Cultural shift needed to tackle workplace harassment

A new approach will be investigated over the next three years to tackle one of the most entrenched and expensive issues facing Australian workplaces – sexual harassment.

Professor of work and organisational psychology Michelle Tuckey has been awarded $418,950 to lead a three-year national project identifying how workplace culture, work design, and working practices contribute to the problem of sexual harassment in the workplace.

Sexual harassment costs Australia $3.5 billion each year in lost productivity, legal claims, and internal investigations, yet it remains a serious and constant problem across many workplaces.

According to the latest survey from the Australian Human Rights Commission, the highest-risk industry sectors are information, media, and telecommunications; arts and recreation; electricity, gas, water, and waste companies; and retail.

“Workplace sexual harassment is rooted in organisational systems that accept or tolerate this behaviour, which means we need to go beyond a focus on individuals exhibiting poor behaviour,” Tuckey said.

“This is why policies, training and reporting have failed to address systemic breaches in workplaces. Training allows people to recognise sexual harassment and how to report it, but it produces minimal change if the work environment is inherently unsafe.”

The research project hopes to gain a deeper understanding of the risk factors for sexual harassment in day-to-day organisational functioning while also examining the in-depth cases in hopes of guiding the development of systemic interventions.

The overall goal is for the researchers to develop a model that makes workplaces resistant to sexual harassment.

“Despite its prevalence in Australia – affecting 20 per cent of workers – sexual harassment is not inevitable; it is preventable.

“The greatest risks lie within workplaces rather than with individuals per se. Employees who are inclined to harass others are less likely to do so in healthy work environments,” Tuckey said.

As Tuckey stated, a healthy work environment is far less likely to have instances of sexual harassment, putting some onus on employers to create a culture where this issue is strongly unacceptable.

As previously reported by HR Leader, federal Assistant Minister for the Prevention of Family Violence Justine Elliot noted that employers have the responsibility to actively prevent these issues from occurring.

“Too many women in Australia are denied the basic right of working in an environment that is free from harassment, disrespect and bullying,” said Elliot.

“We have come too far as a society to continue to allow thousands of women to be pushed out of jobs and opportunities, as a consequence of employers not demonstrating the leadership required to ensure their safety and security.

“We are looking to industry and business leaders to take up this challenge and help us stamp out this unfair treatment and foster equality and respect in the workplace once and for all.”

Research in this space is crucial to prevent further cases from occurring. Although strategies and models will come out of this study, the onus is already on employers to ensure that they are doing their very best to negate the possibility of sexual harassment happening in the workplace.