55% professionals believe complaining about harassment at work do more damage to the victim’s career: Study

The #MeToo movement witnessed several people, especially women, opening up about their experiences of sexual harassment in their workplace, and a recent study tried analysing how the movement impacted the work environment of companies. The research concluded that women feel less safe at work than they felt before, and more than half of the participants believed raising an issue impacts the career of the victim more than the harasser’s. Here are all the details of this study.

In a survey done by SurveyMonkey (a survey platform) for LeanIn.org, a non-profit founded by Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg to support working females, the researchers interviewed more than 5,000 working professionals and asked them a bunch of questions related to workplace harassment, how safe they felt in their office, office policies, the consequences of #MeToo movement etc.

The positive change after #MeToo was that 68 per cent of the participants believed workplace harassment was taken more seriously and only about 8 per cent believed the allegations levelled against someone were completely false.

The same survey was conducted last year as well and comparing the statistics, the percentage of women feeling safe at office has gone down. 85 per cent women feel safe at work, whereas the figure was 91 per cent last year.

Most of the respondents felt the harassers, especially the employees with good performance at the workplace, were not adequately punished, and only 16 per cent agreed that high-performing employees guilty of misbehaving were held responsible for their action.

Around 55 per cent of the participants believed that it was the victim whose career got impacted more than that harasser when he or she raised an issue. Not just this, 69 per cent, seven out of 10 participants, believed the consequences lasted for longer period of time for the victim.

While 46 per cent workers believed their company took action to address an issue of harassment last year, the same figure rose to a whopping 70 per cent this year. The measures taken by the companies included sexual harassment policies, providing guidance on how to report the issues and talking about appropriate conduct at work.

Shockingly, 60 per cent of the male employees hesitate to interact with their female counterparts, but it seems workplaces have no role in promoting this perception. 82 per cent of the professionals agree that their workplace does not discourage them from mentoring, socialising or even traveling with someone of the opposite gender. What does it indicate? It’s not the company’s policies but an individual’s thought process that might be leading to unfair treatment at the office.

(All images used here are representational)