Mandatory sexual harassment training sounds quite disturbing. Anybody can comment in detail how it is conducted? Is it really mandatory for everyone or only for men?
The most recent one I did was actually useful (!!!!), probably because it was geared toward helping us employees/professors/etc actually know what to do when a student comes to you with a concern and how to intervene in bystander situations. It did explain the law. Far more useful were the scenarios: "Famous Prof is creeping on your grad student at a conference. Here are three options." "A student comes to talk about their poor performance on homework and ends up telling you they were assaulted at a party two weeks prior. Who do you talk to and who do you not talk to? What are the student's options?" "You fall madly in love with a student in your calculus class and the flame of your passion cannot be extinguished. While you are their TA/prof, what do you do?"
The bystander training and training on which resources to direct students or colleagues to, with instructions on how best to contact the offices, was good. The suggested wordings for responses were good. Often "good people" don't intervene because they don't know what to say or don't want to be awkward. Imagine you're a 22-year-old math grad student TAing for the first time -- maybe you've only been in the state or country 2 weeks -- and a student tells you about a rape during the parties first week of the semester. How're you supposed to deal with that with no training?
It's the only good training I've ever experienced, actually.
Generally I've seen they use the "stoplight" model, in that some behaviors are "green", near universally accepted as non-harassing, some are "red", near universally rejected as harassing, and some are "yellow" meaning individuals vary. "Red" behaviors should get you fired immediately, while "yellow" often puts some burden on the offended party to speak up about it, and it only becomes harassment if it continues.
Google's training when I took it a decade ago focused almost exclusively on the yellow/gray area and was pretty interesting because of it. Other trainings I've suffered through focused on the red zone which felt obvious, awkward, and dull.
I have to admit I have never been in the US. So, what is the right answer for the second question?
I suppose it should be mandatory for all, but in the same time I have read too many stories about "classes to teach men to not rape" that I am in doubts.
It's usually just some slides or a video you click through, and most people try to fast forward or skip as much as the software allows. That's actually how all corporate training works.
It's not confusion so much as incredulity that this would seem disturbing to someone, especially considering it is so common that a major state[1] mandates it for some employees. California is an example that mandatory sexual harassment training is common.
I honestly dont mind the idea of taking any of this training, but I loathe the fact that I'm prevented from completing it at a pace I'm able.
The purpose of it is usually not educating people, but providing a liability shield. Juries don't look kindly when Billy was harassed by his manager, and Billy's employer couldn't even be arsed to put Billy through a two-hour course, that spells out why harassment is a bad idea.
On the other hand, if Billy's manager did go through this training, and harassed Billy, then the company can blame everything on the manager.
Also, recognizing that a quid pro quo relationship is inappropriate at work = also feminism.
Have you considered that work is for people to go to, so that they can do their ing jobs?
Because it is the most common way for an idiot to open up the company to hundreds of thousands of dollars of liability.
Because it is the only concern that is a constant, regardless of which industry you work with.
When you're in the medical industry, managers have to take medical compliance training. When you're in the financial industry, managers have to take financial compliance training. When you're in the automotive industry, managers have to take OSHA compliance training.
But in all of those industries, there is one common element. Managers have reports. Reports that can sue the company, if their manager engages in harassment, or allows another employee, customer, or contractor to harass them.
Actually reducing sexual harassment or other negative behavior takes a deep change in a company's attitude and culture. You can't get it from a 1 hour seminar conducted by some HR drone.
[0] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/evidence-based-livin...
It's usually an incredibly boring hour-long-or-so presentation employers expect everyone to go through somewhere around annually. It discusses inappropriate behaviors like quid-pro-quo, retaliation, inappropriate comments towards other employees, etc.
The general assumption behind it is that some people may not know their behavior is appropriate, and presumably, to remove the "I didn't know that wasn't okay" defense on any future violations. Of course, the issue is everyone knows that things like what Harvey Weinstein or Matt Lauer did aren't okay, but they still happen anyways.
I don't feel I benefit from it in any way after the unteenth time I've been through them, but if an employer pays me to be there, it's on their dime. The college I go to also tries to require a sexual harassment training thing, and I have declined to participate since I pay them to be there, not the other way around, and the dean's office has admitted to me in an email that the "required" training is "not mandatory".
I find it sounds disturbing as well, never
heard of such thing before.
On the other hand, you go to a national chain, the calendar has a message about the importance of embracing teamwork.
Sexual harassment training purports to transform organisations that behave like the first one into organisations that behave like the second one. How much of the difference in behaviour is a consequence of the training and how much from other factors is obviously difficult to measure.
I follow a simple rule, and so far, I haven't done anything stupid: "If you think it would make someone personally uncomfortable when you say it, consider not saying it".
That poor woman, still being victimized by that creepy sexual predator to this day. We should try to save her.
It can be, if it is done poorly. In fact, if it's done really poorly, it can look like it was carefully designed to cause a differentially hostile workplace environment based on sex, such as when every single example or reference to a victim or potential victim specifies a female worker or uses feminine pronouns, and every perpetrator or potential perpetrator in an example or description is male. (Which happened in the first such training I attended, in 1999.)
> Anybody can comment in detail how it is conducted?
It varies. A lot. Even as to whether it is mandatory sexual harassment training or mandatory harassment training that includes sexual harassment as a component.
> Is it really mandatory for everyone or only for men?
Where it is mandatory, it is usuually mandatory for everyonein the workplace, though there is often additional training for supervisory personnel over and above what everyone else is required to take.
I'm not sure how much it actually helps prevent sexual harassment though - most sexual harassers are just jerks (i.e. not people who don't know better and would stop if only they had been through sexual harassment training).
If it's anything like everywhere I've ever worked, it's mandatory for everybody, and they go out of their way to pretend their not just talking to the men about the women, but it's actually twice as uncomfortable because all of the women - for whom this training is actually for - are sitting next to the men, for whom the training is actually targeted. So you sit through an hour of uncomfortable filterspeak that would make the 80's Soviet Kremlin cringe.