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Ask Slashdot: Preempting Sexual Harassment In the Workplace?
zwei2stein writes "My team of about 10 men (IT guys) is expecting a new colleague: a female one. It is guaranteed that there will be remarks, double entendres and innuendos with huge potential of getting worse. We already have women in teams who can somehow handle this (and deliver apropriate verbal slaps). How would you deal with this? We talked about some simple, fun ways — anyone who [acts inappropriately] will have to wear an embarassing tie, etc. — instead of swear jar, having a sexual innuendo jar and even fairly harsh punishments (like people losing their bonuses for the month or their extra vaccation days). I'd like to figure out a solution that would be effective, not call much attention to itself, and not be quickly abandoned." What has your workplace done to create a good culture on this front? And what hasn't worked?
Get every member of the team to put a picture of the mother on their desks.
May the Maths Be with you!
I have a hard time believing the submitter has a serious question.
This reminds me of that one scene in the trailer for the new movie coming out "Pitch Perfect". Some girl is going to try out for this singing group and she introduces herself as "Fat Amy". The other girls snigger at this and ask her "You call yourself Fat Amy?" To this, Fat Amy replies, "Yeah, so bitches like you don't do it behind my back."
"We talked about some simple, fun ways — anyone who [acts inappropriately] will have to wear an embarassing tie, etc. — instead of swear jar, having a sexual innuendo jar and even fairly harsh punishments (like people losing their bonuses for the month or their extra vaccation days)"
Any acts which would result in these embarrassments are terminal offenses. Then on top of these, these acts could be considered terminal harassment themselves.
You have serious problems if your polices are already unenforceable.
Our small office is actually almost half female these days. Three of us are techs, two are admins. We have a comfortable relationship with the guys because we're all geeks, and our geekiness trumps any awkwardness from male/female interactions. Light teasing is permitted, but personal relationship discussions are off limits. We generally try to keep all our jokes strictly to IT, nerdliness, and our clients' baffling behavior. We all also wear the same uniform, so the only personal expression the ladies get is earrings and nail polish. (No skirts or heels allowed.) This dress code prevents a lot of harassment, I think. (I know I wouldn't want to have to drag patch cables across the floor in a skirt...)
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
In Is There Anything Good About Men?, Roy F. Baumeister writes
You are proposing frat boy solutions to a frat boy problem.
It's easy: dont turn it into a frat boy game. Just say once, seriously, before the new employee starts: "I noticed the innuendo around here. It's not funny. Do it once, get a warning. Do it twice, get fired."
And then actually do that.
Sexual harassment isn't funny. Of course the frat boys will say it's just a little fun, no harm intended. Thats the problem.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
...It is guaranteed that there will be remarks, double entendres and innuendos with huge potential of getting worse...
So you work with a bunch of unprofessional animals?
You should *already* have a policy that makes such comments and such a work environment unacceptable.
Let them know that this type of childish behavior is not only unacceptable, but will result in being canned.
End of sentence.
This man's coworkers probably just think they're having good clean fun and that they're "keeping it real" in the face of what they feel to be phony soul-tarnishing political correctness. However, it's hard to really walk in another's shoes sometimes. Points of view are intellectually challenging. (Which is why scientists use the mirror test as a marker of sentience.)
One person's idea of "good clean fun" isn't necessarily the same as another person's. It sounds like there's a group there who has been enjoying the camaraderie and other benefits of a tight-knit "workplace culture." of their own. As the workforce at your company gets larger, the likelihood of everyone new liking all aspects of the original group's "culture" are going to diminish. So either you're going to have to impose the same "culture" on all new employees or this group "culture" is going to have to change.
Again, it's a point of view thing, so it's going to be very hard to convey what it truly means to be on the other side of their "ribbing." A good professional trainer might be in order. (But a bad trainer is likely to only make things worse.) Change also needs to be backed up by authority. It's probably only going to work at all smoothly with buy-in from the social leaders of that group.
I find it really strange that kids these days are such misogynists, they have almost no reason to be. Their girlfriends put out, send them nude photos, dress much more revealingly, and they even sometimes play video games. Not to mention that almost none of these boys has even been married.
It used to be that you had to put on a few decades of living before a man really worked up a real mindless hatred of the opposite sex, usually fueled by a bitter divorce.
In my old team we had things get wildly out of hand and HRLegal got involved. The entire team suffered because of a manager who didn't just step up and handle it like a problem between adults.
In my current team I am at/near the top of the social pecking order and have a very good reputation for looking out for juniors in the lab (going to bat w/ management for them but not telling who I'm batting for, etc.) and a good reputation with management for telling things as they are and having people trust me. This (amazingly to me) has gotten me some measure of respect from both sides, even when things get heated (we had a reorg a while back that turned very sour).
We had a repeat incident that was very nearly the same as what happened in my old group, but I told my manager what was happening, and asked him to give me a shot at handling it. I pulled the two into a conference room (based on the authority of the managers e-mail to them both) and dressed them both down, her for wearing clothes that are against the dress code and sure to attract attention, and him for utterly failing to be a gentleman that when a girl wears enticing clothes and lets you know it isn't you she wants it's time to back off. I reminded both of them that they are adults and to act it, and that neither was guiltless in the whole mess. Problem solved. Year and a half later, still no issues; she's dressed at least a little closer to the dress code, and he's polite, but non pursuing to her.
I don't think informal warning straight to dismissal is the right policy, there should be two more steps in between: formal warning && second warning + suspension.
Just realized I mis-parsed that part of your post, but there's the two steps I'd put there.
-nB
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Formal training is vital legally but doesn't always reach people.
Making an example of someone is something you should be ready to do. Sounds like you'll need to. Do it early.
Brainstorming about preventive measures to *supplement* your policy: start memes like "nerds don't bully nerds" or "would you say that to your sister?". Hire an outspoken victim that nerds can identify with to talk (not lecture) about what the impact is.
My current place of employment where I am in the process of departing from (my choice, they have no idea I am looking) we were a bunch of guys with one very laid back woman on our team. Sometimes we would step over the line; in fact my manager came out once and told a couple co-workers, “Guys, Sally (not her real name) is in the room!” We were lucky that Sally is extremely laid back and pokes fun back at us and would tell us when we cross the line. Fast forward a couple years, she is now in a different group (not because of us) and we hired new people (three women) to work on our team.
Of the new hires that are women, and one is very uptight, very demanding for a new hire of things being setup to accommodate her and her way of thinking etc. She refuses to join in on team discussions and she refuses to go out of her way to learn. She expects people to cater to her, change the way we act (she dislikes joking in the work place), she refuses our managers orders that I am the senior guy on the team and when he is not around she is to take direction from me. Because of her nature, her constant complaining to management about anything and everything they are afraid to manage her and set her straight and they let her through her probation period; the other female new hires are friendly, they joke around and like a laid back environment. Heck we guys listen to them talking about the guy they saw last night and sometimes across a border that should not discussed at work. We shrug it off, it happens and move on.
Why am I telling you this? Personalities can kill a work place, sure your team may seem to be a bunch of unprofessional dorks, but again what is your environment like? There is being unprofessional, then there is joviality, sometimes the humor crosses the line, let them know when and most adults are reasonable and apologize and clean it up. The fact of the matter is when you have a team that joke around, then it is a team that bonds and works well together and supports each other. Joking and social interaction builds camaraderie and it sets your team up to work well in stressful situations and work through the issue no matter how many hours it takes.
If you hired this new girl, then obviously you discussed the work environment and hopefully she interviewed with some of your team members. If you failed to tell her about the environment and you failed to let her know that if some humor makes her feel uncomfortable to tell the offender or you as her manager so you can tell them to knock off, then you failed in your job and have set your team up to fail. If the new hire understands this and is cool about it, then see how she works out and how she interacts – the one uptight woman I mentioned I told management to extend her probation period another three months and they did not. Once she crossed that three month barrier then the real complaining/whining began. DO NOT make this mistake, the probation period is there for a reason - they do not work out byebye.
Tesen
Actually, any manager that is allowing this kind of behavior to occur is asking for trouble, no matter what the makeup of the group is. Many years ago I worked for a smallish all-male consulting company that allowed a LOT of sexually unprofessional behavior to occur. We're talking "Playboys in the magazine rack in the lunchroom" kind of unprofessional behavior. Several of us weren't thrilled about it, but there really wasn't a lot of complaining.
One of the male software engineers left the company after about a year. Several weeks later, the company was hit by a lawsuit. Turned out that he was gay (nobody had ANY clue) and found the workplace to be sexually hostile. The guy walked away with a healthy settlement, both managers were fired, two other employees were fired along with them, and the work atmosphere went down the tubes.
Sexual discrimination suits don't require there to be a gender difference, and even an employee who seems OK with sexualized behavior can later sue over it if they change their mind (or simply want to make a few bucks). Only a complete moron would allow this kind of behavior in their company.
There is nothing so pathetic as seeing a beautiful young theory roughed up by a tough gang of facts.
You need to understand the laws around sexual harassment, which you clearly do not.
Is there some reason to believe that the OP lives in a country with draconian sexual harassment laws? Not everyone lives in a litigationocracy.
I really can't imagine where these people are working that this is even an issue. I'm a professional in the tech industry and I can't imagine anyone I've worked with having any sort of inappropriate interactions with female colleagues (nor have I ever encountered this happening in almost two decades in the industry). Aren't we at least two or three decades past the transitional "women coming into the workplace" period? Aren't practically all the guys that would be old enough for this to even remotely be a problem for already retired?
This is exactly what I thought, and exactly my experience as well, with about 15 years experience in the industry. Women in the workplace are nothing new; even in smaller companies I've worked at, we had plenty of women working there, though not usually as IT people or engineers, but we still had to be around them and interact with them. Women are usually dominant in roles such as HR, after all.
But to read Slashdot, you'd think that programming teams are all full of misogynistic "brogrammers". Maybe you and I have been lucky or something, but most of the tech people I've worked with were married, frequently had kids, and had no trouble with female co-workers (or cow-orkers).