What does an investigation tell us about an organization’s culture? Not much!
Investigations are about determining whether someone violated a policy or not. Can the concerns raised in a complaint be validated or not. Someone claims a hostile work environment, and the investigator determines whether the claims are valid based on the facts discovered.
This isn’t enough to truly resolve the problem.
Make Anti-Harassment Training More Effective
My point is that we are too darn focused on compliance when it comes to harassment. Why are we relying on investigations alone? Whether the complaint can be validated or not, the complaint is a sign something is not right, and that “something” should also be investigated… with a climate assessment.
Another example of society’s focus on compliance is harassment prevention training.
Seriously, can we really even put “prevention” in the title? Harassment corrective action training is more like it.
Just take a look at any list of learning objectives from harassment prevention training vendors, or this article from The National Law Review, or the law itself…
If you want to use that word “prevention”, then you’d need to include empathy, respect, assertiveness, allyship, bystander intervention and other behaviors that actually prevent harassment. Because last time I checked, manager training on how to take in a grievance isn’t a preventative measure.
What I want to know is why we are relying on lawmakers to dictate what belongs in a corporate training program. What do they know about the power of training in behavior change? Obviously nothing, or our training requirements would be more useful.
And that’s fine, it’s not their job to know. It’s ours. And we owe society something better.
ADDIE Model
So here’s a crazy idea. Let’s use the ADDIE model, developed 30 years ago, and still widely used today. If you haven’t heard of it, ADDIE stands for Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, Evaluate… use these five steps and you’ll have better training.
ADDIE asks you to determine what behavioral outcomes you want as a result of the training. That simple question in the design process could change the course of harassment prevention training forever.
Here’s an example of how ADDIE might work, or five questions you should be asking and answering to improve your harassment prevention training:
1) Analyze:
- What behavioral outcomes do you want?
- Behaviors that prevent harassment from happening… respect, empathy, emotions, awareness of implicit bias, and the ability to speak up.
2) Design:
- What are your learning objectives? What should people be able to do after the training is over?
- Step in when bad behavior is witnessed, describe how harassment goes against the company core values, define personal accountability to a healthy work environment, speak in a respectful and positive tone, be self-aware of body language and words.
3) Develop:
- What should the training look like if we are going to achieve the desired behavioral outcomes?
- Handouts, articles, discussion points, exercises, assessments and role plays.
4) Implement:
- How will the training unfold? Who will ensure we achieve behavioral outcomes?
- Managers will hold before and after conversations, managers will be held accountable to positive survey scores, in order for role play to occur the training will be in person.
5) Evaluate:
- How will you measure success? How will you measure business outcomes?
- Complaints will decrease, turnover will decrease, productivity will increase, survey scores will improve
This is just a quick example of what the training design process would look like, if we were really and truly focused on PREVENTION and also CHANGE.
Civility Partners doesn’t do harassment corrective action training like everybody else, but we do offer harassment prevention training if you’re interested. In fact, we’re offering a no cost, super interactive Harassment Prevention Training Webinar on April 25th at 9AM PST. Be sure to save the date in your calendar, and register you and your employees in advance here! Everyone’s invited!
And if you’ve already done your harassment corrective action training, encourage your workforce to watch my LinkedIn Learning course for the prevention part.
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