Creating a Safe Working Environment: 5 Benefits of Harassment Prevention Training For Employees
On a personal level, workplace harassment is a crisis. So why do so few employees treat harassment as a company crisis, too?
Workplace harassment can leave deep mental scars, drain productivity, and make it difficult to retain skilled employees. That’s why employers are slowly waking up to the value of harassment prevention in the workplace.
Here are five benefits of harassment prevention training for employees.
1. A Safer Workplace
Let’s face reality: most of us don’t go to work because we love it, no matter how excited job ads seem to get. Most of us don’t have a choice but to turn up so we can earn a living.
Given that we’re effectively “forced” into a work situation, the least an employer can do is make a workplace a safe place. Harassment prevention training is a great way to do that. By making clear that harassment isn’t tolerated in your workplace, you create a safer place for everyone.
2. Mutual Respect
Any boss knows that interpersonal relationships in the workplace can shape the landscape of your workforce. In a workplace rife with personal drama, the landscape becomes convoluted—bosses lose respect, employees fail to work well in teams, and only negative personalities stick around.
That’s why workplaces built on mutual respect tend to do better. When you hire corporate security training for harassment prevention, you create environments where employees can work better together and where management keeps the respect of its subordinates.
3. Enhanced Productivity
A safe and secure workplace isn’t just to the advantage of your employees. It also means good things for your company.
Without the distractions brought on by harassment, workers are free to concentrate on their jobs. Poor mental health can hit productivity as surely as poor physical health can—and one often leads to the other. Harassment is one of the most distressing things one can experience in the workplace, so it’s no surprise that tackling harassment also boosts productivity.
4. A Better Recruiting Pool
Word gets around. If you’ve guaranteed a secure working environment for your employees, people outside your organization will soon know about it. They may even learn about it by contrast—someone used to a harassment-free workplace is sure to react in horror when they hear stories from elsewhere.
This all boosts your company’s reputation as a safe workplace. That makes it easier to attract and retain the right kind of worker—and repel disruptive elements. In time, harassment prevention becomes a self-reinforcing filter for recruitment.
5. A Strong Company Reputation
While a happy, healthy, and productive workforce is always an advantage, remember that your company has a reputation to protect, too.
In many cases, harassment incidents have clung to companies as negative PR for months or even years. As a company gains a reputation as a place that allows harassment, it experiences the exact opposite of the benefits we’ve outlined above. Worse still, your company could make headlines for its failure to protect workers.
The Many Benefits of Harassment Prevention Training
No one should have to deal with harassment in the workplace. That’s not up for debate. With harassment prevention training, you can make that a reality and secure the many benefits outlined above.
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