Employee Satisfaction with Sexual Harassment Policies: The Training Connection

Abstract

This paper explores satisfaction with sexual harassment policies in public sector workplaces, using a survey of municipal employees to address the following policy questions:

What types of sexual harassment policies do employees want?

How would employees handle complaints of sexual harassment?

How satisfied are employees with current workplace policies?

What appears to enhance policy and process satisfaction?

It concludes that public sector organizations should:

Include confidentiality protections and sanctions in policies;

Require that parties to a complaint be fully informed of the outcome;

Increase awareness and knowledge of policies through employee training;

Train supervisors in interpersonal skills and investigatory processes;

Utilize teams to investigate allegations of sexual harassment; and,

Understand that training and process implementation issues are more important to employee satisfaction than the policy itself.