'It's challenging when we're putting our trust in managers to communicate these policies to staff': Canadian researcher
Researchers at Thompson Rivers University and the Kamloops Sexual Assault Counselling Centre (KSACC) have partnered up in a research project to try to understand why sexual harassment persists in the restaurant industry.
Through surveys with Kamloops area restaurant workers, managers and owners, project lead Dr. Rochelle Stevenson hopes that new strategies can be developed to support and educate restaurant workers and managers.
The first phase, conducted last December, involved preliminary interviews with owners and managers about what workplace policies they had around sexual harassment. Approximately 30 percent of the restaurants they spoke with had no sexual harassment policy, and about 12% had a general harassment policy. Interestingly, Stevenson said, there was a proportion of managers who didn’t know if they had one or not.
“It’s challenging, when we think about the fact that we're putting our trust in managers to communicate these policies to staff, and when they're not being communicated that means that there's a there's a gap, not only in safety for staff but in the whole culture of the workplace, in terms of safety for everyone,” said Stevenson.
Lack of education leads to lack of compliance with sexual harassment laws
Many of the respondents who didn’t have sexual harassment policies in place demonstrated misconceptions around when such policies are necessary, Stevenson said; employers would cite reasons such as only hiring women, or only hiring high school students, as reasons why they believed sexual harassment would not pose a problem in their workplace.
“To us, that represents the belief in a variety of myths around sexual harassment in terms of who it happens to and who's engaging in it, and that represents an educational opportunity for businesses,” Stevenson said.
“The idea that it doesn't happen among younger folks, the idea that it is only perpetrated by specific groups of people … not only is a bit of an age myth, that it can't happen among the younger age groups, it means that it doesn't happen in single gender environments, when we know it does. So, some of those misconceptions around sexual harassment as a whole, I think is a really important thing to chat about.”
Stevenson’s hope is to use the data to inform and develop educational programming for organizations that will fit with the particular needs of the restaurant industry, such as short, five-minute training videos that can be implemented before or after shifts.
She also identified low levels of government follow-up as a roadblock, but acknowledged that the nature of the industry, with establishments constantly opening and closing, would make enforcement and investigations a challenge.
Employers required by law to have sexual harassment policies
“There's a precariousness that is unique to the restaurant industry, where people are very reliant on their jobs,” said Flora Vineberg, lawyer and workplace investigator with Rubin Thomlinson in Toronto. “And anytime there's that level of vulnerability, there's openness to exploitation, and it can be really dangerous for people. And I don't think there's any excuse anymore for employers to not be held responsible for these types of violations, and I think courts are more aligned to that.”
Regardless of any reason for a lack of sexual harassment policies in their workplaces, employers are still responsible for investigating every complaint of sexual misconduct, with or without a formal process in place, Vineberg said.
As recent court decisions have demonstrated, employers can be found liable for sexual misconduct that occurred without a policy in place, and also when an employee has committed a single or first offence.
“They ought to have known that there was sexual harassment occurring in their work environment, and that there is an obligation to look into that. An employer can't just continuously throw up their hands and say, ‘Well, we didn't know, there was no formal complaint,’” Vineberg said.
“There needs to be a wholesale recalibration of understanding what sexual harassment is, and believing in the importance of having a proper policy in place, because that is one of the primary ways you can ensure the safety of your staff, and nothing less is to be expected nowadays.”
Sexual harassment study initiated by support workers
The project was originally initiated by the KSACC in an attempt to gain more data to better help individuals who they say are accessing their services because of sexual harassment in their workplaces – usually in the service industry.
“People have the right to be safe at their workplace, and unfortunately, a lot of people are not,” said Alix Dolson, Agency Coordinator of KSACC. “Because of the pervasive culture, particularly in the hospitality industry, around sexualized violence, often these reports of incidents are not taken seriously.”
Dolson said that there is a “compounding” effect that occurs when sexual harassment goes unaddressed, which staff at the centre witness when vulnerable workers leave jobs due to being unsafe, then consequently lose their homes or need to access social supports which often aren’t available.
“When a person doesn't have the right to safety in their own job sites, whether or not they continue working there is really challenging,” Dolson said. “So we have folks that are traumatized and trying to navigate that trauma, while also trying to navigate the compounding results of housing insecurity and poverty that may result from that original assault.”
Harassment study to address sexualized culture of restaurant industry
A large and seemingly insurmountable problem identified by restaurant workers, experts and academics alike is the ingrained culture and acceptance of varying forms of sexualized behavior in the industry.
It is this decades-long culture that makes legislating – and enforcing – sexual harassment policy in restaurants so difficult, says Stevenson.
“Even when there is a policy in place, there's this general culture, the acceptability of some of the components of sexual harassment, the sexualized banter, the silly jokes, those kinds of things, which are components of sexual harassment, but it seems to be part and parcel of the culture of the industry. And that's one of the things that we are trying to investigate.”
Phase two of the study, which is currently under way, involves questions around how individuals define sexual harassment, how they react to it, and which behaviors they’ve witnessed or perpetrated. Phase three, commencing in the Spring of 2024, will comprise in-depth interviews with staff, managers and restaurant owners.
“We recognize that time is money, and that the labour costs are often one of the largest expenses for businesses, and restaurants are working on very slim margins,” said Stevenson.
“So that's where we're going with the education piece, identifying where those gaps in knowledge are and trying to provide short, accessible, easy to roll out materials that employers and staff can use.”
Recommendations for HR
Vineberg recommends clear sexual harassment policies in every workplace, complete with concrete guidelines around reporting, investigating, and consequences.
It’s not about virtue-signalling, she said, it’s about creating a culture of safety where every employee knows exactly where and how to report an incident of sexual misconduct.
Plus, it is simply the law.
“We have a better understanding of sexual harassment now and how it manifests at work,” she said.
“We understand the impact it can have on employees, we understand the liability, that employers can sometimes be found vicariously liable for the misconduct of their employees, in a civil lawsuit, and laws are amended to reflect this by putting greater emphasis on managers’ responsibility, legally and culturally.”
