This is KPBS midday edition. I'm Maureen Cavanagh. Five years ago on this date the San Diego City Council accepted a resignation deal for Mayor Bob Filner. By that time at least 19 women had come forward to accuse the mayor of sexually inappropriate conduct. In the years since Filner left office the problem of sexual harassment has received more and more public attention culminating in the Mitsu movement. Women and the smaller number of men who have been sexually harassed are demanding a reckoning and significant changes in professional behavior. Sexual harassment training is now mandatory in many workplaces including PBS. But does it work. Joining me is Johnny Taylor CEO of the Society for Human Resource Management the world's largest H R professional society. And Johnny welcome to the program. Oh thank you for having me. By and large how have professional workplaces responded to the new awareness about sexual harassment and has that response been effective. Fortunately most organizations professional and frankly non-professional in the sense that you know are not requiring master's degrees in traditional professions are responding in ways that we haven't frankly ever seen before. And it's a really positive thing. They now understand the seriousness of it and they're responding accordingly and thus we are now seeing significant training interventions. We're seeing you know at times and historically you know we had a a more tolerant sort of approach to sexual harassment and other forms of workplace harassment. And now it's just not accepted it's not OK. You make the argument that the kind of video training that most businesses give their employees or quiz based training doesn't always achieve the desired ends why not. There are a couple of reasons why traditional training modalities didn't work some is they're not interactive. And so one of the challenges with putting someone in the front of a computer and having them sit through sort of a you know 10 or 15 minute video and click a few questions is you don't know if they're engaged. And as I said they can't ask the specific questions to know what behaviors are acceptable and under what circumstances. So you know one of the things that we're seeing as a result of this is much much improved training and development opportunities around sexual harassment training. Now there's a sort of gray area. You talk about between actual sexual harassment and a really inclusive workplace. Can you explain that for us. Yes most people don't really understand the definition of sexual harassment is is pretty extreme I mean it uses words legal definition uses words like pervasive passing comment by someone in the workplace no matter how inappropriate is if it's just one instance. And if it's not tied to a quid pro quo or an exchange of this or that promotion or pay or whatever it doesn't really rise to the level of sexual harassment. But increasingly organizations are saying that's the floor. Employers are saying it's not enough to avoid legal liability. We now want to create environments where people bring their best selves to work and that they enjoy coming to work and don't feel like they come into a hostile environment. So we've actually migrated past the legal minimum to what are now standards that are companies are laying out the standards saying this behavior won't be accepted here. You testified before the state legislature earlier this year and made a really interesting comparison between a healthy workplace and a healthy body. How does a healthy workplace naturally avoid sexual harassment. Right. Healthy workplaces identified much like the body when there is something that invades the body some foreign tocsin your body responds all of your blood cells respond and that causes the white blood cells come in and they fight back. And what we know and what we're seeing now is when it comes to sexual harassment. Well yes you can have the thread of the EEOC or the threat of termination. The best cultures operate in such a way that the employees themselves essentially we jokingly say vote people off of the island they say your level of behavior is toxic and we like the human body must get you out. And so that's why we think it's an appropriate way to think about it. So what are some practical steps institutions can make to change their culture around the issues of sex power relationships and harassment. They've got to be clear about what their values are guiding principles values statements that say this type of behavior not just limited to legal sexual harassment but any of these types of behaviors are unacceptable here. So more importantly got explain to people what sexual harassment is not and that big failure on a lot of training initiatives that we've seen at the Society for Human Resource Management. If we spend a lot of time telling people what is sexual harassment I've already said sexual harassment is a very very low bar or high bar from a legal perspective depending upon how you think about it. And so what we've got to do is spend time telling people that this behavior that is engaged in or that you observe in the workplace may not be sexual harassment and probably isn't sexual harassment but it's not something we're going to tolerate. I've been speaking with Johnny Taylor CEO of the Society for Human Resource Management and Johnny thank you. Thank you.
San Diego Mayor Bob Filner handed the San Diego City Council his resignation five years ago today following accusations by several women that he sexually harassed them.
Since then, scandals involving inappropriate sexual behavior in the workplace seem to have erupted everywhere in every profession, so much so that sexual harassment training is now mandatory in nearly every type of workplace: corporate, non-profit, academic.
But does the type of training that many of us receive actually work?
Yes and no, says Johnny C. Taylor, CEO of the Society for Human Resource Management, the world's largest professional human relations professional society.
Taylor joins Midday Thursday to discuss what works and what does not.
