviour immediately and nip it in the bud. Research has shown that situations involving harassment do not go away by themselves. On the contrary: they repeat themselves and usually get worse. If you are a manager who is aware of an inappropriate situation, you need to take action. If the manager does not react, the harasser and team members may see that as tacit approval of the harassment.
Safety and trust
A recent study by StepStone revealed that 50 % of female employees and 25 % of male employees had suffered from harassment at some point. That is a considerable number, and it is not unthinkable that it happens in your teams as well – however positive your corporate culture is.
Godderis continues: “Harassment often emerges from a conflict that initially appears to be insignificant, if no response follows, or a stressful situation that is not resolved. It is important for you to detect emerging situations and make it possible to talk about them.” In order to notice problematic situations as early as possible, it is important to pay attention to what is going on in the team.
Right, we need to talk, but how?
Team members need to feel that their manager is a contact they can trust: someone who is completely safe to approach if they need to report harassment. “As a company or organisation, it is a good idea to have a clear policy and also to make sure everyone knows about it”, Godderis says. “As a manager, you can put the issue on the agenda at team meetings every now and again, and discuss it with the team. In that way you will make it very clear where the boundaries are within your organisation and how the company deals with incidents. This creates a working environment that discourages harassment.”
Collaborative conversations
When harassment does occur – or is threatening to occur – it is crucial to deal with the situation straight away. Godderis offers a useful conversation technique for this, consisting of four steps. He says: “This is a tried and tested way of holding conciliation talks constructively. It is called ‘collaborative communication’. It takes a bit of practice, but it is perfectly possible to try it out at home, in conversations with your children or partner.”
If you apply this conversation technique at the beginning of a conflict, you can often prevent it getting to the stage of formal complaints. Many managers apply their own intuition, using words and phrases that already imply a certain bias. That doesn’t help them to communicate in a way that resolves conflict. “Don’t hesitate to send managers who do that on a training course”, Godderis says: this is something he encourages.
| Handy four-step plan Godderis explains how it works. “The advantage of this conversation technique is that you can put your personal emotions aside and convert that feeling into something concrete: what is the perception, what is the need that is not being fulfilled, why exactly am I so angry, and what would I like to happen; what is my ideal outcome? That makes your communication more focused and more effective.” Step 1 – As a manager, broach the subject and state the facts. You can formulate them by using your own senses as a guide: ‘I see, I have noticed, I hear’. This is the most powerful way of starting a conversation. After all, people can identify with it easily. If a manager were to say: ‘Someone has told me that…’ they are acting as a messenger, and that evokes negative emotions. Practice this first step well, because you are probably not used to communicating this way. Step 2 – Then put into words how the facts make you feel as a manager. ‘I’m worried. These things make me really concerned.’ Step 3 – Link your feelings to a need that you have (I feel … because I …) and share this with your conversation partners. Step 4 – As the manager, ask the colleagues in conflict a very specific question. What is your specific expectation as a manager, and what are the next steps that people are prepared to take to solve the conflict? |
First aid in serious cases
Godderis has one thing to add when it comes to apply the four-step technique. “Stay aware of your role as a manager. You are not a counsellor”, he warns, “and if a serious incident has happened, you are not the only person responsible for dealing with it. Know and respect your own limitations and abilities, and get prompt support from structures and systems that can support you in that.”
That might mean a person of trust or health and safety advisor. After all, the victim will also benefit from external help at this point. You can help the victim to take that step towards contacting the health and safety advisor. Small businesses do not employ health and safety advisors, but external organisations such as Idewe, Mensura or Liantis fulfil this role.
