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Is harassment happening in your organization?

When we pose this question, most organizations respond with “no, it doesn’t happen here,” “we have a policy” or “there have been some incidents but we’ve dealt with them.”

Regardless of size, sector or success, few organizations are prepared for or untouched by the fallout from harassment. Yet most organizations remain in the dark regarding its prevalence. According to Dr. Jacqueline Power’s research, “nearly half of Canadians report having experienced one or more acts of workplace harassment at least once a week”

Harassment affects mental health, productivity, stress leave and retention of employees who are harassed or exposed to the harassment of others. The cost of employee absence in Canada due to bullying and harassment is estimated to be $12 billion a year (Statistics Canada, 2010).

Nonprofit organizations are not exempt from the toll of this workplace hazard. There are three distinct characteristics woven into the fabric of nonprofits that cultivate fertile ground for harassment and create barriers to reporting.

1. When a culture of goodness breeds a culture of silence

What is a culture of goodness? A culture of goodness reflects work driven by making a difference instead of making a profit; working for a cause greater than oneself. It assumes ideal values of justice, compassion, equality, trust, selflessness, generosity, integrity and gratitude.

Embedded in this framework are implied codes of conduct that can foster expectations of passivity and acceptance, including “turning the other cheek”, endless empathy for wrong-doing, conflict avoidance and lack of accountability. In these circumstances, there are few meaningful consequences for misconduct. These qualities in turn support a culture of silence.

A culture of silence exists when “keeping the peace” has a higher value than surfacing the truth, holding others accountable for misbehavior and repairing the damage done to the individuals and the workplace that are under attack. The culture of silence creates a fundamental barrier to reporting harassment.

2. Donors, boards and volunteers: Sometimes helpers hurt

In working with nonprofit organizations, we encounter numerous examples of bullying and harassment from donors, volunteers and board members. The following examples are an amalgamation of many stories we have heard.

A charitable organization had a major donor known to be inappropriately flirtatious and seductive. The CEO intentionally assigned an attractive female fundraiser to work with him to maximize his contributions to the charity. When she complained to the CEO regarding this donor’s behaviour, she was told, “He’s harmless. Is it that bad if it benefits our mission?”

Nonprofits like to attract influential and accomplished board members. These board members are typically volunteers, leaving the organization wanting to please them while also feeling at their mercy. Often there is at least one board member with a hostile or bullying approach. Nonprofit leadership and employees rarely feel empowered to confront these members and unless other board members do so, these individuals undermine the work of the board and the organization. In some instances, valued CEOs or other employees leave due to the behaviour of one board member.

Volunteers can also create challenges. One volunteer, who was also a major donor, frequently bullied other volunteers and employees. In order to protect the continuity of her donations, leadership never addressed her behaviour or held her accountable. In fact, while everyone knew about her mistreatment of others, nobody said or did anything.

The culture of silence is often reinforced by the need to protect funding and influential connections. This challenge is inherent in the realities of NPOs where fundraising goals and the needs of the organization are in conflict with the protection of employees from harassment. It is evident that the examples above reflect significant barriers to reporting.

3. HR and management: Where are the policies? Where are the boundaries?

Nonprofit organizations are typically underfunded and devote most of their resources to fundraising and the causes they support. For this reason, many have small or non-existent budgets to invest in Human Resources, training and consulting. Due to these limitations, nonprofit leaders are often unaware of current HR legislation and the organization may be non-compliant with employment standards.

Policies, procedures and programs mandated by legislation are often not implemented or poorly executed creating a lack of boundaries and standards around behaviour in the workplace. Many leaders feel they have met their obligations simply by having a harassment policy. But policies are not enough. Preventing, managing, responding to and investigating incidents of harassment require particular knowledge, skills and protocols. When these are not in place, there is a significant barrier to reporting as there is no safe process or awareness of how to do so.

Policies, programs and training: What nonprofits can do to prevent, manage and respond to workplace harassment

1. Create Buy-in. Nonprofits and their boards need to recognize that the cost of harassment is greater than the cost of investing in and developing procedures and programs to address psychological safety in the workplace.

2. Create policies and safe reporting procedures. Employees need to know standards of behaviour and what to do if they are compromised. Typically, employees are encouraged to report harassment to managers however, 78% of harassers are senior to the person they harass, so this is not a safe option. Nonprofits must have a reporting structure that bypasses this barrier.

3. Implement investigation protocols. Employees need to know when they report an incident of harassment, that a safe, thorough, fair, unbiased and confidential investigation is conducted.

4. Decision-making and results. It is not enough to conduct a meaningful investigation. To address and deter harassment, there needs to be a sound decision-making process where the safety of employees is valued more than “keeping the peace”, maintaining funding and avoiding confrontation.

5. Prevention. Raising awareness and education of employees, board members and volunteers through training is essential to creating a “O” tolerance for harassment in the workplace. Performance management that includes the measurement of interpersonal skills helps set standards and creates accountability.

BizLife Solutions is a social enterprise dedicated to promoting mental health and psychological safety in the workplace. BizLife provides easy to implement, cost effective programs with live and online training to assist organizations large and small in the prevention and management of workplace harassment.

Dr. Stephanie Bot, C. Psych. and Donna Marshall, M.A., Counselling Psychology are co-founders of BizLife Solutions, the BizLife Institute, the Harassment Education Advisory Response Team (HEART) Program and the Certificate Program in the Management of Workplace Mental Health and Psychological Safety. They are recognized for their significant contribution to the prevention and management of workplace bullying and harassment.