Could remote work spark a rise in workplace harassment?

In all sorts of ways, the wide­spread switch to remote work over the past year has been laud­ed as a major boon. It has cre­at­ed greater flex­i­bil­i­ty and free­doms for employ­ees and elim­i­nat­ed long, stress­ful com­mutes. Accord­ing to some stud­ies, it has even boost­ed pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, despite the back­drop of a glob­al pan­dem­ic.  

But when it comes to work­place harass­ment, there are con­cerns remote work­ing may have the oppo­site effect. 

Accord­ing to a report pub­lished by King’s Col­lege Lon­don in Jan­u­ary, the migra­tion to online com­mu­ni­ca­tions and the blur­ring between per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al bound­aries has meant expo­sure to work­place sex­u­al harass­ment has risen dras­ti­cal­ly. In addi­tion, with a 52 per cent increase in work com­mu­ni­ca­tions dur­ing evening hours, accord­ing to Microsoft, and an increase in one-to-one online meet­ings, it is becom­ing increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult for man­agers to mon­i­tor all work­place inter­ac­tions.

“It changes the game,” says Gem­ma Dale, well­be­ing and engage­ment offi­cer at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Man­ches­ter, and co-founder of The Work Con­sul­tan­cy. Adop­tion of video con­fer­ence calls means we’re see­ing into each other’s homes, for exam­ple, and while many par­ents are jug­gling home school­ing and work, they may have to send mes­sages or emails in the evening. Also many peo­ple are hav­ing to share per­son­al num­bers if they haven’t been giv­en a work phone. 

“All this means harass­ment has the poten­tial to come into our homes. And some harassers may even be embold­ened by this,” says Dale.

While remote work­ing elim­i­nates com­mon phys­i­cal forms of harass­ment, such as inap­pro­pri­ate touch­ing, brush­ing up against peo­ple or breach­ing per­son­al space, it opens up oth­er ways that harass­ment could be per­pet­u­at­ed, she says. 

This could include inap­pro­pri­ate online com­mu­ni­ca­tions, cyber­bul­ly­ing or gaslight­ing, a type of abuse where per­pe­tra­tors pur­pose­ly cause vic­tims to ques­tion their own rec­ol­lec­tion of events by lies or manip­u­la­tion, such as claim­ing cred­it for their work or set­ting unre­al­is­tic dead­lines. 

This can be hard to man­age for human resources teams and senior lead­er­ship. “It is not phys­i­cal­ly pos­si­ble to stop inter-employ­ee con­tact and for task-achiev­ing pur­pos­es con­tacts may well be nec­es­sary, as it would be in a ‘nor­mal’ office,” says Ian Ashcroft, asso­ciate direc­tor at pro­cure­ment spe­cial­ists Hawtrey Dene. “How­ev­er, con­stant con­tact from one employ­ee to anoth­er could be inter­pret­ed as harass­ment or even bul­ly­ing.”

Where inci­dents do occur, the more iso­lat­ed nature of work­ing from home can make the deci­sion to report more com­plex too, says Karen Beard­sell, an inde­pen­dent HR con­sul­tant and for­mer direc­tor of HR at Stonewall.

“Most peo­ple who expe­ri­ence harass­ment might sense-check with a col­league or speak to a mem­ber of the HR team before rais­ing an issue more for­mal­ly,” she says. “These infor­mal chance con­ver­sa­tions are not avail­able any­more.” 

That is an addi­tion­al blow when harass­ment takes on an insid­i­ous form, such as gaslight­ing, where vic­tims often ques­tion them­selves. A  2019 sur­vey on Twit­ter found 12 per cent of employ­ees are not even sure if they’ve been the vic­tim of gaslight­ing. 

The importance of company values

So what should HR teams and senior lead­ers do to ensure the rise in remote work is not accom­pa­nied by an increase in harass­ment? 

One place to start is by proac­tive­ly reit­er­at­ing and rein­forc­ing com­pa­ny val­ues and expec­ta­tions, says Ed Mayo, chief exec­u­tive at char­i­ty Pilot­light. “Val­ues under­pin all behav­iours,” he says. “That’s the most sure way to deal with these behav­iours, not as and when prob­lems occur, but by invest­ing in and devel­op­ing a pos­i­tive cul­ture, which gives peo­ple a ref­er­ence point as to what behav­iours fit and work well, and what indeed might not.” 

Lead­er­ship needs to be seen to mod­el these behav­iours too, he points out. The fail­ure to do just that led to the res­ig­na­tion of the UK chair­man at KPMG in Feb­ru­ary, when he was cap­tured on a video call telling staff “don’t sit there and moan” about the pan­dem­ic and dis­re­gard­ed uncon­scious bias as “crap”.

Next, busi­ness­es need to ensure all employ­ees feel able to speak up. In some respects, remote work can boost the incen­tive to report, says Lisa Bell, founder at harass­ment spe­cial­ists Tell Jane, as staff are speak­ing up from a safe home envi­ron­ment. But in oth­er ways, the mech­a­nisms for how to do so can be more eas­i­ly lost. 

“Com­pa­nies need to sign­post peo­ple to where to report and reas­sure peo­ple via com­mu­ni­ca­tions that if they do raise a com­plaint it will be tak­en seri­ous­ly and han­dled appro­pri­ate­ly,” says Bell. 

This is even more cru­cial when, as is the case with many small and medi­um-sized enter­pris­es, there is not a des­ig­nat­ed HR team or direc­tor and staff must report com­plaints to senior lead­er­ship, some of whom may also be the sub­ject of the com­plaint. It is impor­tant com­pa­nies demon­strate nobody is beyond reproach and that it takes all com­plaints seri­ous­ly.

“I don’t think enough com­pa­nies have done that dur­ing lock­down, when it comes to being proac­tive in the man­age­ment of their cul­ture and con­duct,” says Bell.

Creating a plan to stop virtual workplace harassment

Not all reports of harass­ment, bul­ly­ing or gaslight­ing arise from the vic­tims them­selves. This means organ­i­sa­tions should also offer bystander train­ing, says Dale, edu­cat­ing staff on how to spot what is and is not appro­pri­ate. The impor­tance of this type of train­ing is even greater dur­ing remote work as “the sig­nals may be weak­er when it comes to how to spot this”, she says.

“So much of our com­mu­ni­ca­tion is body lan­guage and it can be much hard­er to pick up through a screen,” Dale explains. “But you can still be a remote bystander. If you see behav­iour in a group chat that’s offen­sive or inap­pro­pri­ate, or you’re in an online meet­ing and see some­one being bul­lied, you should be encour­aged to either esca­late it in the room or report it after­wards.”  

When an inci­dent is report­ed, HR teams or senior lead­ers need to ensure they have a clear plan in place for what hap­pens next, urges Bell. In some ways remote work can facil­i­tate inves­ti­ga­tions as mate­r­i­al or mes­sages are often saved and can then be used as evi­dence. Also there are no legal issues in con­duct­ing dis­ci­pli­nary pro­ce­dures or griev­ances via Zoom. But too often even large organ­i­sa­tions do not know what to do when they are faced with a com­plaint of harass­ment.  

“Lead­ers don’t like to talk about this stuff, they see it as their dirty laun­dry,” says Bell. “But it’s hap­pen­ing in all organ­i­sa­tions and I always encour­age those I work with to deal with this con­struc­tive­ly.”

Regard­less of the tra­jec­to­ry of the pan­dem­ic, remote work is set to be a main­stay of work­place cul­ture for the fore­see­able future. Fail­ure to act on work­place harass­ment could see com­pa­nies fail­ing to reap its many poten­tial ben­e­fits.