Despite legislation designed to protect workers, we continue to hear about high profile cases of workplace sexual harassment. Benjamin Black looks at why the ‘easy option’ of online compliance training is not driving behavioural change.
Another week, another headline. A prominent actor accused of sexual harassment. A group of junior associates forced to sign NDAs. A major corporation pledging “zero tolerance” … again.
If it feels like we’re stuck in some kind of perpetual loop, that’s probably because we are.
This is happening despite the fact that we’re now living in a post-Worker Protection Act world. As of October 2024, UK employers have a legal duty to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment.
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You’d think that would be a wake-up call. Yet here we are, still shaking our heads as another scandal surfaces.
And yet most organisations are trying. Or at least, they’re doing what they believe is required to tick the “we did something” box.
Companies are hastily rolling out compliance training, inboxes are flooded with mandatory links, and employees are gamely clicking through scenarios about fictional employees (why are they always called Mark and Jasmine?) having awkward conversations in the lift.
Click, click, click. Quiz passed. Certificate awarded. All done? Not quite.
This isn’t working
There’s a reason the media headlines keep coming. If the goal is to reduce harassment (actually reduce it, not just put a digital signature on a corporate spreadsheet) then something isn’t working.
The truth is that online training modules, while better than nothing, are the lowest common denominator when it comes to education.
They’re convenient, scalable, and cheap. And for busy HR departments under pressure to deliver “compliance” across entire organisations, they’re an easy sell.
One-size-fits-all. Low effort. High coverage. Done in 20 minutes, just before lunch. But they are not always the right solution to an endemic problem.
Let’s be honest — how many of us have really absorbed the contents of a click-through training course?
How many people do the course whilst actually reflecting on their own behaviour, or the subtle ways culture and power dynamics play out in their teams, while watching a poorly acted role play on screen, which may not even be relevant to their place of work?
Grey areas
The thing with harassment, particularly sexual harassment, is that it rarely announces itself with a flashing neon sign.
It exists in looks, in jokes, in offhand comments, in lingering silences. It often thrives in the murky grey area of “was that okay?” and “am I overreacting?”. And when it’s not addressed, it becomes normalised. Shrugged off. Rolled into the wallpaper of workplace culture.
Which is why the stick of legislation, important though it is, doesn’t automatically shift culture. It can’t.
Compliance might stop the worst behaviours, but it does very little to build the kind of environment where people instinctively understand boundaries, respect, and how to create a supportive environment built on trust.
Real-life scenarios
That kind of cultural shift needs more than a multiple-choice quiz. It needs conversation and it needs discomfort.
It needs people to engage with real-life scenarios, ask questions, challenge assumptions – and, crucially, listen to perspectives that aren’t their own.
This is why in-person, interactive training is so important. When done well (and let’s not pretend all in-person training is gold), it encourages participation and interactivity, allowing space for nuance using real life, relevant examples.
It makes room for those difficult “but what if…” discussions and challenges that you just don’t get when sitting at your desk clicking through an online module.
In a room with others, people learn by observing reactions, interpreting tone, catching those subtle cues that tell you when someone is genuinely uncomfortable or just British-level awkward.
And that matters, because at its core, this isn’t just about compliance or even just about harassment. It’s about culture.
Culture is what happens when nobody’s watching. It’s the jokes that get made when the manager’s not in the room. It’s how someone’s report of inappropriate behaviour is handled; not just the formal process, but the side comments, the raised eyebrows, the slow fade-out from meetings.
Beyond policy
Culture determines whether someone speaks up or stays silent and whether they trust the system or feel safer avoiding it. And it’s a living, intangible aspect of what happens when you get a group of humans together which can’t simply be dictated by policy.
So yes, by all means, keep the online training. It’s a start. It’s a record. It’s a baseline.
But don’t kid yourself that clicking through a module equals behavioural change. Don’t think for a second that a digital quiz has taught your team how to challenge the senior exec who keeps “joking” about interns, or how to back up a colleague who’s clearly uncomfortable at the pub social.
If organisations are serious about tackling harassment, and not just serious about looking serious, then they need to invest in the stuff that feels harder, creating spaces for open discussion in the everyday and encouraging line managers to take ownership.
Because ultimately, preventing harassment isn’t just about stopping the next headline; it’s about building an organisation where nobody needs to worry about being the next headline in the first place.
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