Make HR Training Palatable: Harassment Reviewed

Make my day. Please share, in comments below, what you have done to make mandatory training more interesting and fun.

An HR Manager at a client company sent an email to all executives and managers asking them to save a three hour block of time for training in how to prevent sexual and other harassment in their workplace. I found out later that the group was totally freaked out by the thought of spending three hours on harassment training. Fortunately for me, what set the parameters for the training session, was the video series we had purchased for the session.

Fortunately for me, too, since I was the one who watched it four times in preparation for the session, the video was great. I told the group that I was watching the series for the fourth time when my husband came home from work the night before the session; I was laughing so uproariously, I didn't even hear him come in. I also took the time, in preparation, to jot down every incident of workplace harassment I had encountered over the years. Real time stories are so critical in training sessions to make dry material come alive.

A couple of points today:

• Preparation for training is crucial. Especially for some of the dryer HR-related training topics such as harassment, FMLA, the ADA, employee handbooks, and writing job descriptions, you need to find and plan ways to engage your audience. Reading the law or policy out loud does not constitute training.
• You need to do more of the HR-related training - not less. Managers and supervisors are the front line when it comes to managing employee performance and needs from work. In harassment, as well as in other law suit-engaging topics, as an employer, demonstrating that you took appropriate steps is crucial. In fact, demonstrating that you took immediate action and that the consequences for the perpetrator were severe, is also critical. And, the front line leader is usually the person initiating and following through on those steps, so they have to feel confident about what they are doing.
• Any form of harassment can create a hostile work environment including sexual harassment and how it is addressed. The court's definition of what constitutes a hostile work environment has recently expanded to coworkers caught up in the situation, too.
• Stories make training live. Try to utilize trainers with lots of real world, real-time experience who have real stories.
• California, as an example, requires this training every two years. Why not get in the habit before it is mandated by government?
• Your policy handbook needs a harassment policy, a policy about how investigations are conducted in your company, and a policy that forbids an employee in a supervisory role from dating a reporting employee.

  I'm not a fan of non-fraternization policies. I think the workplace is one of the logical locations for people to meet and fall in love, as long as the employees engaged in the relationship follow common sense guidelines. But, dating your reporting staff is never appropriate. You need to train these policies.

• Follow your policies. This is the best way to stay out of trouble.
• Care about the welfare of your employees. This is the best way to recruit and retain a superior staff.

Harassment Video Reviewed

I apologize for keeping you in suspense. If you are a regular reader, you know that I rarely review products. My main criteria for a review is that I must have used the product personally.

In the case of this preventing sexual harassment video, from HR Hero, I was exceptionally happy with the quality of the information, the examples, and the two narrators. As one of my session attendees noted, even the lawyers were funny and the fact that they bickered with each other over some of the recommendations, made it even better.

Those of us in training and organization development have such a bad habit of wanting to appear infallible when we're really just like everyone else. We just have a different job and different experiences. So, this was refreshing.

Harassment DVD - Video for Employees?

Does anyone have a decent video you can recommend for employees?

New Training and Sexual Harassment Prevention Articles

I've expanded these training thoughts in this blog into a permanent article addition for the site. Here is the new resource about sexual harassment prevention. Enjoy.

_{Image © Diane Diederich}