Brace for Impact: How to Prepare for Rising Harassment Complaints

Workplace harassment and discrimination complaints have been steadily rising, and that trend is only expected to accelerate. Shifting power dynamics, return-to-office efforts, the political climate, and more are fueling a new wave of employee expectations and organizational risk.

So how can you help your organization stay ahead?

SHIFT HR Compliance Training’s timely, expert-led webinar unpacked the real forces behind this rise—and what steps every organization should be taking to reduce risk and cultivate a respectful and resilient workplace culture.

We also busted common myths – like the Executive Orders have changed what counts as harassment – and shared how to evolve your prevention strategy for today’s workforce.

In this session, you’ll learn:

✔️ What’s fueling the rise in complaints

✔️ The four key steps every organization should take now to minimize risk

✔️ How to modernize training to protect your people and your organization

Stay informed and stay prepared!

Moderator

Karen Byington, Director, Content Development, SHIFT

Karen brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to her role as Director of Content Development at SHIFT HR, where she collaborates with a multifaceted team of experts in employment law, social psychology, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), HR, and Learning and Development. Her collaborative approach ensures that SHIFT HR’s training initiatives are not only comprehensive but also tailored to meet the evolving needs of the workforce. Karen holds a DEI certification from Cornell and is a certified Workplace Violence trainer, which underscores her proficiency in addressing critical issues that impact workplace culture, safety, and well-being. 

Panelists

Katherin Nukk-Freeman, Co-Founder & Chief Culture Officer, SHIFT

Katherin is the Co-Founder and President of SHIFT HR Compliance Training and a passionate advocate for building better workplaces. As a dynamic employment law advisor, training instructor, and industry thought leader, Katherin partners with clients to develop and implement learning journeys to educate and evolve workplace culture and incorporate strategies to manage risk, comply with the law, foster an inclusive workplace, and create an overall better workplace with flourishing for all. 

Kristy Grazioso, SVP, Associate General Counsel, Wiley

Kristy is Associate General Counsel at Wiley, where she oversees global employment law, litigation, and privacy. She spent the early part of her career litigating employment-related claims before moving in-house over a decade ago. While at Wiley Kristy also led Wiley’s global Employee Relations function for four years overseeing the handling and investigation of harassment and discrimination claims. With over 20 years of experience, Kristy brings deep, practical expertise in managing harassment investigations and implementing compliance strategies across multinational environments.

Brace for Impact: How to Prepare for Rising Harassment Complaints Webinar Transcript

Hello everybody. We’re ready to start our webinar on Brace for Impact, how to Prepare for Rising Harassment Complaints. So for those of you that don’t know me already, I’m Karen Byington. I’m the director of content at Shift HR, and we are a compliance training company that offers e-learning in the areas of HR compliance and workplace culture.

At Shift, we really specialize in delivering interactive, legally grounded training that engages your learners and drives lasting behavior change. And so just before I go in and introduce our amazing panelists that you see with me, I just wanna go through a few brief logistics and I promise they’ll be fast, but some of you are attending for SHRM and HRCI credit, and so I’m gonna be giving those codes midway through the presentation so you can jot them down. Kristin is also gonna add those into the chat, so if you see them there, you can write them down for your credit.

And speaking of chat, please use that if you have any questions or comments you wanna make along the way, I’m gonna be monitoring throughout the discussion, so anything we can answer in the course of the webinar, we will. And anything we don’t get to, we’ll respond to you following up the webinar. We’ll follow up with you. And if you want any more information about anything that we’re discussing today, um, we’ll be giving you information on how to follow up with us and contact information at the end. We’ll also have a recording of the webinar, so feel free to go on the website to get that recording. And you can review any information we share, you can share it with your friends and colleagues.

Um, and we encourage you to follow us on LinkedIn so that you can stay informed of future webinars, any resources we have, um, any updates regarding HR compliance and workplace culture.

Kristin’s gonna drop a link into the chat for you so you have a link to, um, our LinkedIn page and you can, um, follow us there. Um, she’s also gonna be adding in some dates in July and August. We have team members that are going to be doing some demo days, so it’s a free no obligation demonstration of our preventing workplace harassment and discrimination courses.

So if you want a chance to get a preview of what the courses look like and ask specific questions about our training, um, please feel free to sign up for those.

Um, and lastly, we very much appreciate, if you wouldn’t mind taking just a minute, following the end of this presentation to answer a couple of quick survey questions will take you less than a minute, but your feedback really does help us, um, provide better content in the future and build stronger presentations to help you create better workplaces.

So thank you for taking a minute to do that.

So now I get to introduce our fabulous panelists. Um, and some of you already know Katherin Nook Freeman. She is the president of Shift HR Compliance training and is a passionate advocate for building better workplaces. She has been an employment lawyer for 30 years, so you wouldn’t know by looking at her. She isn’t a dynamic employment law advisor, a training instructor, and an industry thought leader and she regularly partners with clients to educate and evolve workplace cultures, to incorporate strategies that comply with the law that foster inclusive workplaces and to create an overall better workplace with what she loves to call flourishing for all. So Katherin, thanks for being here.

And then we have is our very special guest today, the lovely and talented Kristy Grazioso. She is the Associate General Counsel at Wiley, where she oversees global employment law, litigation and privacy. She spent her early part of her career litigating employment-related claims before moving in-house over a decade ago. Kristy’s led Wiley’s global employee relations function for four years, overseeing and handling investigations of harassment and discrimination claims. And with over 20 years of experience, Kristy brings deep, practical ex expertise, um, in management, harass in managing harassment investigations and implementing compliance strategies across multinational environments. So Kristy, thank you so much for taking the time to be with us.

Thank you. Thrilled to be here.

And we thank all of you for being here today and joining us. Um, and talking about harassment claims is a daunting topic and one that we know you’re concerned about, which is why you’re here. So the good news is that you’re in really good hands with our panelists today, and they’re gonna be able to address the questions that you have on your mind. Like, why is this happening, why are complaints rising, and what do we do about it?

So Katherin, why don’t we let you set the stage and what are you seeing in terms of workplace complaints and the trends of workplace complaints today?

Absolutely. Absolutely. So I’m sure you all are seeing what we’re seeing, right? And that is the complaint volume when it comes to employment law, complaints is rising and it’s been rising the past few years, and it’s doing so with increasing frequency. In fact, as Karen mentioned, I co-founded two businesses in employment law firm and an e-learning training company. And the law firm just can’t hire enough people.

We are constantly hiring new employment lawyers because our clients, unfortunately are, are getting sued more often than they have been before. And, and really there’s no no end in sight there. And it’s for a number of different reasons. I mean, we all, we all see it, right? We see, we see it in the news, we see the social media employees today are more informed than they ever have been before. They’re more vocal than they ever have been for before, and they’re less tolerant, um, of any kind of behavior that they view to be offensive or abusive or harassing. And they will let us know as HR leaders and as corporate leaders if they feel like, um, something is happening that should not be happening.

We have the whole backdrop of the Me Too movement of the George Floyd incident and everything that has ensued since then. Um, to get a little bit more specific, between 19, uh, between 2021 and 2024, workplace discrimination charges have surged 44%. And that was before, that’s, you know, I I was referencing 2024. So that was before all the newly divisive social discourse that has followed the new administration’s proliferation of executive orders and EEOC guidance.

We know there’s been a lot, we know there’s been a lot in the news about the significant changes, and we know employees are talking about it and they’re talking about their agreement with it, and they’re talking about their disagreement with these changes, and that’s causing the social discourse that, that I referenced.

Um, in 2024 alone, the EEOC received over 88,000 workplace discrimination charges, and that was almost a 10% increase from the year prior. So that was last year. And like I said, we’re bracing to see what will the increase be this year. And you’re gonna hear about what other factors are contributing to potential increase this year over last year. So it’s, um, it’s a, it’s a trend. It’s a trend that we as HR leaders need and want to get on top of.

I know all of you on the call are as committed as we are to creating what Karen referenced as flourishing workplaces. And so what we wanna do is take this opportunity when we are in an, an increasing environment of complaints to really hunker down and focus on workplace culture and build the strongest culture we can while trying our hardest to prevent harassment and discrimination complaints from happening. So I’m biased when it comes to a training front. I believe you need the best possible training to set your managers and your employees up for success. You’re not doing check the box training anymore.

You need to take steps to reverse this trend of increasing harassment and discrimination complaints. Some other reasons why these complaints may be more common today than they were a couple years ago. We also recognize that the whole return to in-person work post COVID may also be playing a role. People may have forgotten how to appropriately interact with one another in the workplace when they’re in person and they, um, or they may have become more sensitized to these types of issues when they’ve been home for a few years.

So employees are readjusting to shared space. Oftentimes they’re readjusting to more confined shared space. So many employers have more hoteling offices now they have employees more compressed because maybe employees are working in the office three or four days a week. And so an employer isn’t going to give them their own office. So this is additional friction that employees are dealing with and it may be leading to, to misunderstandings.

Uh, as I mentioned earlier, pundits are really predicting that that social discourse that I refer to with respect to disruptions to the workplace on account of the executive orders that address DEI, for example, or the EEOC guidance, which addresses protected categories.

This is creating social discourse, the opportunity for more disagreement between employees.

I was looking at a, a recent study and there are many of them, and we’re gonna refer to some other ones, but that said that over 50% of your employees are in disagreement about the contraction of DEI programs and under 50%, but not significantly under are in agreement.

So we have all these employees coming to the workplace and it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s a close split between who’s in favor of it, who’s not, and then the question is, who’s gonna be vocal about being in favor in it and not, and then as we mentioned earlier, the reach of social media posts, whether it’s about this discourse or otherwise, is much broader than it ever used to be.

And there really is when it comes to the harassment and discrimination laws, there’s really no safe haven if you have employees who are posting potentially offensive or harassing statements on social media, even if they believe it’s part of their personal life and their right to speak up if they have employees following them or reading what they’re posting, that’s a problem from a workplace harassment and discrimination perspective.

And many employees don’t understand that.

And, and that’s what I always like to get back to when we talk about the issues we’re gonna talk about today.

I know that most of you understand and know what we’re talking about, your HR leaders, your HR professionals, but the key is how do we make sure we transfer this knowledge that we, that we all on the call have to the other leaders within our organizations who aren’t keeping up on employment laws and HR issues, and then to the employees who report to them.

So that’s really what we need to be thinking about. Whatever we cover today, how do we transfer this knowledge? Is it through training? Is it through conversations? Think about how we can transfer this knowledge because we do wanna set our team members up for success.

So the way I look at it is that this shift that we’re talking about, this social discourse that we’re talking about, it really underscores the need for proactive training, both in building our workplace cultures and also educating our employees on their responsibilities to prevent harassment and discrimination is, it’s, it’s more important than ever to not only reduce risk, but simultaneously grow our workplace culture because the stronger our workplace culture is, the less room there will be for these types of complaints to proliferate.

So true. Kristy, do you have any other, um, developments or relevant trends that you’ve been noticing that have been having an impact on harassment complaints?

Yeah, I think Katherin really sort of covered the broad gambit of why we’re sort of seeing this swirl and this increase. I do think the social discourse is really sort of the most prevalent and prominent one that we’re seeing.

You know, I think the language of the orders, I think some of the language of the media, which has probably been slightly inflammatory, can really create tension peer-to-peer within certain colleagues in like what feels like water cooler conversation, either expressing support for or disagreement with something that’s going on politically.

And I also think, you know, leveraging sort of the return to office and that hybrid work, I think some of it is the tools that have sort of helped enable us work remotely have also sort of contributed this in some way.

Katherin, thinking about what you were saying about social media, you know, I think we see even at our organization due to hybrid work, we have our own internal social network platforms like Yammer channels and Viva engage, and that also sort of spawns this, you know, you’re sort of simultaneously encouraging colleagues to express themselves and communicate, but it really sort of runs a fine line there and, and I think there’s a real risk of like increasing that dialogue and it being perceived as microaggressions and the way that those can be perceived and then reported much more readily.

So true. That’s true. Speak Kristy, you mentioned, um, the executive orders briefly.

Can you just talk a little bit about how, and some examples of how those executive orders and recent court decisions can be misinterpreted in a way that leads to this increase in harassment discrimination among colleagues? Yeah, Absolutely. I think one example, you know, I think many people might believe, or some people might believe that since the executive orders didn’t affirmatively support the right of transgender individuals and a lot of the discourse in the media that that now gives license to make negative remarks or negative comments about transgender  colleagues and those remarks are very likely to be perceived or viewed as harassing by those colleagues that may identify themselves in that category.

And similarly, you know, with this laser focus that we’ve seen in the media on illegal DEI, I think workplace conversations and comments around privilege or systemic advantage also have the real risk of being perceived as hostile, right?

So to Katherin’s point, it’s really important for employers and it’s something, you know, I work with, with my organization quite a bit to really proactively address these nuances and these conversations with robust training, but helping managers and colleagues understand that like the conversation, you know, needs to still be balanced and in accordance with sort of respectful workplace policies and, and making sure that everyone understands that there’s a space for conversation, but that it needs to sort of happen in, in a safer container.

That’s, that’s such a great way of putting it, Kristy.

And, and I think the issue is again, since most of the managers, frontline managers and their employees don’t have this employment law HR background, they don’t necessarily understand that just because DEI programs may be may be con, you know, contracted in one way does not mean that the law has changed in terms of who you can harass or discriminate against.

So yeah, that’s a great point.

Yeah. In the same vein, Kristy, can you tell us, um, and help clarify what the EEOC means when they talk about reversing their, you know, clarifying reverse discrimination. So I know that’s been a hot topic and something that people are concerned about raising the number of complaints based on that new guidance. So absolutely what they tell us, Well, the EEOC was very clear. So they issued guidance in March of this year along with some corresponding guidance from the Department of Justice and very explicitly stated that the EOCs position is that there is no such thing as reverse discrimination. There is just discrimination. And so what this sort of emphasizes is that for Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, it protects all employees equally regardless of their race or sex or other protected characteristics.

So the EEOC is saying, you know, where we get a claim, we’re going to apply the same standard of proof to all discrimination claims regardless of whether the person bringing that claim is part of a majority group or a minority group, which in their perception ensures that no group receives any preferential treatment under the law.

And springboarding off that, very recently the Supreme Court came down with a unanimous decision in the case of AIMS versus Ohio Department of Youth Services. Um, and they similarly removed a key legal barrier for majority group employees to bring forward claims of re reverse discrimination. And so previously someone in a majority group, so you know, a white colleague or a heterosexual colleague who wanted to make a claim of reverse discrimination needed to really meet this heightened standard of evidence, right?

They had to sort of present evidence that the employer was like unique and discriminated against to the majority. The court completely scrapped that extra burden requirement and that extra burden test that forced these plaintiffs to, to meet a higher bar. So the court’s message here, similar to the EEOC was crystal clear discrimination is discrimination for all employees.

And with that barrier gone both at the EEOC and now through the Supreme Court, you know, across the United States, plaintiffs of any background employees of any background will feel newly empowered to file. And many are anticipating that this is going to lead to a bump and a rise in reverse discrimination cases, especially with the sharper than ever focuses by the EEOC, both on the concept of reverse discrimination and that it doesn’t exist.

But also, you know, the rhetoric around de and i policies and you know, I think what I found to be sort of most interesting about the e EOCs March guidance, I mean, I think it really can be read as a playbook for how to lodge a reverse discrimination claim or what they’re now calling just a general discrimination claim.

You know, they point to specific portions of any DEI programming that could be perceived as problematic. They really have sort of laid it out, which really helps to see where their focus is and again, underscores the importance for employers to get in front of this and really prevent this type of bias retaliation and making sure that there is consistent enforcement of all policies and practices and investigation protocols across all employee groups.

That, just to add to that, you know, here we are talking about the risk of increased litigation, reverse discrimination litigation.

If we think about the increase over the past however many years, three, four years I was referencing earlier, all of that was, or most of that was basically increases because of, uh, minority representation bringing claims about against their employer.

So if we think we’re gonna continue to have that increasing trend and now we’re gonna add to it potential reverse discrimination claims, again, all of a sudden that makes what we’ve already talked about so far that much more important because the increase could be, could be something like we haven’t seen before, right?

That’s the title Brace for impact, right?

Right. Brace yourself, Brace yourself.

Katherin, we’ll switch gears a little bit about talking about kind of, we laid all the groundwork.

So how are you advising companies to navigate all of these complexities?

So, so I’ve always been a, a proactive person. I always try to take a proactive approach, whether it’s in my personal life or my professional life. And even as a junior employment lawyer, I, I started out at a, at a large well-known litigation firm where we would defend employers who were sued. And then I actually grew and developed their preventative employment counseling department to really help employers avoid the litigation or at least make sure they’re doing all the right things so that if they do get sued, they have a much better chance at winning the litigation.

So, so my philosophy has always been prevention is the best protection. And I actually even go further to say you’re either gonna pay now and, and, and minimally to protect yourself, whether it’s through good advice, whether it’s through auditing your practices, whether it’s conducting really meaningful training to educate your workforces or you’re gonna pay later. And chances are, if you pay later, you’re gonna pay a lot more later.

So to, to the extent you can be a long-term thinker and your organization can view things more on a long-term basis, you’re better off putting your time, your energy, your resources, your money at a more minimal level now to take steps to proactively reduce the legal risk and to grow your culture.

So what I’ve seen is the companies who actually do invest that, that time, the resources, the money and the prevention are also the ones who are going to be more likely to avoid more of the internal complaints, the costly litigation, the public relations fallout, the low engagement of employees who are working in a place where they’re not so happy and the attrition and then the costs that go along with that.

We know as HR people, it’s hard enough to find really good people as it is, but if our environment is causing people to leave at a greater rate, then we’re gonna have to do that more often than we’re doing right now. So there are a number of things that we can do to take these preventive preventative steps I’m referencing.

So as a first step, and I’m sure most of you have done this already, ensure you have comprehensive and updated as of 2025 updated policies in place which reflect this rapidly evolving workplace.

So for example, make sure your prevention of harassment discrimination policies that you have right now and you’ve had for years are updated to reflect the new guidelines that have been reflected in the executive orders and in the EEOC guidance. So you wanna make sure they’re updated to include all of those evolving issues. You also wanna make sure if those policies are not already updated to reflect the concern of social media and how that comes into play. You wanna make sure that the policies reflect, um, the personal social media posts of employees.

So those are two, you know, two ways that you can start off by, by really taking preventative steps. Um, one of the other changes you may consider making sure harassment, discrimination policy, and you’ll wanna get advice from legal counsel on this, especially if you have offices in multiple geographical locations. But you may wanna consider changing references in your policies regarding discrimination to, um, which are based on gender to based on sex instead of gender. And I mentioned different locations because many states such as New York and New Jersey and California, and I know a number of you are on from those states, um, have broader employee protections than those under the federal law. And so you wanna make sure you don’t make any changes that that still, um, that, that would cause you to violate these state laws. So you have to comply with the state laws in which you operate.

Um, you also wanna make sure that, um, you, um, have, as I mentioned, social media guidelines not just referenced in your prevention of harassment and discrimination policy, but that you have a standalone used to be like electronic communications policy, but it’s evolved to more of a social media policy now. And, and those policies you have to update on a regular basis because as we know, platforms are changing regularly, you may have referenced TikTok and now we know it’s x and and the list just goes on from there. So you really wanna make sure that your, your policies are reviewed on an annual basis.

If you’re an employer in New York, in New Jersey, in California, where these employment laws are changing literally on almost a monthly basis, you really should have to, to say you’re gonna review your handbook and revise it on an annual basis is probably not conservative enough. So you really wanna make sure that that’s just a remaining priority.

Those, those handbooks, they’re living, breathing documents and, and you wanna have them in place, one, to really educate your workforce.

But two, because if you experience this increase in complaints that we’ve been talking about, you’re gonna wanna have that solid documentation. And a handbook and a policy is, is certainly a piece of solid documentation in order to more effectively defend any harassment or discrimination complaint. It really goes a long way in showing, look, as a corporate citizen, we acted fairly, we clearly communicated our policies to our employees and, and, and as I mentioned earlier, you are doing it through a handbook. And I think the best practice is then to take it next level and do training of your workforce, even if it’s just your managers who are in charge of implementing and enforcing and bringing violations of these policies to your attention as human resources.

So you really wanna make sure that they understand what these policies say. I’ve, I’ve seen it play out in harassment litigation before where a company has perfect policies and the manager sits down during a deposition and is asked to describe the changes made to the policy over the past year. And the manager can’t adequately do so because either they haven’t read the updated policy or they haven’t been trained on the updated policy. And so it’s really important that we do whatever we can to set our managers up for success.

So I mentioned documentation and, and documentation when we’re talking about defending against litigation, documentation is key. And you know, i I, in the beginning part of my career, I used to be much more involved in litigation and I was always in awe of how the plaintiffs who are suing their employers and suing their bosses would basically roll into the courtroom with like documents and documents and documents.

They had tons of documentation, whether it was their own personal notes, their diaries, whatever it might be, supporting their complaints against the company. And then oftentimes the managers, the company officials, they were too busy doing their job and running their department that they had scarce documentation in place. And so that’s our job as HR leaders to make sure our managers understand what documentation is just part of good management, good business practice so that our managers do what they can to, to one, communicate with employees, and two, be able to support their position and support the company’s position if they’re challenged and a complaint is filed.

So that could include a number of things. So when I refer to documentation, it could be something as simple as, and you all know this, employees are distributed an employee handbook and you’ve got that acknowledgement that says the employee read the distributed handbook.

It can also be as simple as any training log or records that show that managers were trained. Because again, if you have proof that you’ve trained your managers on these key concepts of preventing harassment and discrimination, well that type of documentation is going to demonstrate you as an employer your commitment to providing this type of necessary training. And clearly communicating expectations to managers and employees, if we’re talking about after a complaint has been brought to you internally, then, um, you know, for harassment, discrimination complaints, proof would be the fact again that you have the harassment and discrimination policy.

Proof would be that you have an investigation report and that a prompt investigation into the internal complaint was brought to your attention proof would be that you made a decision and you took appropriate disciplinary action if you determine that inappropriate conduct occurred.

So that would be other examples of of documentation that would be helpful and and necessary.

If we’re talking about performance-based terminations where you terminate one of your employees because of a performance issue and then they come back after you and they, they, they file a complaint for wrongful termination.

The most helpful documentation would be documentation usually started by the managers, hopefully with your input as hr that expectations of the job were in fact clearly communicated to the employee and that the employee failed to perform those expectations.

You’d also wanna have documentation to show that the employee was provided notice of the performance issue or whatever the deficiency was. They were also told what the consequence would be if they didn’t improve and didn’t maintain sustained improvement. And so that could be everything from manager’s notes to their own file. It could be manager’s notes to human resources describing the deficiencies and the employee’s performance. It could be emails that the manager sends directly to the employee, not just off the cuff conversations, but really identifying the expectations for the job, how the employee is not meeting those expectations.

So those are all the types of documentation that would help with a performance based termination where the employee files a complaint afterwards.

If we’re talking about a termination where you have an employee who was fired for misconduct and then decides to sue you for, um, for wrongful termination, the hand, the handbook and any policy that really governs the misconduct that the employees accused of would be helpful documentation, documentation of either witnesses or others who saw the, um, the misconduct would be helpful.

And then also documentation that would establish that you as an organization have given consistent treatment to other employees who have engaged in the same misconduct ’cause that’s always important too. And then of course, since I co-founded a training company and I’m very passionate about training, one of the ways that you can be very proactive in trying to prevent the occurrence or at least the frequency of complaints, is to implement effective training.

Not check the box training, but training that you believe as an experienced HR leader really will impact positive change, really will get the message across, really, really will be listened to by employees. And, and, and I always like to say the reason I love our shift training is because we respect the learner.

So the learner respects our training and then the learner ultimately respects human resources for administering a training that that really does respect them and where they are and, and that they, it doesn’t dumb it down for them.

So I think it’s really crucial to proactively address, prevent and prevent workplace harassment complaints and build that flourishing workplace culture that we all want and that we’re talking about by having really effective training.

True. And, you know, at shift, I just wanna add, you know, we are very conscious about making sure that we are staying ahead with the times and making sure that we are addressing, you know, the issues and the um, the harassment complaints that are happening in the current, you know, time.

So we work directly with the legal team, um, at n Freeman and Sarah to go through and find out what are the issues that are being faced by your employees, what is management seeing, what are the things that we really need to help, um, describe and train, you know, those nuanced issues that are, they’re just having in trouble getting employees to understand, you know, to not make those mistakes in the workplace.

So we are always evolving and staying on top of, you know, what are the trends, what are the issues that we need to be clarifying and training on to make sure that managers are prepared and employees are crystal clear on behavior that’s allowed, um, and what’s not.

So, and it’s always, it’s always evolving. So, And you’re right because Karen, it needs to be, you’re exactly right, it needs to be relevant to the learner. They need to be seeing it either going on in their workplace or in a friend’s workplace or hearing about it in the news for it really to resonate with them.

So yeah, I think that’s one of the most helpful pieces to incorporate into training. And like you said, what some of the new issues are related to social media, you know, what are you supposed to do?

What’s allowed, what can you post on your site and what happens if somebody is saying something inappropriate?

So you really wanna have learners engage and see what that looks like. How do these things play out? How do managers, what are they supposed to do to respond?

So including all of that in the training to make sure that people are aware as, you know, things evolve and things train hybrid situations that you wanna have, you know, things that are relatable for those people who are working remotely, um, because not everyone is in the office together, but there’s still ways in which discrimination or harassment can happen. So you wanna be able to make it really realistic.

So Kristy, we’d love to hear from you. Can you talk a little bit about how you tackle training and what you look for in the training programs that when you’re rolling them out?

Yeah, absolutely. And I think just jumping a little bit into sort of Katherin, what you were talking about in the documentation too.

You know, all of this sort of ties together, right? It’s sort of this robust process of like the different ways which you’re gonna tackle one risk mitigation, but also two, like really empowering your employees and your managers and your leaders to lean into that culture, right? Of sort of working well together and managing risk. And I feel like in my experience, what I’ve sort of seen, which frustrates a lot of managers and some HR professionals is you can sort of never document enough and you know, one of the things that came to mind, you know, when you’re talking about a restructuring, when you’re sort of laying people off, one of the gaps that we identified that we now really emphasize is not just having documentation for the people who are exiting, but for the people who you moved into different roles.

Something that could be perceived as a promotion, right? So really just thinking about anything that could be challenged and just making sure you have some sort of documentation for that.

And all of that I think is, I think there’s usually some initial resistance from managers, right? They feel like it’s more work, it’s sort of just another thing that we’re asking them to do. And that’s where I really think the different modalities of training really come in handy, right?

I think when you’re doing things correctly, when you have this sort of culture of training where if it is not a compliance exercise, it is not just like a legal defense exercise, it just really about like who we are and doing things the right way and you know, really wanting to be sure that we’re treating people fairly.

I think the manager’s vision and sort of understanding of why they’re doing some of these things can also sort of shift. And I think that there’s a little bit of like less resistance to those types of things, at least that, that I’ve seen. Um, but when we’re looking for a training program, you know for us it really isn’t just a legal defense.

It is truly our most powerful tool to really build a workplace that’s rooted in respect, which is of paramount importance to us.

You know, there’s a lot of compliance trainings, there’s a training culture at most organizations in some capacity where there’s sort of rolling things out.

But our HR trainings, our anti-harassment trainings, those are sort of the cornerstones of what we consider to be our training program because it sets the tone. It is really about behavior shifting and behavior acknowledging, right?

So to Katherin’s earlier point, generic training just won’t cut it. We are no longer in a day and age where like having a manager massage someone’s shoulders in a video is gonna move the needle for absolutely anyone in our organization.

So being able to have really engaging, accurate, of course, but up to date content really makes all of the difference. It keeps our managers and our colleagues engaged. Um, but it also I think really communicates to them like, we care, we take this seriously. We want you to feel safe and respected. It’s not like we grab the first training programthat we could find  and rolled it out. Like everything about the programs need to feel thoughtful and you know, we do use shift.

So it’s a little bit of a partnership and a collaboration to find scenarios that really make sense and would resonate with our population. Um, and it’s really, it’s not just a policy, it really is prevention. It should not be an afterthought for us.

It’s always been a sort of cultural cornerstone, but candidly, as we’ve sort of seen this trend of rising complaints, there’s a much more increased emphasis on that being part of the solution for us and not just so that we’re better protected. And so that, you know, if worst case scenario we get a claim, we’re prepared but more to avoid them for the fact of we don’t want any of our employees to experience, right?

That sort of behavior or that sort of incident. We want everyone to sort of feel included in the conversation and brought along.

So it’s prevention both from a legal perspective, but also just from a cultural perspective to make sure that people understand as the norms of what sort of expected evolve that we’re sort of keeping them current in the conversation. So, you know, for us it is looking at training that really addresses the nuance of situations. Um, employees and supervisors are challenged every day to sort of balance these day-to-day situations that pop up and giving them the tools to help navigate those gray areas. Um, and it’s not just about always the content, but how it’s framed. So we’re looking at does it really connect the dots between those daily decisions, the organizational risk, and move the needle in helping colleagues, employees, managers spot those issues before they escalate.

Yeah, we heard a lot of feedback about that in the last development phase of the course. And Krista, you were really helpful in, in giving feedback, but we heard a lot of desire from HR professionals saying that we wanna see how behaviors track over time. So if you ignore something one time, you know what, how does that play out? If you ignore it multiple times and the right, you know, interventions aren’t taken, um, and put in place, then how does this play out over time? And if you were to change it and show like we take the same situation and we do make the right interventions, you know, then how could it play out and how, from the perspective of the employee, how was their experience when it was done and not done? And from the supervisor, you know, did they do the right thing and can they address and recognize what they should have done? So it is looking at that long term, you know, making sure you’re making the decisions every day so that overall someone’s experience in the workplace could be different.

Absolutely. Yeah, it’s exactly, I Think those, those methodologies were so impactful, you know, I think it really landed the messages in a, in a really helpful way. That’s great. And Christie, what other preventative measures, anything else you would add that you’re doing?

I think all of those things sort of together, it’s for me, like my number one priority is always our managers. It is what information is in the hand of our managers? Are they prepared? You know, I think we’ve all seen situations go sideways where a manager has a perfect opportunity to contain a situation and ends up escalating the situation. And you know, I think what myself, our legal team and our HR team talk about a lot, we sort of say this, it’s like a framing is, you know, moving from being righteous to being responsible. Did this manager have the tools that they needed that we wanted them to have in order to be able to spot the issue and to understand when to escalate. You know, I think we can all appreciate that they are the frontline, they are the one to spot the issues and make the decisions. Oftentimes without any involvement from hr, we can’t be everywhere at all times. So really empowering them with clear processes, documentation practices that they understand why they’re doing is really essential to reducing risk and ensuring consistency for colleagues, right? To make sure that managers are sort of applying the same principles across their team. Um, but like, as I said, without those tools and without guidance and without the right level of training, they very easily could inadvertently escalate a risk instead of containing it.

True. So Katherin, let’s shift to the upside of all this and how can organizations take some of these complaints and turning ’em to something positive? How can you take all the negative coming out? How do you shift gears and look at it to what can be done on the positive side?

Yes. Well, I I think you both know, I don’t know about the audience, but I, I am an incurable optimist, so I’m always trying to think about what’s the silver lining? How can we take the positive from something negative? And, and in fact, one, one of my favorite lines, and it seems hard to believe, but is everything that happens is the best possible thing that could happen, even something bad like a complaint. And, and maybe it’s because one complaint, if we, if we respond to it and we address it appropriately and make changes that are comprehensive, maybe we can avoid what was about to be a class action complaint. So we don’t really know what could have happened or what would happen. All we know is that we should take any negative situation and try to figure out how we can we come out better. We have to have that growth mindset to figure out we’ve got a complaint. Each complaint is an opportunity to improve and to do things better.

So, um, number of things that we can learn from complaints, right? So sometimes complaints reveal patterns and the patterns reveal gaps. Either gaps in training of our managers as Christie was talking about our managers really not informed and educated and so not capable of managing certain situations better. So we really can view these employee complaints that we may receive either internally or externally as valuable data that can reveal opportunities that we then have as HR leaders to strengthen our workplace and really build that organizational resilience that we need now more than ever before. Um, sorry, there’s a, a flyer running around my room. Um, in addition to addressing individual complaints that we might receive either internally or externally HR leaders like those on the call, we really need to think about how we can analyze the information and the complaints, the, the the data within the complaints to really look for any recurring patterns or any systemic issues. And that’s why it’s really helpful to have a, have an, an, um, knowledge of not only the complainant complaint immediately before you, but complaints filed otherwise to see are you getting similar types of complaints either with respect to a particular issue, with respect to a particular department, with respect to a particular manager, whatever the case might be. Because those insights will, will really help you identify the gaps in policies, the gaps in training, the gaps in communication that might actually be contributing to the workplace friction which resulted in the complaints. Um, and so really when you have this knowledge, when you uh, when you identify these underlying issues, that’s when you then can move forward and proactively implement solutions to address what you’ve just uncovered.

I think that’s so right Katherin. And what I would add too is I think a lot of times, ’cause we’ve all been doing this for a long time and we see a lot of complaints and I think there is this reaction sometimes internally to you sort of know, you know, the players, you know, the colleague, you know the manager and maybe very quickly sort of assess like, this is nonsense or they’re not happy with their raise. But I think what’s like a missed opportunity sometimes. And I think to your point, the value in these complaints is even something that, you know, is gonna be unsubstantiated or ends up being unsubstantiated. It’s still pointing to a perception problem, right? Or it’s still pointing to a communication problem with the manager and the colleague. So there’s sort of always an opportunity to gleam a little improvement or change or just awareness of an issue.

I love that. And that’s what I love about the role that we as HR leaders play right now. It’s so much more dynamic than it was decades ago. We, we have so many opportunities to take things next level and in really important and essential ways. So I completely agree, Christie. Yeah, I also think there’s a lot of value here. When you are proactive about addressing complaints and being proactive and transparent about any gaps you uncover, I think you really have an opportunity to build trust because people see that you are doing the work and you are taking it seriously. And Christie, have you seen that in your organization just to change? Absolutely. I think effectively addressing complaints at every level, right?

Here’s your cleaned-up transcript with all timestamps and random numbers removed, keeping only the dialogue exactly as spoken: — Even something that’s unsubstantiated, but some change comes out of it, whether it’s a training for the team or a change in process or just even a clarification of a policy can really enhance trust and transparency within the organization, which candidly the newer generations expect and basically require, right? So it’s a little bit of your talent retention tool too, but communicating the outcomes of the complaint, the analysis, and any resulting changes just fosters that greater transparency.

I think colleagues and employees these days are naturally a little bit more cynical and skeptical of leadership and management in the organization than they probably were 15 or 20 years ago. So anytime we have an opportunity to lean into the values and lean into the culture and show that we’re walking the walk and taking these things seriously, I think has a huge impact.

And I’ve sort of always had the mantra, much to my chief people officer’s dissatisfaction, I would rather have like 600 internal complaints and no EEOC charges, right? You really do want to foster a comfort and a familiarity for colleagues that they believe if they raise a concern internally, it’s going to be taken seriously and handled. That’s often what prevents them from calling a lawyer or calling the EEOC or anything like that.

I just want to add an exclamation point to what you said about the transparency because I was just in DC, as you know, yesterday speaking on managing a multi-generational workplace. And again, we talked about the fact that 70% of the workplace is going to be Gen Z and millennials within five years. One of the key expectations that Gen Z, and to a lesser extent millennials, have is transparency and trust.

They want to work for transparent companies they trust. So I think you hit the nail on the head — as HR leaders, we’re building the workplace of the future. In five years, the future is here. We’ve got millennials and Gen Z making up the vast majority of our workplace. So the sooner we can work toward that, the better for all of us, our organizations, and our employees. Great point, Christie.

It’s so true. And like you said, when you have that level of trust, then people bring the complaint. So you may have a lot of them, but you can’t change and you can’t fix what you don’t know is happening. It’s so important to build that level of trust by being transparent about what you’re doing, showing that you care by offering training, doing things to build your culture — all of that builds trust so you can hear about things before they escalate to the point where you can’t do anything more about it.

Exactly. So true.

So we have talked about so much, and Katherin and Christie, you’ve given so many ideas about how we could go about navigating this. Katherin, where do you give people some advice on where to begin?

If you’re on this webinar and you want to know, “All right, what are my next steps leaving this webinar? What’s my checklist for things that I need to be doing today?” Got it. Well, there’s a long checklist, but we as HR leaders are used to those. Just as we cross a couple off, we’re adding a couple more. Simply put, I think it’s always great to start with: Ask yourself, what’s the current state? Where are we right now as an organization? What are our policies? Which ones do we need? Which ones do we need to update? Where are we in terms of receiving internal complaints or external complaints? Are we happy with that number or do we want to decrease it? Where are the gaps that we identify from a human resources perspective? Where are we in terms of employee engagement? Do we have a much higher threshold we’re trying to reach, or are we feeling pretty good about our employee engagement?

Then we want to talk about where we want to be. What are our objectives for compliance — making sure we’re prohibiting harassment, discrimination, wrongful terminations — and what are our objectives for our workplace culture? Do we want to hunker down and do everything we can to build a flourishing workplace culture that has very little room for complaints, negativity, and problematic issues?

Once we know what those objectives are, we want to equip our managers and employees with the tools and training to keep up with changes and help us achieve those objectives. As HR leaders, we want to make sure we’re empowering our teams of managers and educating them on how to track, document, and communicate with employees so we can effectively handle workplace situations and, if necessary, defend against complaints.

If we find any gaps along the way, take proactive steps to close those gaps and create the best possible workplace we can.

Good. Chris, do you have any last-minute thoughts to share?

No, I think that’s all. It can seem really daunting, but I think getting ahead of some of this — some organizations won’t see an increase, some will see a tremendous amount — but to Katherin’s earlier point, you’re never going to regret being prepared. Building some of this infrastructure now, or enhancing what you already have, can only pay dividends down the road.

And even if it’s not needed from a litigation or compliance perspective, seeing enhanced training, additional rollouts, and policy updates sends a strong message to employees about what’s valuable and important. In and of itself, it’s worth its weight in gold to do those things.

So true. Right now I don’t see any lingering questions in the chat. If you have any, feel free to add them now.

We are winding down, but I really appreciate — we all appreciate — you attending today and taking time to care about your organization enough to see what you could be doing to make improvements and make things better.

I invite you again to follow Shift HR on LinkedIn. We’re always providing valuable insights and resources. You can reach out if you want more information about our courses.

Thank you to those putting your email addresses in the chat regarding our demo days — we’re excited to have you join. If you didn’t put it in the chat, you’ll be getting more information about them. There will be plenty of time to sign up. Thank you again for joining, and we’re excited to see you next time.

Thank you, Karen. Thank you both.

Thanks, Kristy. Thanks, Katherin. Take care.

Take care.