Sexual Harassment Trainers

Dianna

Our company is located in Georgia, and we are thinking about trying to find someone that specializes in sexual harassment training. The goal right now is to have them come to our property to hold special sessions on this subject for our team members, maybe twice a year.

Is there anyone who has any ideas on where I might look on-line for something like this? Or does anyone know of someone who does this type of thing?

Thank you for your help!

Margaret Morford

Dianna,

I do quite a bit of this sort of training along with training on other topics like FMLA, ADA and discrimination. Before I was in HR, I was a trial attorney defending companies against these types of charges. (I am now a "recovering attorney!") Currently, I do preventative education for my consulting clients.

I also have a consultant who can do sexual harassment training in Spanish if you have a large group of employees for which English is a second language. This individual not only does the training in their native language, but overcomes the cultural issues that hispanics employees wrestle with in the workplace with regard to sexual harassment.

Regardless of who you get to do this for you, the education of your work group needs to be different from what you offer your managers. While you want to make sure that harassment is not going on in the workplace, you don't want to pay to educate your employees to the point that you give them a "how to sue the company" lesson. Managers should be educated enough, not to make lawyers out of them, but to make them aware when they have their hand on a legal issue and need to come ask you for help. Most of what you deal with is the stuff that arises because managers didn't understand that they had a legal issue developing that could have been dealt with easily early on if they'd just come to see HR. The training should be informative as well as fun. I'll be glad to discuss with you how we do it if you will contact me at 615-371-8200.

Margaret Morford
theHRedge
615-371-8200
[email]mmorford@mleesmith.com[/email]
[url]http://www.thehredge.net[/url]

Down_the_Middle

Dianna:
There are a ba-zillion trainers out there that can help you, altho like anything, "caveat emptor"..... If the I-Net doesn't produce any prospects, try [url]www.astd.org[/url] The Amer Society of Tr'ng and Development has a site with chapters (locations) and trainers that are avail. Many law firms offer affordable (well, kind of) attorneys that provide this sort of thing.

Sally

If there's a law firm that you have dealt with on employment law issues you could check with them. Our attorney handled the training for us. She did one session for managers and a separate one for the rest of the staff. Because she handles sexual harassment claims and other issues from management's standpoint, she could cite some great examples of the types of things that can lead to a claim of harassment.

Mike Maslanka

a thought---most lawyers can not really deliver the most important messages on training...we get wound up with legal stuff,not the practical stuff...we are great at scaring the devil out of folks,but that is only one-half of the challenge...think about margaret and hredge ,or try [url]www.workrelationships.com...both[/url] are great,and give you more than just we as lawyers can...regards,mike maslanka

Dorris

I've used a company called ELI, Inc., based in Atlanta, with good results. Their program is titled "Civil Treatment" and focuses on appropriate behaviors to maintain the right environment. Good background on legal applications, and helps to reinforce the message that it's not just about being legal - it's about creating the appropriate business environment. Check out [url]www.eliinc.com[/url] for details.

njjel

What about HR doing the training rather than spending dollars on an outside source? Any recommendations/thoughts on that?

System

Here's my input:

While it's true that you can save money by doing the training yourself, I think that having good outside trainers sometimes is well worth the money, just for the fact that they are taken more seriously than "insiders", even if there is respect by employees for the hr department in general. Also, for me personally, public speaking in definitely not my strong point ( in fact I have an awful fear of speaking to large groups!), so I prefer to use outside trainers and I obviously do the general co-ordination of the meetings. But in our company culture (manufacturing), I have found that our employees do respond much better to outside trainers, and they do take them seriously.

Ana