Sexual harassment revealed to affect one third of workforce

The latest wellbeing@work study led by Massey Business School’s Professor Jarrod Haar, Ngāti Maniapoto, Ngāti Mahuta, explored the experiences of sexual harassment in the workplace and various related issues.

Using data from 1037 workers across a range of genders, ages and geographical locations, Professor Haar reports 67 per cent reported no experiences of sexual harassment over the last six months, with the remaining third reporting the opposite.

The most common form of sexual harassment included the telling of suggestive stories (33 per cent), making sexist comments (25 per cent) and making crude sexual remarks (23 per cent).

Professor Haar says while the overall frequency levels of sexual harassment are low, it remains a persistent issue.

“While overall the regularity of sexual harassment from a supervisor, manager or co-worker is uncommon, it’s certainly not sitting at zero. The data shows eight per cent of respondents reported experiencing sexual harassment beyond rarely within the past six months, and given sexual harassment is both illegal and immoral, these results are concerning.”

When breaking down the responses, the data showed women experience sexual harassment more, with 35.8 per cent reporting incidences. However, men aren’t far behind, with 30 per cent reporting harassment. Female respondents were found to report higher frequencies of sexual harassment than men.

While no difference was identified by sector, regional location or ethnicity, managers reported higher levels (35.8 per cent) of harassment compared to employees (31.2 per cent). Through examining the data, Professor Haar found female managers report the highest levels of sexual harassment, at 53.6 per cent compared to other groups, with young workers (aged 30 and younger) being more likely to report sexual harassment when compared to everyone else at 41 per cent.

Outside of being detrimental to workers’ wellbeing, Professor Haar says the data shows sexual harassment can impact organisations.

“Those experiencing sexual harassment are more likely to retaliate with counterproductive work behaviours and are more likely to quit their job, reporting higher job stress, lower happiness and being more likely to be bullied at work. Those experiencing high sexual harassment are also 4.2 times more likely to experience severe job burnout. Sexual harassment can have a ripple effect, being incredibly harmful to those affected, but also their employer around turnover and performance.”

Professor Haar says no organisation should tolerate these behaviours and more needs to be done to prevent occurrences of sexual harassment in the workplace.

“The findings are alarming, particularly in showing us that managers – especially female managers – are at the highest risk and this is complicated because it might include being harassed by their own manager or peers. Organisations need to provide good opportunities for HR complaints and follow through with strong support. With only eight per cent of respondents reporting sexual harassment experience beyond rare in the last six months, we might think such behaviours are simply uncommon. But given the impact on personal wellbeing and performance, organisations need to have a ‘zero tolerance’ for such behaviours in their workplaces and bring that statistic right down.”