Harassment Prevention Training

[Bork]

It's the most useless thing ever. The only thing that came out of it was I got paid to sit there and drink my coffee and eat my free bagel. Extra bonus: because they provided bagels, I have a scone to eat for breakfast tomorrow!

We had to watch this super dumb video that, judging by what everyone was wearing, was made in the early '90s. It was horribly overacted, everyone was crazy cheerful and peppy and excited to be talking about harassment in the workplace. It reminded me of the (also so stupid) videos about theft prevention I had to watch when I worked at the Gap. After the video, we had to discuss five different scenarios with our neighbor, and decide whether there was harassment or not. Duuuuuuuuumb.

I don't have a problem having to go to meetings like that. I think a refresher in what's work appropriate and what's not is a good thing to have every now and then. The thing I hate is how it's handled. Don't show us some dumb video that makes it impossible to take the topic seriously. Show us a serious video. Give us real scenarios, or at least scenarios that aren't as cut and dry as the ones we were given. It's not the obvious cases of harassment that are the problem, those are easy to spot. The situations people have a harder time with are the ones that are more ambiguous, and leave you not sure whether what's happening is harassment or whether you're just being overly touchy and you need to let it go.

[Aum]

Oh no, not a 90's education video. When they show a video so old it shows they don't take things seriously. Honestly, update your stuff.

Also, how non-interactive can you get? Watch a video and then talk to your neighbour? Sounds like the person teaching it wanted to do less work.

[Bork]

Also, how non-interactive can you get? Watch a video and then talk to your neighbour? Sounds like the person teaching it wanted to do less work.

Well, she was talking a bit too, but that was another thing that bugged me: There was such little effort put in on our HR person's part. The meeting really seemed like they felt obligated to have a harassment prevention meeting, so they slapped this together just for show. Just so that they can say, "oh look, we've told people how to behave and not behave! We're doing something to prevent harassment in the workplace!"


Back in September, one of my coworkers was fired - basically for being a harassing douche. I'm pretty sure that's why we had a meeting about this. Months and months and months too late.

[Sonic#]

So it's presented both out of context and without addressing the original situation? That sounds horrible. And the message that they send, in the lack of effort, is that harassment is not a serious offense.

[monk]

What to know the scary part? if they were to show a video with a realistic scene of someone putting inappropriate moves upon one of their co-workers, the video itself could be objected to by someone and be a cause for litigation for harassment.

Things of an overtly sexual nature cannot be used even to teach about how inappropriate actions that are overtly sexual are.

Political correctness is teh shizzit.

[LunchBox]

Sexual harassment trainings are just going through the motion nowadays. When I took it for my campus job we watched that silly 90's video and signed paper saying we knew what sexual harassment was and would not do it before letting us go. While it's a half-assed way to do thing to fulfill legal obligations and whatever quotas I can't come up with a much better and more hands on (no pun intended) way to do it off the top of my head.

[Neko]

Oh man, I flashed back to the sexual harassment video I had to watch as part of training for a previous job. It was more of the stupid "watch these scenes and decide which ones could be totally offensive and stuff!" One of the scenes was a knock knock joke. "IMPATIENT COW." "IMPATIENT COW WH--" "MOOO!!!111!1"

[rowan]

No no that's Interrupting Cow!