3 Steps Toward Respectful Workplaces Step 1: Awareness
Special Thanks to EVERFI, a leader in workplace culture and compliance training, who brought you this week’s blog.
By Elizabeth Bille, JD, SHRM-SCP
The larger your organization is, the more challenging it is for supervisors, managers, HR professionals, and leaders to stay on top of the wide range of interactions taking place between employees. Even leaders in small organizations can’t be observing employee exchanges all the time. Most interactions are positive and collaborative. But when interactions become disrespectful or conflict escalates into potential harassment, it’s important to be aware of what’s going on and intervene as soon as possible.
That’s where your employees can come into play. When employees understand the potential role they can serve in this effort as active bystanders, and when they are equipped with the skills and resources to help them fulfill this role effectively, everyone benefits.
Getting Employees Comfortable with Getting Involved. Most people want to intervene in situations where they observe concerning behavior, but many don’t. Why? Because they’re not quite sure what their role is, what they should do or say, or whether they’re comfortable putting themselves in the middle of an awkward—even potentially hostile—situation.
Teaching employees how to speak up and intervene effectively when disagreements or interactions become disrespectful can have a big impact on supporting a climate and culture of respect, inclusion, and belonging. It can also prevent unprofessional behavior from escalating into illegal misconduct.
That’s why many employers are increasingly training their employees on bystander intervention techniques. But research shows this type of training requires more than simply telling employees to speak up when they see something concerning. There are actually three important steps that organizations must take to educate employees about their role as active bystanders and to make it safe and comfortable for them to do so, which we call “The 3 As”:
Awareness
Attitudes
Action
In this and two follow-up posts, we’ll be exploring each of these steps and offering advice and practical tips for creating a cadre of active bystanders.
The First “A”: Awareness
While it may seem that employees should be able to naturally identify situations of bias, disrespect, discrimination, or harassment, this isn’t necessarily the case. It’s important, therefore, for employers to explicitly educate employees both on what types of behaviors they should be alert to and why they should take action when they observe these behaviors.
Don’t Assume Employees “Know” What’s Expected. With an increasingly diverse workforce made up of not only different generations but people of different races, nationalities, religions, communication styles, and more, employers shouldn’t assume that employees will automatically recognize inappropriate assumptions, stereotypes, comments, or actions in the workplace. They need to be specific about what inappropriate behavior looks like–especially the less egregious forms that are tougher to spot.
This can be accomplished through policies and procedures, where examples can be given. In addition, employers have an opportunity—and an obligation—to provide training to help employees identify and really “tune in” to the many nuanced ways that disrespectful behavior and incidents of harassment can occur in the workplace. This helps employees to understand which behaviors they should be aware of that warrant further action on their part.
The Importance of a Positive Tone. One of the research-based best practices we have uncovered is the importance of taking a positive, rather than a blaming, approach to training—a focus more on what positive behaviors should be practiced and what a supportive culture looks like, rather than solely an emphasis on bad behaviors and penalties.
So although training that contains bystander intervention skillbuilding does require some focus on inappropriate behavior so learners can understand what they should be on the lookout for, the overall framing of the course should be about encouraging positive action to build a positive workplace culture. In other words, it’s really about teaching employees what TO do, not what NOT to do.
Reinforcing the Awareness Message. A focus on awareness of disrespectful or harassing behavior isn’t something that should take place upon an employee’s hire or during once-a-year mandated training, although these are obvious times that awareness can be raised. Instead, communication should be constant and ongoing to ensure that employees—and supervisors and managers—understand what the company expectations are and what types of behaviors are inappropriate.
In our next post, we’ll talk about the 2nd “A”: Attitudes.