The Role of Leadership in Preventing and Responding to Sexual Assault at Work
You’d think that we have a shared understanding that sexual assault is both illegal and immoral. I thought so too until I worked at a company where a woman was raped and I overheard several of the young men say, “She was so drunk, what did she expect?”
They appeared not to know that having sex with an unconscious woman was rape. When I told them and had a lawyer reiterate the facts, they realized they’d better change their behavior. You may not think that educating your employees about consent is part of your job as a leader, but it is. The above video from RAINN offers a very clear explanation of consent if you’re unsure exactly what consent means.
Making sure nobody at your company, including you, has unchecked authority can also be a deterrent to physical violence. And remember — power doesn’t have to be absolute power for it to create the conditions for violence.
In 2017, The New York Times published a story about a manager at an auto plant who used his power over shift assignments to coerce a woman to have sex with him. When she refused his advances, he assigned her a shift that started before her child’s day care opened and then threatened to fire her if she showed up late.
This manager deserved to be fired, but that in itself wouldn’t solve the problem. When managers have unchecked power, some of them are likely to abuse it, not just this one guy. Checks and balances make sexual violence less likely to happen. But prevention will never be perfect.
When sexual assault happens despite your efforts to prevent it, how can leaders ensure that they respond with institutional courage? Here are some important things leaders can do:
Find Out What Your Employees Think
If you want to know if people in your organization trust their leadership to do the right thing if they report sexual harassment or assault in the workplace, conduct an anonymous survey. Psychologists Jennifer Freyd, Carly Smith, and Alec Smidt have designed surveys that measure employee impressions in these areas and allow institutions to use them for free.
If you launch a survey and discover problems in your organization, you need to address these issues or you’ll risk making your employees only feel more cynical and beaten down. Lean on your legal team; consult your top executives. If you can afford it, hire a consultant with expertise in these matters.
Educate Yourself
Learn about sexual assault so that you’ll know how to respond effectively when, and if, it takes place on your watch. Make sure you understand that victims often react to violence with silence or muted emotions. Don’t get fooled by rape myths that cause too many leaders to expect strong emotions from victims.
You’re likelier to get a strong emotional response from the accused, who — upon being held accountable for their behavior — often responds with a behavior pattern Jennifer Freyd calls DARVO. DARVO stands for “Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender.”
In this pattern, the accused will aggressively deny the behavior, attack the individual who confronts them, and reverse the roles of victim and offender, such that they assume the victim role (e.g., the role of “falsely accused”) and paint the actual victim as a perpetrator of harm.
Not everyone who DARVOs is guilty. But it’s a reminder not to make a decision about innocence or guilt based on the strength of someone’s emotional response.
Build Trusted Reporting Systems
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act requires that publicly held companies maintain a system for employees to report matters that might have a material impact to the audit committee of the board of directors. Most large companies rely on a third-party system that provides an anonymous reporting hotline for this purpose. However, these systems are not designed with sexual misconduct in mind.
Leading institutions are investing in systems to improve their access to sexual misconduct data, which helps them manage the risk of undetected sexual misconduct in the workplace. A number of reporting systems have emerged in just the last several years to meet this need. What many of these systems have in common is that they allow people to report incidents anonymously.
Anonymity is important because it offers some protection against the way that victims of sexual assault are often retraumatized when they report the crime. These systems don’t automatically punish anyone as a result of an anonymous accusation. They simply trigger an investigation. And they can allow management to notice any pattern of accusations against one person.
A pattern of accusations doesn’t mean a person automatically gets fired or punished. It simply means that there’s more to investigate.
Laurie Girand, an expert in sexual violence reporting systems, explains why being able to report anonymously is so important: “Every person who makes an allegation to any authority is accountable to someone. Many codes of conduct state that falsifying a report can result in termination. Corporations are not courtrooms. Employment is a contract, and many employees serve ‘at will,’ until the company decides it no longer needs them. Both the alleged perpetrator and the target are entitled to a fair investigation, but the target and allies assume the greater risk in reporting, which is why they are owed anonymity.”
A reporting system that operates on the principle of safety in numbers is often the only way to get people to report. If you had a repeat offender in your workplace, wouldn’t you want to know? That’s where anonymous reporting systems can help identify and prosecute repeat offenders in the workplace.
Read more about creating and enforcing a culture of consent in chapter 10 of my book Radical Respect.
Radical Respect is a weekly newsletter I am publishing on LinkedIn to highlight some of the things that get in the way of creating a collaborative, respectful working environment. A healthy organization is not merely an absence of unpleasant symptoms. Creating a just working environment is about eliminating bad behavior and reinforcing collaborative, respectful behavior. Each week I’ll offer tips on how to do that so you can create a workplace where everyone feels supported and respected. Learn more in my new book Radical Respect, available wherever books are sold! You can also follow Radical Candor® and the Radical Candor Podcast more tips about building better relationships at work.
