There is a time before and a time after The Voice, at training and research bureau Bezemer & Schubad. Previously, it provided training courses on cross-border behavior to about ten companies on an average day. Since the revelations about abuse at the Dutch TV program, that number has exceeded one hundred. “In the past it was often incident-driven, then something transboundary had happened at an organization and people said: never again,” says founder and namesake Ernst-Jan Schubad. “Now you see that they want to get ahead of it and train preventively.”
Prominent examples of misconduct, such as at The Voice of Holland, where many participants said they were victims of sexually transgressive behaviour, symbolize a broader social problem. Similar matters – such as around Ajax director Marc Overmars and D66 celebrity Frans van Drimmelen – have also contributed to growing awareness about social safety at work in the past year.
According to a survey by trade union CNV 30 percent of working women have experienced some physical form of sexual harassment in the workplace – from colleagues, supervisors or customers. The group that has to deal with verbal misconduct is twice as large. Employees who are confronted with transgressive behavior often do not feel safe to report it, or do not know how.
The growing social attention for the theme also prompted Het Waterlaboratorium (110 employees) to turn to Bezemer & Schubad. In July, the employees of the Haarlem laboratory, which tests the quality of water, followed an ‘awareness training on recognizing and preventing undesirable behaviour’.
Pascal Koene, personnel advisor at Het Waterlaboratorium: “The subject was also discussed at our organization. If things go wrong, do employees know where to turn? When we asked employees who the confidential counselor is, they often answered: do we have one?”
The training took some getting used to for some. “A number of colleagues thought: what should I do with this?” says Koene, who also took part. “We work in a technical environment, people here are trained on the hard, cognitive side. The training challenged them in a completely different way.” Despite the heavy theme, Koene found the training ‘accessible and fun’, because of the practical exercises and the conversations that employees engage in.
One of the statements during the training: “Having a colleague’s arm around me is not unpleasant. I think that’s normal.” Everyone stands in the middle of the room, and by walking in one direction or the other, participants show whether they agree or not. At Het Waterlaboratorium, opinions were divided, Koene recalls. The same was true of an actor-played scene in which a man compliments a female colleague on her clothes. His comments then become more and more annoying, for example: “It’s best to undo an extra button.”
Defining boundaries
What is appropriate and what is not? Opinions about where the boundaries lie can differ, Schubad knows. His office not only organizes training courses, but also conducts research into possible transgressive behaviour.
Schubad: “There is still a debate about whether and how you can compliment a female colleague on her appearance. But such a scene makes people aware that they should be more reserved. What is fun for you, a colleague can experience completely differently.”
This insight also plays an important role in the training courses of Fairspace, a training agency and knowledge platform that is committed to an inclusive workplace. Founder Laura Adèr: “On the basis of a cross-border exercise, we make it visually clear to participants that your own experiences do not determine whether you cross a border.”
At the beginning of a training course, Adè often hears employees say that their company or organization is not aware of the problem: “Everyone is so nice here, does it sound like that, or: that doesn’t happen here. But that doesn’t mean that colleagues can’t have bad experiences or never feel uncomfortable.”
Adèr sees this during Fairspace training sessions, when participants are asked to take a step forward if they have encountered transgressive behaviour. “We notice that participants feel free to tell what they have experienced. This section is an eye-opener, especially for men, who are less likely to experience misconduct.”
Fairspace helps companies draw up protocols and covenants to combat sexually transgressive behaviour. But, says Adèr: “If no one reads or observes it, you are not further along.” The training is a means of bringing policy to life.
Resistance
Not all companies or employees are enthusiastic about the training in advance, Schubad knows: “Some managers believe that there must be a lot going on in order to use this type of training. There is surprise: why us?”
Bezemer & Schubad always recommends that the company top have training first: “If it doesn’t have the right tone on this theme, it will be a tough competition.”
To remove uncertainty from participants and promote openness, Bezemer & Schubad trainers try to create maximum social safety. “You have to make sure that no one drops out, so that anyone who allegedly commits a faux pas continues to participate.”
Trainers indicate that there is ‘no right or wrong’ during the training, and that what participants say freely remains private. Therefore could NRCdespite various requests to do so, do not attend training.
Schubad and his trainers often hear a reaction along the lines of ‘you can’t do anything anymore’. “Of course we don’t pretend that such an attitude has changed overnight. We are happy when awareness is created.”
Check off
Practice in the United States shows that training can also have the opposite effect. There, this type of training is often a ‘tick-off exercise’, intended to protect the employer against legal proceedings. “Big companies treat participants as potential perpetrators and basically say: we’re going to put you in a room and tell you what not to do. That doesn’t work,” said researcher Alexandra Kalev of Tel Aviv University.
Kalev did with Harvard colleague Frank Dobbin large-scale data research into the effect of programs against sexual abuse in the workplace in the US. This effect turned out to be limited: the position of women in the workplace has hardly improved since the 1970s.
According to Kalev, the perfunctory nature of American training forces employees on the defensive. “People can be strengthened in their prejudices during the training. Our beliefs and prejudices are deeply rooted in us, we inherited them from our home, at school, from our culture. You can’t undo that in a two-hour session,” says Kalev. “In fact, if you try to force prejudice out of people, you risk a backlash.” As it turned out in 2001 from a trial that such training afterwards can have a negative effect on men who already had a greater tendency to transgressive behaviour. There are more studies showing an adverse effect, Kalev said.
The researcher emphasizes that there must be consequences for offenders. But pointing fingers and punishment alone will not get you any further. “Make them allies to tackle a broader cultural problem,” he advises.
A more effective means, according to Kalev, is bystander intervention training, aimed at intervention by colleagues who are neither victims nor perpetrators. Fairspace also uses this method in training: “People often think that if they don’t intervene when the misbehavior occurs, they can’t do anything anymore. We use an exercise to show that you can also mean something to someone later on. By indicating to the victim that it was not okay what happened, and by asking if there is anything else you can do for her or him. With that you say: it was not your fault.”
Audience members at Het Waterlaboratorium were also urged to say something about the actor’s annoying comments. Personnel advisor Koene: “It teaches participants that it is not at all crazy to set boundaries.”
The question remains whether such training will continue. A sign that it is working can be that reports are made more often, says Adèr: “People then apparently have the confidence that they will be helped. We often hear from companies that employees continue to talk about the theme – a good signal. It does something to people.”
If Fairspace is called in, it first examines the social safety situation at the institution concerned. Sometimes the agency returns six months after the training with an evaluation and refresher courses. But, Adès says, “not every company chooses this. It depends on their wishes and financial resources.”
Bezemer & Schubad returns to the client after a year to evaluate: how often has the confidential counselor received a report? What is in the management reports? What does the complaints committee say? What do employee surveys show? “This way you know whether adjustments need to be made, or whether new employees need to receive training. We are constantly in a cycle.”
The subject also remains on the agenda at Het Waterlaboratorium. Employees entered into discussions with the confidential adviser, who was also involved in the training, says Koene. Colleagues are more aware of each other, pay better attention to jokes and comments that are not pleasant for everyone. “It’s become normal here to ask yourself out loud, Geez, can you say that?”
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