The Drama-Free Workplace
How You Can Prevent Unconscious Bias, Sexual Harassment, Ethics Lapses, and Inspire a Healthy Culture
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The Drama-Free Workplace
How You Can Prevent Unconscious Bias, Sexual Harassment, Ethics Lapses, and Inspire a Healthy Culture
About This Book
Eliminate sexual harassment, unconscious bias, ethical lapses and other HR nightmares!
Companies spend millions on legal compliance training and initiatives to eliminate workplace drama and the resulting low morale and lawsuits, but don't always get the results they want. Most organizations understand that simply checking legal compliance boxes around sexual harassment, bias, etc. isn't enough, but are at a loss on how to implement solutions, especially in today's post-#MeToo world.
Patti Perez is an attorney, HR expert, trainer, and former state regulator, who has conducted over 1, 200 workplace investigations. In this unique book, she explains the secret to avoiding all forms of drama, legal exposure, and low morale: A healthy workplace culture. Patti combines the lessons learned from 25 years of professional experience with robust data from behavioral science research to debunk common myths, including the belief that a focus on legal compliance leads to a healthy workplace culture. (In fact, it increases the likelihood of getting sued).
The Drama-Free Workplace includes a section with easy-to-understand causes, effects and solutions to problems related to:
- Sexual harassment
- Bias and diversity
- Ethics lapses
The book also includes helpful information on:
- Becoming an organization that values and practices fearlessness, fairness and freedom
- Anticipating situations that give rise to drama, with detailed advice on how to prevent it from happening
- Using emotional intelligence to communicate more precisely and persuasively about sensitive, controversial topics in the workplace
Finally, the book's DIY section guides companies on how to:
- draft and enforce helpful policies (that employees will actually read and *want* to follow)
- design and deliver powerful and effective training programs
- investigate and resolve claims of sexual harassment and other types of misconduct.
Together, these practical tools will help all your employees feel valued and motivated, and keep drama, disengagement, and lawsuits, away.
Frequently asked questions
Information
PART I
Diagnosis Drama: What You Can Do to Identify, Prevent, and Fix Workplace Drama
1
How to Blow Up an Organization (and Rise from the Ashes)
#WorkplaceDrama: Identifying Problematic Behavior
- âHarassment.â This word is in quotes for a reason; itâs a word that is misunderstood and therefore misused. Too often, people use the term to describe behavior that is annoying or bothersome. While that is the dictionary definition of âharassment,â the legal meaning is quite different. More than likely, youâve had this conversation before. Youâve had to explain this distinction between the laymanâs definition and the legal definition, though hopefully youâve made it clear that even behavior that is âless thanâ illegal is nonetheless problematic and needs to be addressed. Harassing conduct takes many forms and involves the entire gamut of personal characteristics, but the type of workplace harassment that is most often discussed remains sexual harassment. And of course, in the post-#MeToo world, itâs taken on an additional urgency. In many instances, an employee complaining about âharassmentâ is actually referring to disrespectful, rude, or demeaning conduct, and, in more severe cases, workplace bullying. Having a respectful and civil workplace environment is vital to having a truly healthy workplace culture, but a problem canât be fixed if it is imprecisely stated. It requires a new plan and it is one of many ways that a company needs to blow up before it can rebuild.
- Bias â conscious and unconscious. Youâve seen bias, or at least allegations of it, every day, right? It may take the form of a boss who is playing favorites, inaccurately describing someoneâs performance, or making judgmental comments. Undoubtedly, youâve also had discussions about unconscious biasâwhether it involves African-Americans who are arrested for waiting for a friend at a coffee shop or women who say they experience âmansplainingâ at meetings. The reality of unconscious bias and the ways in which it affects our decision-making is well chronicled, even if the average employee still doesnât understand it completely.
- Perceptions of unfairness. âI work just as hard as Sarah, but Joe always gives her a higher rating and a higher raise.â âI just wish I knew the rules of the game so I could succeed at this company.â âThey tell us that there is a procedure to deal with this issue, but we all know rules are bent if you have the right title.â âI honestly have no idea why my boss dislikes me and treats me so disrespectfully.â Whether these examples ultimately uncover actual unfairness ends up being of little consequence. If employees have a reasonable perception that an individual or âthe companyâ is treating them unfairly, you have workplace drama you need to deal with. (More on this in Chapter 5.)
- Ethical lapses. Many examples of ethical lapses involve a lack of thought and analysis. While there are certainly examples of employees embezzling money or committing other blatently fraudulent acts, in many instances the ethical lapse is an employee receiving a gift from a vendor, a committee leader advocating for his friendâs company during an RFP process, or a manager going against policy and hiring someone without going through the pre-established procedure. Regardless of whether the conduct is purposeful or is due to laziness, ethical blunders, and how the company deals with them, are a common source of drama at work. (More in Chapter 4.)
Root Causes of Workplace Drama
- Inauthentic leadership: A lack of authenticity creates or perpetuates a belief that management is hypocritical, that they only talk the talk but donât walk the walk. In this environment, employees lose enthusiasm for their jobs, passion for what the company represents, and, most dangerous, they lose trust.
- Problem-solving deficit: A lack of authenticity leads to inconsistency, usually seen in the form of the failure to implement solutions in an even-handed way. Over time, this creates actual unfairness (and also creates a strong perception of a lack of workplace justice).
- Persistent confusion: Unfair or illegal?: Repeated inconsistency in dealing with conflict (e.g., ignoring misconduct, conducting sham investigations into claims of misconduct, uneven distribution of consequences when misconduct is proven) not only leads to the erosion of trust, but it also increases the probability that employees will perceive any level of misconduct not only as unfair, but also as illegal. This increases the chance that they will make internal or external claims of legal violations. If made internally, the company must go down the compliance route and conduct a formal workplace investigation. Or the employee might choose to file a lawsuit. And in todayâs social mediaâfilled world there is another choice. An employeeâs grievance could end up on a blog, an employer review website, a social media site, or as an exposĂ© on the front page of a national newspaper. Yesterdayâs biggest workplace fear might have been an employment lawsuit. Today, brand value is more easily lost with one press of a button . . . a button that says âpost.â
Imprecise use of legal terms
Table of contents
- Coverpage
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Foreword
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
- Introduction
- PART I. Diagnosis Drama: What You Can Do to Identify, Prevent, and Fix Workplace Drama
- PART II. âHikingâ to the Top of the Healthy Workplace Culture Pyramid
- PART III. A DIY Roadmap for Creating and Maintaining a Drama-Free Culture
- EULA