Why Effective Harassment & Human Rights Training Needs to Be Tailored—And Why Most Programs Miss the Mark

Organizations rarely dispute that harassment, discrimination and microaggressions harm culture, retention, and productivity. They also know the law requires training. But there’s an unspoken truth: most workplace training programs simply don’t work.

They check the legal box, but they don’t shift behaviour. They don’t build capability. And they certainly don’t address the realities of your workplace.

As an employment lawyer who designs and delivers training grounded in adult-learning principles, I’ve spent years studying why standard programs fall flat—and what it takes to make them actually effective. My approach is intentionally different, and it’s built around three core principles: interactivity, complexity, and specificity.

1. Harassment & Discrimination Training Should Be Interactive—Not Passive

Adults don’t learn by being talked at. They learn by doing, questioning, engaging, and applying.

That’s why my programs are at least 70% interactive. Participants analyze scenarios, debate grey zones, and practice interventions using tools tailored to their actual workplace. This is not generic webinar content. It’s not a slide deck with a quiz at the end. It’s active skill-building.

Interactivity also allows people to test their assumptions in a structured, respectful way—essential in topics where defensiveness can shut learning down. When people engage more deeply, they retain more and apply more.

2. Complex, Real-World Examples—Not Obvious Ones

Many harassment or discrimination trainings revolve around cartoonishly obvious examples:

• Don’t grope.

• Don’t tell sexual jokes.

• Don’t use racial slurs.

Necessary? Sure. Useful? Not really. These aren’t the issues that confuse people or erode culture.

Real workplaces are full of grey-area situations, the kinds that disproportionately impact marginalized employees while appearing “neutral” to dominant groups.For example:

• Comments about clothing that feel harmless to men but threatening to women and gender-diverse folks.

• “Jokes” framed as personality conflicts that are in fact gender-based harassment.

• Patterns of exclusion disguised as preference or style.

These subtler behaviors cause the most cumulative harm—and they’re almost always absent from generic training.

My approach focuses on complex, nuanced, thought-provoking examples drawn from the client’s actual environment. These scenarios are where the real learning happens, because participants recognize themselves and their workplace in them.

3. Workplace-Specific Tailoring—Not One-Size-Fits-All

Even within the same industry, workplace cultures differ dramatically. A scenario that makes sense in a hospital emergency department may be irrelevant—or even confusing—to a small outpatient clinic. A manufacturing floor is not an accounting office. A corporate head office is not a remote field site.

Generic training assumes all workplaces share the same problems.They don’t.

Effective training requires:

• interviewing stakeholders,

• understanding specific risks and patterns,

• identifying how power, identity, and context show up in your organization.

This takes time and expertise. And yes, it costs more than an off-the-shelf module.

But the result is training where employees say:

“I’ve seen this exact situation here. Now I know what to do.”

That moment—recognition plus capability—is the difference between training that is forgotten and training that changes behaviour.

4. Bystander Intervention—And Beyond

Many programs now advertise bystander training based on the “Five Ds”: distract, delegate, direct, delay, and document. These are valuable tools, and I use them.

But my approach goes further by incorporating microintervention strategies, based on the work of Dr. Derald Wing Sue of Columbia University.

A quick clarification that matters:

In this model, “micro” does not mean “small.”

It refers to the individual level (as opposed to macro-level systemic discrimination). A microaggression is an interpersonal act of bias. So the intervention must also target the individual level.

My training teaches people how to:

• Make the invisible visible

Identify the underlying message of a comment (“the meta-communication”) and name why it is harmful.

• Educate without shaming

Acknowledge good intent while clarifying the harmful impact, allowing the conversation to move forward without escalating.

• Disarm the microaggression

Interrupt the joke, redirect the conversation, disagree in the moment, or use nonverbal cues to signal that the behaviour is not acceptable.

• Mobilize support and use structural tools

Draw on allies, leaders, reporting structures, and community-building mechanisms.

These tools empower bystanders, self-identified allies, and targets alike.

Most programs focus only on bystanders. This is broader, deeper, and more realistic.

5. If You’re Legally Required to Train Employees, Why Not Choose Training That Works?

Organizations often treat harassment and human-rights training as the cost of doing business. The logic is: “We have to do it anyway, so let’s check the box.”

But this is backwards.

If you’re spending money regardless, the question becomes:

Why invest in training that has no measurable impact—when training that actually works is available?

Effective, tailored training reduces:

• absenteeism,

• long-term disability associated with psychological injury,

• turnover and retention costs,

• conflict escalation,

• grievances,

• reputational risk.

It also strengthens:

• psychological safety,

• trust in leadership,

• cultural competence,

• team cohesion,

• productivity.

In other words: it costs more to do ineffective training than to invest in a program that actually changes behaviour.

Spending slightly more on the front end saves exponentially more on the back end.

And it demonstrates—to regulators, to employees, and to the public—that your organization not only understands the law but genuinely values a safe, respectful, and equitable culture.

Conclusion

My training is not off-the-shelf because your workplace isn’t off-the-shelf.

It is interactive, specific, and grounded in the complex realities of modern workforces.

It equips people with practical, immediately applicable tools—not vague principles.

And it is rooted in both employment-law expertise and evidence-based adult learning.

If the goal is compliance, almost anything will do.

If the goal is culture change, psychological safety, and risk reduction, you need training built for your actual workplace—not someone else’s.

Curious to learn more? Please reach out. I'd love to speak with you.