How to Spot and Prevent Harassment in the Workplace – 2024 Guide

Harassment can have serious consequences for everyone. Also, it can be a serious issue for the whole company. When the person suffers from sexual harassment it can affect him/her very emotionally. No one should experience something like this and become a victim of harassment. However, if you find yourself in a situation like this, you should know one thing – it is not your fault. Anyone can become a victim, and you should not blame yourself for that. In fact, you should not think about what did you do wrong, is it something about how you behave or how your dress. No, you should not ask yourself something like that.

Everyone deserves a respect and to be valued, whether it is a man or woman. It is not your fault if you end up in these kinds of situations, it is the fault of the person or even people who are doing this to you. No matter whether you need to listen to some inappropriate words, if it makes you feel uncomfortable, you should not put up with it. In fact, it is better to report it right away or do something else about it, instead of thinking that it will stop. The person or people who are doing this to you will not leave you alone until you stand up for yourself. That is why you should be brave and bold enough to do that. If you need support to do this, you can contact the Bibiyan Law Group and they will protect you.

On the other hand, if you haven’t got into this situation yet, it is always good to know how you can prevent it and stop it. The truth is that experience like this can really affect people’s feelings, emotions, and the way they are looking at themselves.

When it comes to the organizations, they can get a very bad reputation and credibility if something like this is happening in their workplace and they are not doing anything to prevent it and stop it.

In the further text, we will analyze this topic and there would be things that both executives of the companies and employees should know about preventing harassment.

You should set expectations

In the recent period, many different larger companies are sending their executives a warning to pay attention more to maintaining a respectful workplace. This refers to the surrounding where harmful behavior to others is not allowed. Because of that, where ever that you are doing you need to be aware that you should not allow anyone to disrespect you. Setting certain expectations is recommendable. You should value yourself and be confident and stand for yourself. Also, you should not suffer insults, belittling, or any other type of harassment. Knowing your value, you can primarily prevent and even stop someone harassing you because that person will be afraid to do that to you.

Build a healthy workplace culture

Every organization should build and create a healthy workplace culture. In fact, this should be a primary goal of every workplace, because everyone deserves respect, good communication, and collaboration. When an organization embraces these things, it can prevent any type of conflict and occurrence of harassment. Everything should be resolved adequately and effectively. In the surrounding where there is no respect and where workers do not act and behave decent or friendly, there is a big risk that harassment will appear.

Create a special team of Culture Keepers

One of the best things that you can do in your organization or company is to mobilize the employers to become special culture keepers. The main goal of their purpose is to maintain and control a respectful and healthy workplace where no one will feel threatened. In fact, this will help the whole organization to have a positive atmosphere and reinforcement. Culture Keepers will on a regular basis check the behavior of other workers. Since they are constantly in the company, they can commit to this work and do it better than any HR, or legal executives would do it. In this way, open and honest communication and collaboration with workers will be encouraged.

Change how you train on sexual harassment

One of the biggest mistakes that some companies made is treating sexual harassment prevention training in the way it is just some activity that needs to be checked on the paper. They do not consider this like something important, so they just act like they properly trained their workers in order to fulfill their legal duties. However, it is not the point to check this because of law requires it. It is crucial to train all workers about sexual harassment. They deserve to learn things from the training and to know how the harassment is manifesting, what they can do about it, how they can report it, and most of all – how to prevent it.

If you represent to your workers this training like it is something very important, they will value it and they will not harass anyone or allow anyone to do the same thing to them. Moreover, all workers will create a stronger bond and better connection between them through this training. They will become closer friends and they will understand that they are not just people who share the workplace, instead, they will value, respect, and care about their colleagues.

Handle complaints and investigations in a fair and respectful way

One of the biggest mistakes that one company can make is not having a proper HR team. In fact, every HR team in some organization needs to be open for discussion with everyone in the company. People should feel comfortable and not ashamed when it comes to coming forward to talk and complain about what bothers them. The HR team should not neglect and ignore any complaints. If they do something like this, it only means that the company itself enables disrespectful behavior and does not value its employees. Everyone will ashamed when he/she needs to confirm and face the fact that he/she suffers from any type of sexual harassment.

That is why the HR team needs to be open and make things easier for people. If everyone talks about what they are suffering from, on time, the problem can be resolved much effectively. No one should be quiet and suffer alone because of things that happen to her/him at work. It is very important to create an HR team of those people who knows how to listen, understand the situation from the other person’s perspective, and have empathy. Also, they should tell the person that they are very sorry that he/she experienced something like that in their organization and then conduct with all the regulative measures.