A new survey shows incidents of sexual harassment in Alberta workplaces are often going unreported

A new report shows that more than half of Albertans have observed sexual harassment in the workplace, but only one in 10 reported the incident.

The Workers’ Resource Centre is a charitable, not-for-profit organization that helps Albertans navigate their workplace rights when it comes to injury, human rights, disability insurance, and more.

The centre does this through a casework program that assists workers facing difficulties and through public legal education workshops that ensure workers know their rights.

Carolyn Krahn, executive director of the Workers’ Resource Centre, says their existing programming found gaps between sexual harassment happening in the workplace and what was being done about it.

Due to this, they decided to appoint RA2 Research to conduct a survey in early May of this year.

Key findings

The report, “Albertan Perceptions and Experiences with Sexual Harassment”, found that 49 per cent of workers in the province have experienced workplace sexual harassment, and that 61 per cent had observed instances of sexual harassment.

Of these numbers, only 11 per cent had reported the incident to a superior and seven per cent had described the incident to human resources.

“I don’t think the report is a surprise to a lot of us working in this area,” Krahn says.

“Sexual harassment can take many forms. It's not just inappropriate physical contact, it can be jokes, it can be one-off remarks, it can be the idea that there's a power imbalance and someone can hold job prosperity over your head if you don't capitulate to their demands. It takes a lot of different forms and a lot of it is really about power.”

The report says women under the age of 55 are far more likely to experience sexual harassment in the workplace.

Data also showed staff in organizations between 20 and 99 employees were significantly more likely to experience sexual harassment in their workplace as compared to those working in smaller or larger organizations.

Why not speak up?

Krahn says most people who have suffered sexual harassment in the workplace are reluctant to report the misconduct due to fear of the repercussions they may face.

“People are worried about job loss,” she says.

“If somebody brings up sexual harassment to their human resources person or their manager, they're often terminated. They're not terminated for bringing it up, at least not on paper, but they'll often find another way to terminate people.”

This is not always the case, but Krahn says she’s seen it occur many times among their client base at the Workers’ Resource Centre.

Due to these isolated incidents, most victims fear reporting sexual harassment and ultimately decide not to take any action at all.

Harassment from home

Although workers are stronger at identifying sexual harassment in the workplace, Krahn says that the increasing shift into hybrid work has further challenged people’s perception of sexual harassment.

“What does sexual harassment look like on a Zoom call?” Krahn asks.

The number of workers who have experienced virtual harassment is rising but Krahn adds the younger demographic is experiencing it at higher numbers.

“The reality is, if workplace sexual harassment can reach you while you're working from home, then that really takes away a place of safety for people.”

HereForHelp.ca

In response to the survey, the Workers’ Resource Centre launched HereForHelp.ca – Alberta’s Sexual Harassment Resource Hub for Albertans facing sexual harassment in the workplace.

“The goal is really to simplify and centralize the answers to many of the questions that people have about workplace sexual harassment,” Krahn says.

“It actually has a set of guided pathway questions to help someone navigate the site and understand what their issue is. Then it creates an automatic referral to the correct agency.”

In the past, she says that finding the correct agency for information took multiple steps, multiple phone calls, and multiple retellings of the sexual harassment incident.

“The goal is really just to keep referrals more centralized to prevent the retriggering or retraumatizing of individuals the more times they have to tell their story to another agency or another person,” she says.

Systematic change

The website and the agencies referred by the website don’t specifically address the workplace issue for you, instead, they help provide people with the proper information and tools to handle it themselves.

“Our goal is to put the individual in the driver's seat of making their own decisions, and we're just there to support and offer resources and advice.”

HereForHelp.ca is a great step to helping address workplace sexual harassment, but Krahn says systemic change needs to occur in order to correct it.

“It really begins with the executives and management taking a hard edge against anything that could be construed as sexual harassment,” she says.

“If we have leaders in spaces that don't put up with that type of behaviour, we can address it on a systemic level. We also need to recognize that workplace sexual harassment is not a woman issue. It's a human rights issue.”