Doing Better Than “Don’t Do This”: Rethinking Sexual Harassment Training

A common pain point I hear from clients about sexual harassment training that they've downloaded (or hired) is that it was so boilerplate and obvious that it went in one ear and out the other. The lessons often go like this:

• Don’t touch anyone

• Don’t talk about your sex life

• Don’t make sexually explicit jokes

Most employees already know that overtly sexualized behaviour is inappropriate in the workplace. And yet sexual harassment complaints persist. The issue, as human rights and labour adjudicators have made clear time and again, isn’t usually ignorance of the rules.

What the Law Actually Shows

In sexual harassment cases, respondents frequently argue that they didn’t intend to harass anyone. That defence rarely goes far. Intention isn’t part of the legal test.

What’s more revealing is what emerges when you look closely at the facts. Patterns appear. The conduct at issue is often less about sexual interest and more about reinforcing power. Importantly, power in this context isn’t limited to formal hierarchy. Many cases involve dominant cultural power rather than positional authority:

• female managers harassed by male subordinates

• sexualized “locker room” conversations used to assert masculinity or sexual superiority

• behaviour that functions to put someone else “in their place”

The common thread is not a failure to understand the rules, but conduct that places or keeps another person in a position of relative inferiority.

The Bystander Problem (Including Managers)

Another striking feature of many cases—particularly those involving group-based harassment—is how many people didn’t actually want to be participating. They went along with it out of fear: fear of standing out, fear of backlash, fear of becoming the next target.

Most workplaces don’t have a large number of active perpetrators. They have a large number of bystanders.

And managers are often among them.

Tribunal decisions are full of manager testimony describing how behaviour was misinterpreted as someone just being a “hard ass,” minimized as harmless banter, or accepted on the assumption that everyone was voluntarily participating. That misreading frequently leads to inaction. When managers don’t intervene, norms harden. And it becomes much harder for anyone to seek support later, particularly in cases of subordinate-on-superior harassment.

Why “Don’t Do This” Sexual Harassment Training Falls Short

This is why training that focuses only on telling people what not to do rarely works. We’ve known for years that training is unlikely to change deeply held values. Lists of prohibited conduct tend to address only the most obvious, extreme behaviour—the kind that already triggers formal complaints or investigations.

What they miss are the more common, insidious forms of harassment that don’t register as “incidents” in the moment but nonetheless shape workplace culture and exclusion. These are precisely the behaviours that often fly under the radar of managers and HR until they’ve already caused harm.

A More Effective Focus: Bystanders, Microinterventions, and Context

A more effective approach is to equip bystanders—using that term broadly to include employees and leaders—with practical tools to intervene and reset norms in real time.

That doesn’t mean expecting confrontation every time something feels off. In many situations, that’s unrealistic and unsafe. What’s far more useful is teaching a range of recognized microinterventions: small, proportionate actions that interrupt behaviour, signal boundaries, and shift group norms without escalating conflict.

Resetting norms is possible, especially when it’s done by people with cultural or positional safety—those who already belong, have credibility, or aren’t at high risk of retaliation. (A classic example often cited in training is the visibly masculine or high-status employee who casually opts out of sexualized talk, signalling that participation isn’t required to belong.)

Effective bystander-focused training helps people learn how to:

• Recognize when “banter” is actually doing power work, particularly against women or members of marginalized groups

• Opt out of or quietly redirect sexualized conversations without calling undue attention to themselves

• Use positional credibility to support a colleague being targeted, including managers facing coordinated pushback from subordinates

• Understand that if something feels off to them, they are very unlikely to be the only one noticing

Importantly, incorporating these strategies into training also sends a powerful signal: that the employer understands how harassment actually shows up at work. That signal alone can make it safer for people to seek support—something that is often especially difficult in cases where the target holds formal authority but lacks cultural power.

Moving Beyond Compliance

Organizations that want to meaningfully reduce (and eventually eliminate) sexual harassment complaints need to move beyond checkbox compliance. The goal isn’t simply to remind people of the obvious. It’s to give them realistic, context-sensitive tools to act when the obvious isn’t so obvious in the moment.

That shift—from “don’t do this” to “here’s how to respond”—is where training starts to change behaviour, not just satisfy a legal requirement.

A Different Approach to Training

My approach to workplace training is deliberately different from the usual checkbox-style sessions. Rather than focusing on abstract rules or worst-case hypotheticals, I design training that is grounded in real case law, real workplace dynamics, and the specific power structures that exist in your organization. The emphasis is on practical, context-sensitive strategies—especially bystander and manager interventions—that actually change behaviour and make it safer for people to speak up early.

If you’re interested in training that goes beyond “don’t do this” and instead equips people to recognize, respond to, and reset harmful dynamics as they arise, I welcome you to get in touch.