Research findings from Karlstad University were presented at a conference in Oslo.
- As always when it comes to changing cultures, it is important to be persistent and not give up, says Markus Fellesson from the Center for Service Research (CTF).
Markus Fellesson and Anna Fyrberg-Yngfalk, researchers at the Service Research Center (CTF) and Karlstad Business School, you recently participated in the conference “Prevent and Intervene – Ending Sexual Harassment at Work” in Oslo.
- Working life representatives, researchers and ministers for gender equality from the Nordic countries met to share the results of the five projects that were granted funding as part of the research initiative on sexual harassment at work, commissioned by the Nordic Council of Ministers between 2021 and 2023, says Markus Fellesson.
Anna Fyrberg-Yngfalk and I presented our project “Customer Sexual Harassments in the Nordic Service Workplace”, where we studied how common strategies for service practices can enable sexual harassment from customers, and also make it more difficult to deal with them in a good way.
You and Anna Fyrberg-Yngfalk are doing research on sexual harassment in the workplace. What is required to manage and prevent sexual harassment in that environment?
- Our particular project has been about how employees are harassed by customers (rather than by colleagues and managers), which creates a different type of problem because the customers are not employees and thus cannot be “managed” in the same way. On the contrary, the customer often has a very strong position, both through pure market forces and through organisational strategies for customer orientation and ambitions to “put the customer at the center”.
In order to manage and prevent harassment from customers, it may therefore be necessary in certain situations to stop perceiving the customer as just a customer. This is more difficult than you might think, you need both supportive rules and routines as well as changed professional norms and a supportive workplace culture where you as an employee get the support of colleagues and management.
Six years have passed since #metoo started - what does research show?
- It shows progress in awareness, reduced tolerance and concrete action. But also something that could be called a backlash where there is both a weariness about the subject as such and a frustration that not enough has been done.
How do you deal with a culture of silence and a work ideal that promotes violence and harassment?
- As always when it comes to changing cultures, it is important to be persistent and not give up. Discussions and various exercises can help if they are carried out in the right way. Working as far as possible with the help of and within the framework of the existing culture, rather than by bringing condemnations and pointers from the outside, has proven to be an effective way forward in many cases.
What methods are there to define and measure sexual harassment in the workplace?
- A lot is done within the framework of systematic work environment management, such as work environment surveys. There are many different ways to define sexual harassment, but work is underway to develop a more uniform conceptual apparatus, as well as valid scales to present the problems statistically.
A lesson that can be drawn from this is that it is important not only to talk about sexual harassment in general, but also about specific behaviours and attitudes in order to address harassment that has become so common that it is regarded as “normal”.
What has proven to be the most effective way of dealing with and preventing sexual harassment in the workplace?
- In Sweden, for example, we now have a law that allows you to ban customers that behave badly. Although the law is new and has not been applied to a particularly large extent as yet, it is an interesting attempt to address the problem of “third party” harassment.
