Why Reporting Sexual Harassment to HR is Ineffective

Stop me if you heard this one—a female employee gets sexually harassed by her supervisor and reports it to Human Resources. HR tells her that she can transfer to another department to get away from him, but because it’s his first offense and he’s a star performer, there’s little they can do. The employee transfers and learns from other female employees that the former supervisor has harassed many of them. They go back to HR, which does nothing. The latest example of this happened at Uber, according to the New York Times, which picked up the story from the employee’s own blog.

This sort of ineffectiveness is all too frequent from HR departments. They often seem more interested in protecting the bullies than dealing with abuse. In fact, when I talk with employees at speaking events around the country, the most common response to the question “Did HR help you?” is that the department is in management’s pocket and the visit was a waste of time.

We’ve seen this play out over and over again—Fox News, Roger Ailes, Bill O’Reilly, and so on. This is why I devoted a chapter in my book From Bully to Bull’s-Eye: Move Your Organization Out of the Line of Fire to sexual bullying. Until we recognize the right of every employee to enjoy a psychologically healthy, safe and fair workplace and make that a priority for Human Resources, sexual harassment will continue to harm victims as well as the company.

Credit: BIGSTOCK

Don’t Miss the Message Behind Employees’ Obsession with Political Chatter

The current presidential administration has employees glued to social media even during working hours. While productivity is always important this Wall Street Journal article totally misses a dynamic that is occurring in the workplace. The reason employees are spending time on social media and debating in person about what is going on is because they are experiencing democracy being dismantled, in real time on prime time. For many, what they are seeing on the news parallels what they are experiencing at work. Most have not witnessed the rise of totalitarianism in their lifetime and are completely consumed and confused by it—and at the same time unsure of what they can do to prevent it.

While my new book From Bully to Bull's Eye: Move Your Organization Out of the Line of Fire centers around workplace dynamics, it is equally applicable to society in general. Bosses, rather than bemoan this distraction, should tap into how employees feel about what is going on and create cultures where democracy thrives to the benefit of the individual and the organization. When employees experience this at work, they will be more secure in their own ability and more likely demand the same from government. 

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Transforming HR for the Next Generation of Business

I have mixed feelings about the concept of human resources in business. In concept, it’s a great idea; in practice, HR departments can sometimes compound problems within dysfunctional workplace cultures. However, as discussed in this article, the new startup culture shuns the idea of HR – and it often puts non-white, non-male employees in a tricky position. While I’m hesitant to break down the importance of HR in terms of race or gender, I do think that the notion of having a person in a position to be an advocate for employees who feel like they’re being treated unfairly is essential to any growing business. I understand and agree with many criticisms of modern HR culture, which startups are pushing back against, but I think that rather than abandoning HR specialists in favor of substitute software, we should be transforming the way we think about HR to improve it for a new generation of businesses. Read the full article at Fast Company.

Image: Jacob Lund via Shutterstock via Fast Company