Trigger Warning
This post contains content regarding sexual harassment and sexual assault that may be sensitive to some readers. Please be aware of your mental health and your own triggers before reading, and know you are not alone in your mental health battle.
The lights in the breakroom kitchen went almost dark as a large Corrections Lieutenant came through the doorway and blocked my exit. He was in the HR building for a leadership training and in his full uniform. The man was over 6 feet tall, and even in my heels I was less that 5’4. I was holding a pot of coffee I intended to bring to the leadership training room and as I turned to face the door I realized I was unable to exit the breakroom.
I breathed slowly, purposefully. As a survivor of domestic and sexual abuse I knew this moment well and I knew this would be a fight. I was 20 years old in this moment and I already knew a man in my workplace would not leave me alone if I asked.
The Lieutenant smiled and told me my legs looked nice in my skirt. He knew I was in Human Resources.
“That’s inappropriate and it makes me uncomfortable. Now move out of my way.”
He smiled bigger and didn’t move an inch. “Go to lunch with me today. I’m a good guy, and it’ll go a long way with the guys at the jail. They’ll respect you more if you’re my girl. You know you want to.”
And at 20 years old I turned around, set the pot of coffee down, stepped towards the Lieutenant, and screamed very loudly in a breakroom kitchen, “Get the fuck out of my way, you make me uncomfortable, and I cannot leave without you moving. I will physically hurt you if you do not get out of my way.”
It was like a gunshot in a library. The IT guys across the hall came running in and the Lieutenant jumped out of the kitchen. I forced myself to remain calm because I knew a hysterical and scared witness is never believed.
I reported the incident, and it vanished.
And as a smart brown woman I watched quietly as the system failed me, as my own department covered up a sexual harassment experience to protect a white man and I made a very calculated decision.
Fuck that shit.
My entire career changed in that moment. I purposely took the job of the Employee Relations Analyst that had botched my own case (because I’m smart, calculating and tend to get what I want when I’ve been wronged) and spent the next eight years of my career locking eyes with victims and monsters wholly dedicated to changing the way organizations handle sexual harassment allegations.
I’ve sat across the table from women who have been told to “get on their knees to keep their jobs,” and held the hands of men that have been shoved into a closet and molested by their boss.
Police officers have stood back and let me get on my knees in front of a rape victim that was one of my employees and tell her I wouldn’t leave her side if she decided to walk through a rape kit.
Executives have hugged me after I’ve cleared their names from legitimately false accusations made by desperate and cruel employees.
Lawyers have raised their voices at me as I’ve enacted new policies that are less company-centered and more human-centered because this is the one space I won’t budge. Those same lawyers have gone from raised voices to full on yelling when I’ve advised organizations to settle outside of court when that organization truly failed a victim.
And my worst case, the one that I’ll hold forever against my soul as the reminder of why we need reform in our sexual harassment practices, is the female employee that stated she was raped by a male employee during an overnight shift and no one believed her. I came onto the case and two days later she took her own life in her apartment. I attended her funeral, watched the anguish of her family, and etched it into my soul on purpose.
Lean in a little bit and listen to me, HR warrior - Employee Relations might not be your expertise. Investigations and sexual harassment/assault might not be your niche…but it must be where we are excellent every single time.
If we look at organizations like USA Gymnastics that employed hundreds of people and had an actual HR policy that stated sexual harassment allegations must be made in writing and signed by an adult, or The Ellen Show where allegations were made but never investigated, or every local government agency in America where Elected Officials cannot be fired because they must be impeached therefore the sexual harassment policies are only written for regular status employees - we can see that we have systematically created predatory spaces in our workforces.
The system is set up to make sexual harassment easy, and HR must take accountability for that.
If you are reading this right now and you’ve been in HR for longer than a year, and you have not had one messy sexual harassment case, you have aided in an unsafe environment. Read that again.
You see, we’ve allowed lawyers and the government to convince us that outdated paper policies and PowerPoint presentation trainings curate safe spaces and that is a lie we tell ourselves to assuage our consciences of the truth that minorities and the LGBTQ+ community are being attacked in our companies and we aren’t protecting them at all.
We have collectively decided that investigations are too difficult, people lie, it’s a “he-said, she-said,” and we don’t really know if that classifies as actual sexual harassment.
We let lawyers bully us into believing we can’t substantiate claims.
We have collectively stopped asking the questions everyone is afraid to ask the creeps: What’s your reputation at this company, how do you think women feel around you, when was the last time someone at our company said you put them at ease, why do you think I’m concerned about your behavior, would your family be proud of your conduct, can you repeat to me what you said to that women and look me in the face when you say it?
We are obsessed with success in America, but the idea of sacrificing minorities to the atrocious sexual assault of others to gain that success by sweeping these actions under the rug is something we’re not willing to admit yet.
If we get nothing right in Human Resources, we must get this one thing right. They must be safe.
As someone willing to set themselves on fire in the hopes of sparking the flame of change for the culture of sexual harassment and sexual assault in Corporate America, it’s important to me to list a few concepts I’ve found successful in my career as you walk this path of creating safer spaces.
This list isn’t comprehensive, and it isn’t perfect; It’s a list of techniques from an employee relations expert, human-lover, sexual assault survivor, and HR Fire Breather.
Evaluate Your HR Staff - Spend a significant amount of time evaluating your team and determining who is the sexual harassment expert, and if they’re the right person for the job. If you have an ER team, you need to evaluate the following: are they reactive or proactive, how approachable are they, how often are they meeting with key stakeholders, what data do they bring to the table monthly, what’s their partnership with L&D, how often do they fight with the legal team and lastly, when was the last time they’ve apologized to someone professionally? ER teams should be nearly perfect in all of those capacities at a minimum. Hold them to a standard that they cannot meet, and then encourage them to that standard every day. If you do not have an ER team, evaluate your current team to understand who has the qualities to become what I listed above. Have a meaningful conversation about what ER is, see if their willing to move towards the darkest space in HR, and then train the hell out of them. As my favorite movie Remember The Titans say, “We will be perfect, in every way.” Run at that sentence and don’t stop running.
Rewrite your policies - It doesn’t matter if your policies were rewritten yesterday, change them. Saying we’re “zero tolerance” isn’t enough anymore. Policies need more than you can be fired if you do this. Policies need to include an email and phone number of who to go to 24/7 if something happens, and cut that chain of command bullshit out. HR handles sexual harassment, period. Policies need to include verbiage about victims being believed because we trust our team to do investigations at such a level that if things aren’t true, we’ll figure it out. All policies should put the accused on paid leave during the investigation to protect the integrity of the investigation. Research, find the most innovate and nearly impossible to implement policy in the world and write yours to model it, then sell the shit out of it to your leadership. This is the most important policy other than diversity and if you can’t sell it then what the hell are we doing here? We might as well just be payroll, then.
Stop training - Our sexual harassment trainings suck, and California making it mandatory made them suck even more. Our PowerPoints do three things: make the attorneys happy because we’re in compliance, teaches everyday employees to tune us out about this topic, teaches predators that we aren’t hovering over our culture like the hawks we should be. Sexual harassment education should be facilitations, not trainings, and there’s a big difference. They should be interactive, participatory, and the facilitator should talk the least. Humans don’t learn by being talked at, and if we’re going to teach employees about a topic as taboo as sex, we’ve got to start educating them at a level their brains can process. Invest in this training like you invest in a hard skill training and work your ass off in that class, every single time. If you aren’t drained after a sexual harassment facilitation, you’ve done it wrong.
Investigate them all - I don’t care what your Sales Executive Vice President says about the little comment his Sales Director made that somehow got back to you, it was inappropriate and you need to look into it. Chase this shit down and make it uncomfortable for people to be inappropriate in your workplace. HR is too afraid to be the cop because we’re trying to rebrand as the “People Department” but we’re forgetting that we aren’t anyone’s friends, we’re their parents. Yes, we want them to love us and come to us when they need something, but I’m also going to make it exhaustingly uncomfortable when you step out of the guidelines of this home. It is our responsibility to create enough rapport to be approachable and a hardass about sexual harassment all at once - it IS possible. If you don’t have the bandwidth to make this happen, then that’s your new battle with your leadership until they give you the funds to make it happen. In every organization I’ve worked at employees at all levels have said a version of, “That’s Kayla. She’s a badass, the one you want when shit is hitting the fan, but you need to watch your mouth and jokes around her and in general. She doesn’t tolerate any sexual stuff and it always gets back to her. Just don’t do it.” That’s got to be you, too.
Get very, very uncomfortable- Employees need to feel safe, comfortable, and led by you. Leadership needs to feel like you’ve got this under control when a case comes your way. That means you need to get very, very uncomfortable on a very consistent basis. Whatever your background is with sex, it’s time to let that go and lean into what’s happening right now. Quote the inappropriate words that are being said when you’re in an investigation. Quote them directly, with the curse words and all. Look the accused in the eye, lean into the conversation, print out the picture of the dick pic and ask them if that’s a picture of their penis. Stop blushing and pull your professional self together. These people need to see that you do this for a living and they are safe to tell you everything. Lawyers need to trust that you can ask the tough questions. Victims need to know you won’t be scared of what happened to them. Predators need to know you aren’t intimidated by vulgarity. Survivors need to know you’ll climb right into the mud, get on your knees and hold them right where they’re at. It’s time our comfort levels stop determining our effectiveness.
As one employee relations expert, survivor, and minority female standing in the HR world I’m begging us all to make this the area we refuse to fail at. May this be the one area we decide to be perfect at, in every way.
To my survivors - I love you, I honor you, I’ll hold you forever. You light my path, give me purpose, and color this world. I promise you, Human Resources will be better.