Sexual Harassment Scandals Prompt Rapid Changes in the Workplace

Sexual Harassment Scandals Prompt Rapid Changes in the WorkplaceTop brass at advertising giant Interpublic Group of Co s. told its 20,000 U.S. employees last week they had until year's end to complete sexual-harassment training. The session quizzes employees on what to do when a co-worker discusses weekend sexual exploits at work or comes on to a colleague's girlfriend after hours.

Source: Source: WSJ - Carol Hymowitz, Lukas I. Alpert and Suzanne Vranica | Published on November 13, 2017

Human Face, Human Hand, Palm of Hand, Self-Defense, Women

IPG doesn't have a harassment scandal. Chief Executive Michael Roth told his board he fast-tracked announcing the mandatory training, a board member says, in response to high-profile harassment allegations in Hollywood and media.

"Women are crucial to our business and our workforce," says Mr. Roth. "We need our environment to be safe for all."

The wave of misconduct allegations has abruptly shifted the climate in American workplaces, prompting companies to scrutinize how employees work with one another, in one of the most rapid changes in corporate behavior in generations.

Vox Media says it tapped an outside firm to examine its procedures following the dismissal of an executive for inappropriate behavior. Uber Technologies Inc. says it added staff to examine worker concerns including reports of inappropriate conduct, following female employees' allegations of harassment and mistreatment.

At a growing number of companies that haven't had public allegations of sexual harassment, including Dell Inc., Rockwell Automation Inc. and Facebook Inc., some employees have attended training sessions meant to detect biases that can lead to harassment. House Speaker Paul Ryan last week called upon members of Congress to provide sexual-harassment training for their staffers.

The dam broke with the October revelation in New York Times and New Yorker articles that Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein for decades allegedly engaged in sexual misconduct. His namesake studio fired him, citing the allegations as cause. A spokeswoman for Mr. Weinstein said he "unequivocally" denies "allegations of nonconsensual sex."

Since the October reports, more reports of workplace sexual harassment have emerged from individual women and men, and from news accounts and companies. As accusations pile up, they are sparking public and private workplace conversations about how men and women work together, and how companies deal with same-sex harassment.

Managers describe a clear epochal shift: Before Weinstein to After Weinstein.

"This is a moment where people will not turn their heads when something is wrong," says Pamela Craig, a former Accenture PLC finance chief who sits on the boards of Merck & Co. and Akamai Technologies Inc. and is foundation chair at C200, a women's leadership organization. "We need to make it a watershed."

Some liken the moment to the early 1990s, when Anita Hill testified that Clarence Thomas, then U.S. Supreme Court nominee, had sexually harassed her when he was her boss, igniting a national conversation about workplace harassment. He denied her allegations. Mr. Thomas's supporters questioned Ms. Hill's credibility and motives, and he was confirmed to the court in a 52-to-48 vote.

Support for women's issues swelled-a flood of new female members of Congress were elected in 1992, dubbed "The Anita Hill Class"-but workplace changes were limited.

The speed and sweep of the consequences this time around show how shifting social values, given a catalyst, can abruptly force change in the social-media era-a phenomenon also seen in rapid policy shifts toward same-sex marriage.

In the case of Mr. Weinstein, the fact that some of his accusers were well-known actresses forced people to take notice and emboldened millions more women to share their stories online, using the hashtag #MeToo.

Boardrooms typically don't address the topic of sexual harassment unless a lawsuit has been filed against the company or a complaint involves a named executive. Now, some directors say they can no longer sit on the sidelines.

"Just as boards should not wait for the Equifax breach to put in place proper cyberdefense and data-security policies, similarly they shouldn't require a grotesque Harvey Weinstein example to suddenly say, ‘oh, gee, we better check how our own culture is,' " says Tom Glocer, former Thomson Reuters CEO, who sits on several corporate boards including Morgan Stanley and Publicis Groupe SA .

More allegations are certain to emerge, business leaders say. But the treatment of women in the workplace is getting better, many say, not worse. Kathleen Peratis, a partner with the law firm Outten & Golden who handles harassment cases, says she believes there is somewhat less harassment today than there was 25 years ago, largely because women have more power at work and are expressing more outrage.

"Women feel they aren't going to be sent to Siberia, and that's giving them courage to speak out," says Maggie Wilderotter, former Frontier Communications Corp. CEO and a director at Costco Wholesale Corp. , Juno Therapeutics Inc., Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. and Cadence Design Systems Inc. Women now possess greater visibility and power in business, she says, coupled with a belief that they have strong career options.

Ms. Wilderotter has noticed a generational change. At a recent dinner gathering of about 30 senior executive women, "practically all said they had to fend for themselves" in the past with unwanted sexual advances at work. The new generation of working women, she says, is less willing to sweep things under the rug and knows employers are more likely to take action and investigate.

Before Weinstein

Even Before Weinstein, recent high-profile scandals in media and entertainment were beginning to draw more attention to sexual misconduct in the workplace.

At Fox News, Roger Ailes was ousted as the network's boss following allegations against him that led the company to pay out millions in settlements to alleged victims. Top Fox host Bill O'Reilly also departed following revelations that he and the company paid settlements to women who had accused him of harassment. Mr. O'Reilly denies all wrongdoing. Mr. Ailes, who denied wrongdoing, died this year.

Fox News parent 21st Century Fox Inc., which shares common ownership with Wall Street Journal parent News Corp, says it has "directed its businesses to accelerate the pace of live training on workplace behavior" and "continued to strengthen reporting practices."

Walt Disney Co.'s ESPN, which has been through intense periods of self-examination about men and women at work, continues to tackle internal culture issues. On Oct. 23, it canceled a show made in partnership with Barstool Sports after Sam Ponder, a female ESPN host, tweeted that Barstool's president, David Portnoy, made sexist statements about her, calling her a "slut" in a 2014 blog post, among other comments.

ESPN knew of those statements at the time it chose to proceed with launching the show, believing there was enough distance between Barstool's on-air staff and the company's president, people familiar with the matter say. Before the first episode aired, executives spoke with Ms. Ponder, who expressed confusion and frustration, they say.

Still, the network was surprised by Ms. Ponder's tweets and feedback from other employees, one of the people said. Some asked whether the company would continue with the Barstool show if the offensive comment had been a racist one, rather than a sexist one. That resonated with top ESPN executives, who canceled the show after a single episode. Barstool didn't respond to a request for comment. In a statement streamed online after the show was canceled, Mr. Portnoy said: "I get why ESPN canceled the show. The executives there were put in a box."

After Amazon.com Inc.'s Hollywood studio head, Roy Price, resigned after a sexual-harassment allegation against him was made public, Senior Vice President Jeffrey Blackburn sent Amazon Studios a memo saying "we will use these events as an opportunity to review our sexual-harassment policy and processes to ensure they are doing their job to provide a harassment-free workplace. And if they are not, we will make the necessary changes."

Amazon declined to comment. A spokesman for Mr. Price referred inquiries to an earlier statement to the Journal by Mr. Price's lawyer contesting the allegation.

The latest controversies have left employees wondering what relationships, communications and interactions are appropriate at work. Complicating matters is the always-on work culture in sectors such as tech, finance, law and media, where long hours and constant communications blur the line between work and life.

Reaction has been remarkably swift at many companies, even when some of the alleged offenses were decades old.

Michael Oreskes, a top NPR news executive, resigned last week following reports he made unwelcome physical contact with two women when he was the New York Times's Washington bureau chief in the late 1990s. Mr. Oreskes, who described the behavior as "inexcusable" in a statement, didn't respond to requests for comment.

NPR says it has brought in an outside law firm to review how it handled the matter. The Times says it has reviewed its files and interviewed managers from the time in question and found no formal complaints about Mr. Oreskes's behavior. It has announced additional mandatory training for its managers on appropriate conduct in the workplace and how to respond to allegations of abuse.

‘Tipping point'

"We are in an appropriately hypersensitive time," says a prominent media executive who sits on multiple industry boards. "We've crossed a tipping point and people are taking this much more seriously now."

Vox Media took rapid action after a former web developer, Eden Rohatensky, published a long post on Medium, a blogging platform, on Oct. 12 alleging sexual harassment and assault by colleagues at a number of places she had worked, without naming people or workplaces. One incident she described, in which an unnamed vice president kissed her neck in the back seat of a taxi, got the attention of executives at Vox, where she had once worked, says a Vox spokeswoman.

A week later, CEO Jim Bankoff announced that editorial director Lockhart Steele had been fired after he "admitted engaging in conduct that is inconsistent with our core values." An outside law firm was brought in to help with an "ongoing" probe. Mr. Steele and Ms. Rohatensky didn't respond to messages seeking comment.

"There are multiple investigations happening," Mr. Bankoff told staffers the following day, according to Vox's spokeswoman. "This is something that is extraordinarily serious but also extraordinarily new to us."

The intense focus on workplace sexual harassment, while overdue, may lead to unintended consequences, says Michael Welp, whose consultancy, White Men as Diversity Partners, has worked with large employers including Rockwell Automation and Dell. Some men in Mr. Welp's corporate workshops describe avoiding conversations and teamwork with women colleagues, he says, "afraid that if they do one thing wrong, they'll get labeled a harasser and sent to HR."

That leaves women out of the conversations and collegial relationships that could help them advance, he says. "Companies have to grapple with all sides of this."

Some men who believe women's stock is rising at work find it hard to accept that harassment may be a problem in their firms. At a workshop that his company held recently with managers at the Stockholm office of a U.S. technology company, Mr. Welp says, the men present said "we don't have these issues, so we don't have to deal with this."

But a female human-resource manager told the group she had been trying to deal with a male manager who brought a scale to work and weighed and measured the women on his team. "Our question to the group," Mr. Welp says, "was ‘why weren't other men here intervening and stopping that, and what about this culture enabled this to occur?' "

Similar questions have echoed in the venture-capital world following a series of news reports detailing alleged harassment of female entrepreneurs by several male venture capitalists. Emotions ran high at an August emergency board session called by the National Venture Capital Association to address the reports and discuss fixes, says Kate Mitchell, co-founder and partner at Scale Venture Partners, of Foster City, Calif., and former chairwoman of the group, which represents hundreds of top venture firms.

The group has held subsequent workshops and meetings with the affected women and others. "More men began to say ‘first of all, this is no longer somebody doing something on their own and it's a one time guy with too much money and too much alcohol,' " Ms. Mitchell says.

Rather, she says, their view was: "This is now becoming more systemic, it's impacting the way we do business, it's bleeding back into the way we interact inside our firms."