5 Essentials of Sexual Harassment Training for Employees

In today’s modern businesses, no matter what industry, it’s important employees understand what is and isn’t acceptable behavior in the workplace. That’s why it’s critical that everyone has harassment compliance training in New York. Recently, state and city laws have mandated training for everyone, not just supervisors and managers. New York organizations have a responsibility to ensure the workplace is a safe and respectful environment. By providing this training to employees, companies do their part to prevent harassment, bias and discrimination while fostering a positive, inclusive work environment. When choosing a program that meets stringent NY harassment training requirements, make sure it provide the following 5 essentials:

Focus on Strengthening Workplace Culture

Harassment training is not supposed to divide, but create a more positive workplace environment. When choosing trainers and training modules, it’s important that the curriculum focuses on strengthening the working relationship instead of causing a divisive workplace environment.

Increase Awareness of Inappropriate Behavior

The goal of workplace harassment training in New York is to create awareness of unacceptable behavior. With the rise of the #MeToo movement, many workers find that they’re not sure what the boundaries are anymore, especially in the gray areas. The best sexual harassment training for employees provides concrete examples of what inappropriate behavior looks like and how to make choices that don’t create conflict, discrimination, bias, or fear in the workplace.

Includes Management

Sexual harassment training under New York law needs support from the top. Management and supervisors must have proper training and send a strong message to their employees that inappropriate behavior won’t be tolerated. When management is on board with the message, the entire team knows that preventing harassment is a key business objective. This can’t happen if a training program doesn’t offer specific management training.

Online Sexual Harassment Training

With so much business conducted online, companies need to find programs that have a curriculum that includes online sexual harassment training for New York mandates. Many programs talk about what not to do in the workplace, but don’t address how these policies transfer to online relationships. How do you address a co-worker in an email? What verbiage is okay to use and what isn’t? These are examples of the types of topics covered and questions answered in the online portion of the training.

Accessibility

Another essential element of training is accessibility. Companies, large, small, and in-between, don’t always have time in their busy day to schedule blocks of time for in-person training. If you find this is an obstacle for your company that makes it hard to comply with the mandatory training requirements, find a training module that allows your employees to access the training even if they don’t have email or computer access.

Final Thoughts

Companies must have a workplace environment that makes everyone feel safe and free from sexual harassment. The training you select should be inclusive and include sexual harassment awareness for all genders and sexual orientations. In today’s modern world, there are many gray areas that people are ignorant about and need professional guidance to make sure they’re not, unknowingly, creating a hostile work environment.

To learn more about harassment compliance training that complies with the New York mandates, contact Impact Compliance Training today!