>> Please stand by for realtime captions. >> Please stand by for realtime captions. >> >> Welcome. My name is Patricia Gotera and I'm with the National Council of juvenile and Family Court judges and I will help facilitate the webinar. Before we begin, I want to provide a brief overview of how the webinar system works and how you can interact with presenters. To the right of the PowerPoint, we have the public chat box and feel free to leave questions or comments you may have here. You will find a PDF copy of the presentation in the materials box and additional material related to the events. To access, select the file and click the download file button. A new browser window will open and when you confirm, the download begins. You will have an opportunity to complete a brief evaluation at the end of the webinar and we ask that participants please stay in the webinar room until it is closed and the evaluation will pop up on your screen. If you experience technical issues during the event, click on the help button located at the top right of your screen and you can select troubleshooting to test your connection and download add-ins for Adobe Connect. If you have audio issues, let me know in the chat box and I will contact you directly. Thank you for joining us and I will turn it over to our presenters to get started. >> Thanks, Patricia and thanks to NCJFCJ for hosting our webinar today. Welcome to everyone joining us and we hope that you are ready for great and engaging conversation. Since the #MeToo movement captured attention, we are seeing a growing awareness that sexual harassment and violence is widespread in workplaces and has a profound impact on survivors of abuse. For what feels like the first time, we are seeing consequences for perpetrators and we've seen action on behalf of employers turning attention to their own policies to see how they respond to sexual harassment and violence in the workplace. As employers review policies, it is important for them to consider the aspects of violence that workers might and counter. They can create workplace environments in which all workers can thrive. Today, we are hosting this webinar with support from the Office on Violence Against Women to discuss the goal of creating workplaces that are supportive of survivors and address sexual harrassment environments. Before we begin, I want to give some background for those who may not be familiar with FUTURES without violence. Over 30 years ago, FUTURES was founded with the mission to end violence. Our vision is our name. It started in emergency departments where we documented abuse survivors experienced and it was tracked to supportive resources and it has grown into an organization that seeks to address the root causes of violence and seeks to transform social norms by training professionals, creating tools and resources and we work with advocates, policymakers and others to help those sustainable leadership makers across the globe with the importance of respect and healthy relationships. One of our many initiatives is our works places respond to domestic violence and domestic and sexual violence resource Center. It builds collaboration among workplace and non-workplace stakeholders, to include employers, worker associations, unions and high violence advocates toward the goal of preventing and responding to domestic violence, sexual harrassment and violence, trafficking, stalking and forms of exploitation in the workplace. Through the workplace resource Center we provide resources, information, training, technical assistance to all of these key stakeholders and we work with them to develop and implement collective programs that can assist employees experiencing violence and help create versatile workplaces that can respond and prevent sexual violence and harassment in the workplace. Today, I am joined by my team. I am Sarah Gonzalez Bocinski, the program manager of the economic justice and workforce initiative. I'm joined by Eesha Bhave, our program specialist and Aaron Polkey, our staff attorney. As we do with all of our training and technical assistance opportunities, we create learning objectives so the audience can know and expect what they will learn. Today's objectives are the goal of helping participants be better able to identify essential components of a prevention-oriented, victim-centered, gender-based violence workplace policy and to formulate trauma-informed policies and practices that address the needs of survivors of all forms of gender-based violence. Before we get started, we hope you will be willing to take a minute to answer our poll questions. Does your organization or agency currently have a policy that addresses domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking and/or sexual harassment? I will give everyone a minute to go ahead and put in their response and we will share those results. We are getting some results in. Right now, it looks like nearly half the participants have a policy that addresses domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking and harassment. That is great. Glad to see that. A smaller percentage is those who address sexual harassment, only and many that are unsure. We can close the pole and share the results with everyone. Everyone should see the results, now. We see that nearly half have policies for domestic violence, sexual assault and stalking and that is much better than some of the research we've seen. I think a 2013 study found that 85% of companies lacked a domestic violence policy and I'm guessing since many of you are in the field, that you are conscientious about this to make sure your own workplaces and organizations have key policies to respond to this. We have about 14% that are not sure and that is common for people to not be aware of what they are. Little over 15% have sexual harassment policies in place. For those who lack a policy, that is great and we hope that the presentation today will help you take the first steps to build that comprehensive victim centered policy and for those who have existing policies, it's an opportunity to reflect on what is working well and opportunities to improve those policies. In terms of those who don't have policies, this is from the Society of human resource management and they found that 65% of companies that were surveyed do not have a formal policy. Now, we love to get started and I will turn it over to Micah Olli, Aaron Polkey, will discuss violence and harassment in the workplace and effective policy response. >> Good afternoon. I'm happy to join you with this opportunity to discuss the policy angle of the issue. We were certainly pleased to see that a little over half the respondents have policies that cover the entire gamut of gender-based violence. In our experience with a lot of the private employers that we encounter, we find that when the question is posed, individual employees tend to be comfortable in saying that their organization has at least a sexual harassment policy, policy addressing issues of sexual harassment. After we move beyond issues of sexual harassment, the issue gets a little bit murkier with respect to addressing domestic violence, sexual assault and stalking. That is where a lot of our value added tends to be. When I first began working at FUTURES about three years ago, my initial work was to help employers accept or understand or appreciate appreciate -- was to help employers accept or understand or appreciate a policy that addresses domestic violence. There was a little bit of a challenge to make sure they understood that when a survivor of domestic violence is having that experience at home, that experience certainly impacts the sustainability and safety while at work. Furthermore, often times, employers needed more help even if they accepted that much. There was a little bit of a myopic approach to understand that they see what they are saying that a perpetrator at home could enter the workplace and hurt the survivor and hurt us all and then in certain context, employees would want to engage us on active shooter training for things that were much more specific to the threat of a perpetrator entering the workplace and hurting a survivor. That is real and should not be discounted. A lot of our advocacy -- advocacy focus was taking that further to make sure that employers understood that it's not only about preventing or protecting a survivor from a perpetrator in the workplace, but it's about making sure that the survivor is able to realize their full potential and ability to be as efficient and happy and safe and secure while at work. Oftentimes, we had to make that sort of a profitability, bottom line argument. It doesn't feel good, but you have to speak to the audiences as they come to you. Further along from the messaging perspective, if we were able to walk down the road with employers, then we were able to deliver what we believed was the actual message, that when we are at work throughout the course of a day -- and in many context, we spend most of our waking lives at work, we wanted employees to see the workplace with the opportunity to detect and to support and create a culture of prevention so that regardless of where a survivor experiences violence and regardless of the form of violence a survivor is experiencing, we are embedding through all of our communities and all of our workplaces, other individuals who can be allies and supporters in a trauma-informed fashion so that survivors can have the support and the agency that they need to navigate the entire spectrum of gender-based violence, be it domestic violence occurring at harm, that occurs at work if you happen to be working with your intimate partner, sexual violence and sexual assault regardless of where it occurs. In many industries, sexual assault has disproportionate prevalence while at work. It may be stalking. Stalking is disproportionately affected at work because that is where perpetrators of stalkers tend to know where the survivor is and sexual harassment as a form of sexual violence and finally, trafficking. Labor trafficking, a clear intersection with the workplace. Everything I just said was the message prior to the #MeToo movement. Since we've now experienced the #MeToo movement, a lot of the preliminary discussion is to move people to the discussion as to the understanding that there is a role for employers and employees to work together and collaborate, with respect to gender-based violence, they are there. Okay, what should we do now to improve responses to sexual harassment? That opportunity is not only an opportunity to help improve what has been a not so successful approach to sexual harassment over the last 20-30 years, but to also bring them back to the other aspect of gender-based violence. Domestic violence, sexual harassment, stalking -- we make sure we don't forget that despite the recent focus on sexual harassment, that we still maintain as much of a focus in advocating for workplaces that are responsive to all forms of gender-based violence. In your communities and organizations, with employers you speak to, and anyone you encounter, we would commend to you a message that does not pigeonhole any aspect of this spectrum into one corner at the expense of another. We insist on speaking about GBV holistically and speaking about it. The reason why, as many of you know and would agree, all aspects of the spectrum of gender-based violence are all rooted from a common source source. The desire of a perpetrator to assert power and control over the survivor that they seek to victimize. From a statistical perspective, we have been discussing the percentages of workers who report having experienced intimate partner violence and this is an important highlight to make sure that folks know that despite the fact that women are, by far, disproportionately affected by this, this also does not exclude male workers as victims and perpetrators. This is a stat that allows us to make sure that there is a buy-in for folks to understand that we are all in this together, while not at the expense of knowing, though, that there is a disproportionate impact on women as survivors. Then, we have nearly half of respondents through the survey indicating that they have experienced some impact of domestic violence in the workplace and that could be ranging from an actual incident to harassing phone calls, to being prevented from actually going to work safely, destruction of clothing, mismanagement of money and threats, the whole gamut. We have nearly one in five men and women that indicated themselves as victims survivors of IPV. Now, there is a fascinating statistic that comes from the EEOC that focuses on the impact of sexual harassment or abuse in the workplace. Note that range, 25% to 85% of working women report from around 2013, this study, that they've experienced sexual harassment or abuse in the workplace. How do we account for that disparity? We account for it because of the way the question is asked. If you ask of those who take surveys if they believe they've experienced sexual harassment, you will tend to get the lower range. Often, individuals are not quite sure whether or not what they've experienced is, in fact, under the umbrella of sexual harassment. When you start to give examples of certain kinds of stuff and the further along you take examples, your numbers start to rise and not only does that matter with respect to presenting examples of certain types of conduct, but to open peoples eyes to what they believe might be the reason why they experience that conduct. I can ask someone if they've experienced inappropriate comments at work and some will say yes and some take -- some say no. If I ask if it's on the basis of your gender or sexual orientation or gender identity, the numbers go up. The numbers go further up when the question is raised in matters that account for the intersections of the identities. One might be more confident in seeing themselves and saying that I believe I've experienced this harassment on the basis of the fact that I am a Latina or African-American or that I am a gender nonconforming individual. The further along you connect certain types of abusive or harassing conduct to all of the identities we possess that might influence the way we are treated by and through all of the zones we occupy and travel in life, the more people are able to connect things that happened to who they are and how it made them feel and how it made them feel safe or not safe and protected and supported while at the workplace. I highlight that statistic to stress that in discussions about gender-based and domestic violence, we cannot expect, nor should we expect people who had these experiences, to use the terminology or to assume the identities that we, ourselves, might be most comfortable talking about because of our own identity. We have to open our eyes and open the doors to the broad spectrum of experiences people have and identities they occupy and we have to make sure that we, in inquiring about these things, also invoke a lot of the trauma-informed practices that Sarah is going to get to, later. Moving along -- or Eesha might get to later -- moving along, here are more statistics. We might be able to share these a little more. Some of them are old and some are not so old. In the future use of the slide, we might have to add the dates. We actually were answering these questions and if anyone wants to follow up with us to give the actual citations for these specific statistics, I guess it's harmful to say specific and statistics in the same breath -- we are happy to do so. They speak for themselves. When women experience harassment at work, the capacity to maintain the employment diminishes significantly. 80% of women in a recent report, and a cosmopolitan survey, or Harvard business review, I will check on that and they indicated they left their job within two years of experience harassment. Another statistic indicates women are much more likely to quit, transfer or lose their jobs than men because of harassment. That is not only because of discomfort or lack of safety as a result of harassment, but often times, it has to do with the way the organization responds to the harassment or the power the harasser has to impact the victim survivor's ability to maintain employment when the harassment occurs or if a person experience the harassment chooses to stand up for themselves. Not addressing sexual harassment has a real cost. The cost goes beyond settlement. I forgot which statistic this comes from and I will make sure we get this to you as soon as possible, but we have some information that outside of settlement, there was a cost well into the millions of an average company because of harassment that employees were unhappy. An unhappy or unsafe or distracted employee is one that is not as productive and those employees that experience harassment or feel unsafe, those that feel the job security might be on the line, tend to find their way into a safer employment experience. Turnover is higher and then has its own cost and having to retrain individuals. Finally, absenteeism is higher, too. The individual experiencing harassment and violence is not desirous of coming to work in that environment, but they also have choices to not come to work to protect their own safety. And, to avoid their perpetrator, et cetera. For the same reason productivity and morale would be diminished, as would be absenteeism. Absenteeism is a byproduct of time it takes to seek alternative employment and that assumes the employee even has the financial capacity, the time and the resources and the capacity to take the risk and the time away from children. Absenteeism is also an indicator of actual injury when employees have to seek medical treatment or mental health treatment on the account of the experience of violence or harassment. It obviously is a reason they might not be able to come to work. Environments where employees don't have access to paid leave, the resources that allow them to take care of themselves and they don't sustain a financial hit. They have no choice but to leave the workplace and handle it on their own. That is processed by the employer as an absence when it actually is an experience of obtaining healthcare, self-help, mental health and taking time for yourself yourself. You have access to courts, if necessary, for protective orders or just take a breath and take care of yourself. Those are all costs to employers and it's important for us all to help employers understand all of the reasons why productivity and morale and turnover and absenteeism might be affected. They make sure that gender-based violence and harassment, in particular, is finding its way into that discussion. The effect on the workplace -- I've already alluded to many of these issues. I would highlight, here, that post-traumatic stress disorder is real on these topics. Your understanding of what a trauma is might not necessarily translate to someone else's experience. I think that we all need to make sure that in the conversations that we have, that we back away from common understandings of what constitutes trauma. Make sure trauma is understood to be in the eyes of the person that is actually experiencing it. Then, there is also a notion that I would add to and highlight, of strained coworker relationships. That is not only due to the coworker, potentially, being a perpetrator, but there might be other coworkers that you feel are coddling perpetrators and that is a strain, obviously. There may be coworkers who might be exploring what's going on with a victim survivor, but not doing it in a trauma-informed manner and that can create strain that ranges from dismissing a victim or survivor's experience on up to the extremes of taking too much action without consulting and getting the approval of the victim-survivor and that would be along the lines of confronting a perpetrator. That might create a worse situation for the victim survivor and might strained the relationship in that context. When productivity is down, then the victim-survivor is subject to -- subject to questions about their performance and that might create pressure on the actual ability to keep that job and then when survivors are increasingly economically insecure -- especially if the form of gender-based violence that is impacting them at the workplace is domestic violence -- that has the perverse and awful impact of actually further strengthening the perpetrator's power and control over that survivor. They can simply not afford to leave if they don't have the economic security to be able to do that. A question has been posed about how to encourage an employee to file a complaint against a coworker who is afraid. I think the answer to that question is comprehensive. I would say that the first step is to create a safe and confidential avenue for the employee who is experiencing the violence or harassment, to be able to talk about it. A lot of that depends on where you are in the organization. If this is an employee or coworker doing the same work you are doing and you have reason to believe or you have direct knowledge that they are experiencing violence and harassment affecting them at the workplace and beyond, just opening the door and checking to see if they are okay and letting them know that you are available -- if your able to give information about resources that are outside of the workplace that are available in your area, such as domestic violence coalitions, that could be something to pass along so they can avail themselves of the assistants of experts. Domestic violence coalitions are quite competent to talk about sexual harassment, as well. I would encourage you all to rely on coalitions and hotlines. Even if the issue is, specifically, sexual harassment. Familiarize with the policy and talk through the policy at your place to map out how the process looks and if there is a confidential way to actually learn more about what happens on the back end of that policy from HR without implicating that coworker or implicating yourself, that might be another approach. Overall, I would say that opening a confidential and safe door and not taking action without that employee consent and finding out as much as you can about the policies around you, the key first step is to help someone who might be in that situation. They can avail themselves of resources. Finally, none of us are expected to be the experts. As I said before, it's important to know that the coalition hotline is out there and available and every state has a minimum that people can speak to confidentially to start down the road to get the help they need. We asked you earlier to tell us about the policies that exist in your particular organization. We characterized our advice that we give with respect to policy in three buckets. The sexual harassment policy, the policy that only speaks to sexual harassment and these are the policies that are rooted in the laws that arise from anti-discrimination that are typically legalistic and are not always strong in the forum. Civil rights statutes protect us against discrimination on the basis of gender and race, among other things and there is a body of law that covers sexual harassment in that context that I won't get into. Except, I will say the policies that organizations have and the trainings organizations have, they tend to focus only on sexual harassment and are also, usually, in our experience, the most legalistic and the hardest to navigate and the least accessible and they don't prescribe any trauma-informed practices that we will talk about later. Then, the domestic violence, sexual assault and stalking policies are much more trauma-informed. They create topics such as non-retaliation and confidentiality and create a process of reporting that might not necessarily implicate a legal outcome like sexual harassment policies would. These policies are those that I referred to earlier. They open the door to employers addressing things that happen both inside and outside the organization. They tend to have better trauma-informed language we will speak about later and there is what we want people to aim for, the comprehensive gender-based violence policy that focuses on domestic violence and sexual assault and stalking and focuses on sexual harassment and covers all of the legal Human Resources, the internal employment reporting and trauma-informed topics that we would encourage. On our website, the materials you have today, we have our Model workplace policy and this is an example of one that covers, specifically, domestic violence, sexual violence and stalking. The reason it doesn't cover sexual harassment is because the body of law is so complicated that you have to get a lawyer involved in that. When I would recommend that you will do, is trying to get your lawyers, your advocates and HR professionals involved to create a policy that pulls in the elements you find in this Model policy. A good acceptable definition section that uses every day terms and a statement of confidentiality and non-retaliation and, also, some of these things that allow employees to access things like leave and safe time to take care of themselves and also, understand that performance could be impacted by these experiences. So, opening the door for employees to report that they are having these experiences in a safe way so that if the experience is affecting their performance, that there is a way for them to alert you in the same way that you would understand the disclosure of something that would otherwise require reasonable accommodations. We believe experience gender -- experiencing gender-based violence should necessitate or prompt the provision of reasonable accommodations just the same. Many policies we've experienced have zero tolerance. There may be a duty to report. If you hear there is something going on, you have to report it. If we hear that someone tells us someone is experiencing something, that the organization is going to take action against the perpetrator, no Matt Eric -- no matter what anyone says. We aren't a fan of that. Those are real, but we are not a fan. We aren't a fan because that is not a trauma-informed approach. It tends to remove the survivor's agency out of the picture. Some lawyers, well-meaning and some organizations, well-meaning, believe there is a clear liability imperative with respect to what actions they should take when they find out that something is occurring at their workplace. The decision may be taken there is a zero tolerance policy and there is a duty to report. At a minimum, what we asked the employers do is make sure the workplace understands what that really means and what that looks like. To not only do that at the intake when someone comes in onboarding with a new employee and they begin the HR experience, but to do it at regular intervals in a constant state of awareness raising, so that employees feel informed with the zero tolerance policy. They would know exactly what that looks like on the other end. Now, there is a trick to make sure that you are informing your employees about these stringent policies without deterring them from being honest about what they are experiencing. I don't have enough time to get into exactly how that -- how to thread that needle, right now. If anyone has desire to contact us afterwards to have a one-on-one conversation about what that looks like, we are happy to do that. In summary, zero-tolerance policies are trauma-informed. To be as trauma-informed as possible, at a minimum, we believe they should actively be disclosed and discussed so that individuals know what that looks like at the organization. And, there aren't surprises in the event that policy is invoked into response to a specific situation. That is the walk-through with respect to policies, right now. We are now happy to move on to the victim-centered practices that I repeatedly referenced previously. Eesha will take it over from here. >> Thanks, Aaron and thanks to everyone for contributing in the chat function. I hope you are finding this useful and helpful to get the research and some of the basic information of what it means to be an employer responding to the #MeToo movement. In our last 20 minutes or so together, I want to talk about the victim centered practices that Aaron has been alluding to. You will see with our presentations and the way we talk, we are using victim centered and survivor centered, interchangeably. We recognize that victim is more legal speak and is a legal setting where survivor tends to be a self identified word and can offer power back to the person experiencing the violence. Whether workplace centered or not. Part of thinking through the effective response is acknowledging that and selecting the word that makes the most sense within your context. Like Aaron mentioned, part of building the framework as an employer is to provide a clear policy and procedures in place for when issues arrive for your employees. Before I talk about what that entails, I would love to hear from you all. In the chat box, if you could please respond to the question you see on the PowerPoint of what it means for a policy to be victim-centered. I will give everyone a couple of minutes to respond to the question. The checkbox function is on the right-hand side of your Adobe Connect screen at the very top corner. We've got some responses coming in. I'm seeing victim autonomy, empowering the victim and listening to the victim. Meeting the individual where they are instead of victim blaming. Reducing barriers to reporting. Survivors in the driver's seat, I like that. Everyone can continue to input responses. Ensuring survivors are informed of investigation results and mechanisms put in place to challenge the environment that gives rise to harassment and abuse. Absolutely. Not having a preformed biased opinion and focusing on needs and believing. Promoting survivor agency. Offering a safe place to discuss and meeting the survivor where they are. Transparency and informed consent, absolutely. And using evidence-based practices to highlight victim and survivor safety and honest words to resolve the issue. Great. Thank you to everyone that participated in that chat box discussion. These are all really good ideas and don't worry about writing them down because we will have the chat available to everyone, as well. I want to take some time to identify some of those victim-centered practices that you have already. First and foremost, and at the core of any victim-centered practice or policy, is making sure we are able to prioritize the wishes, safety and well-being in all manners and procedures. We want to ensure that the practice empowers victims and provides them with options and information, which I believe some folks already mentioned. We want to encourage collaboration, that is in the self defined interest, so the idea of having the survivor in the drivers seat and looking for consent from the survivors before moving forward in decision-making or decisions to investigate is critical. Promoting victim's safety and well-being. From what we've seen in some of these incidents we've heard, and like Aaron and Sarah mention, oftentimes, a perpetrator may show up to the work setting and that can compromise not only the victim's safety but the entire workplace safety. Whether a policy, a procedure, a training or other parts of the comprehensive program, we want to make sure we prioritize victim and office safety and work setting safety. We have a video on our website with the steps that are chronicled for a supervisor to accept and if you look at that video, you will see there are some examples of the supervisor using victim-centered practices in some examples where the supervisor does not. For example, if a victim or survivor who has an employee in a workplace comes forward to talk to a supervisor about concerns that they may have, and the supervisor is rude and dismissive and immediately starts commenting on absenteeism or other performance things, instead of creating the open space to understand the underlying issues, what may be incurring and that employee's life, it makes the victim less likely to report or share concerns. When we think about victim-centered practices, we want to make sure that we think about the victim's issues, well-being, consent and having policies that speak to them. Lastly, we want to ensure accountability and I will talk about that more next. Ensuring accountability of the employers, whether the HR function within an organization, whether an advocate that can help address the situation, but making sure that all sides are held accountable when addressing or investigating any form of gender-based violence within the workplace. Related to accountability, the two aspects that are important are trustworthiness and transparency. This is especially true when thinking about a policy, a comprehensive policy addressing gender-based violence. That can take form in talking about relevant timelines. From when someone reports an incident on sexual harassment or other forms of gender-based violence, to when the investigation is adjudicated and what the results are and communicating with the survivor each step of the way. It allows the survivor to have more control, to take back more control for that process. Another key aspect is ensuring that we have reasonable accommodations. Some states mandate reasonable accommodations at the state and local level and it looks different for everyone. One example would be from the Newark city law guidelines. These reasonable accommodations include allowing you to take time off or a modified schedule, changing your telephone number or extension or routing calls through the receptionist, adding a layer of security. Keeping your home address and telephone information or other identifiable information confidential. Transferring you to a different desk, a different department or workspace depending on what is applicable and having a security guard escort you to your car or the Newark public transportation spot. Giving a copy of her protective order to security or the receptionist and posting a photo of the abuser, stalker or perpetrator at the front desk or with security and asking the receptionist or guard to not let the person come in. This is just a small range of reasonable accommodations that the victim actually can be entitled to, depending on the jurisdiction to make sure they can be productive within their workplace. The last piece that is also critical is accessing peer support resources and referrals. This is something I remind myself of, often. I'm not always expected to be the expert in everything. Like Aaron alluded to, there are lots of services and coalitions and hotlines available at the local and state level to provide additional support, whether legal or otherwise. This is a brief glimpse of what should be or can be included within victim-centered practices. This is by no means the full list and we are happy to talk to you more if you have specific questions about where you are working or will what you might have had done with employers. It's important to keep this in mind as you lay the foundation for a comprehensive framework to assess gender-based violence within the workplace. The next step, we actually have a quick activity. In total honesty, we here at FUTURES have not done this before but we hope with such a good audience, everyone will participate and stay engaged and be willing to work with us. We call this the good, the bad and the ugly. What you see on that screen in front of you is a publicly available discrimination and harassment policy from Guilford County schools in North Carolina and what I'm going to do, is read the policy out loud and we will have Patricia pull up the drawing tool and I will give you some instructions, as we go along. The policy listed says, reporting. Any employee who believes he or she has been the victim of harassment, bullying and/or discrimination at the worksite or as a result of district employment, is encouraged to report the alleged acts. It includes the specific facts of the incidents and the names of the individuals to the immediate supervisor in a timely manner. Human Resources intervention, if the immediate supervisor is directly involved or if the employee is more comfortable discussing the concern with someone in Human Resources, the employee should report such acts to the chief Human Resources officer or the executive director for Human Resources. Where members of the board, the superintendent or any senior staff members are involved, the employee should report such acts to the board attorney. An immediate investigation of the claims will take place and upon evidence of harassment, bullying, and/or discrimination, appropriate disciplinary action will be taken. So, you all should see a toolbar on the left-hand side of your screen that has some drawing tools on it. If you all would click on the second button from the top, your marker button, you can go ahead and click green as the color or any color that catches your eye. Go ahead and underline anything you think this policy is doing well. When we think about victim informed practices and principles, what catches your eye successfully? We will give everyone a couple of minutes to respond. It looks like most people have been able to click on the marker. If you could add in the chat box why you selected a certain piece or what stood out to you, that would be great. I'm seeing some great things in the chat box. Thank you for responding to that. Some things that are good, employees are encouraged to report and not required to report. That gives the survivor some agency and how to move forward with that particular experience. The employer chooses who to report to and there's other alternatives in that second paragraph of Human Resources intervention. The perpetrator could be the immediate supervisor or a board member, superintendent or someone else that provides alternate reporting mechanisms. It's difficult to see. People are responding to this within the chat box. What are some policy choices that you could see are bad or could be improved on? I will give you another minute to continue writing in the chat box. There are some great questions coming in as to what kind of action is included. When Aaron talked about having clear definitions within the policy, the policy certainly doesn't have that and leaves a lot open to interpretation and it's fairly vague. Not knowing what to do if there is no evidence and not having a clear investigation process -- someone to investigate what immediate means. An immediate investigation for some companies could be the next day or it could be six months from now. Having that included -- no mention of retaliation. Not actively confirming that no retaliatory action will be taken. You've also got that this policy is liability-base. It is not person first or trauma-informed and it doesn't take into consideration all the things a survivor might think through when deciding whether or not to report and trigger an investigation process. >> Thank you to everyone who participated in this chat box. We recognized it got a little bit messy at the end. Hopefully, you were all able to stay engaged. Now, I will turn it over to Sarah, to talk about the resources we have offered at the national resource center within the last few minutes. >> Thank you for participating in our exercise. I'm excited to see the engagement in the chat box. Many of you are interested in data and resources and I'm here to help you figure out where this might exist on our website. To access our website, you can find the resource Center at www.workplacesrespond.org and on the homepage you will find a link including our resource library that contains a ton of resources including fact sheets, guides, education and training curricula, workplace tools including a Model workplace policy and research and reports with the lot of the data located there. You also can view the contents of the website as an employer or a survivor, coworker or advocate. Someone mentioned they were interested in finding the video. If you looked for tools by employer, you could see that in the results that are pulled up. Also, if you navigate further down the page, you will see the option to request contact information that we will share at the end of the webinar. We routinely provide technical assistance to a variety of stakeholders, public agencies, private employers, labor unions and advocates and anyone seeking to address violence and harassment in the workplace and we are happy to support you all, as well. Here are some select resources I wanted to highlight that are relevant to the discussion. First, or safety card for employees. It offers survivors information on the rights, safety planning and potential workplace interventions and resources and next, we have the workplace Model policy that Aaron referred to, earlier. We have a tool with a guide on incident prevention and response strategies that can help employers promote employee safety and there are three key areas. There are safety audits to prevent potential perpetrator access to the worksite, threat assessments in collaboration with ECHL employees experiencing violence and harassment and supportive responses in the aftermath of an incident. Final look, three other resources that can be helpful for survivors and staff. The first is a sample of domestic violence training content for survivors and managers and we talked about the importance of having a policy. We need to make sure people understand what domestic violence is and the policies they have in the workplace. This tool outlines those key elements including why domestic violence is a workplace issue, what is available and how you can help a coworker experiencing violence. Supervisors play a critical role in preventing and appropriately responding to the impact of violence in the workplace and the guide for supervisors offers a number of strategies that can help with that. We also have a virtual employee that supervises can interact with that demonstrates best practices we discussed earlier. In addition, we have a new hub focused specifically on sexual harassment in the workplace and this can be found at www.workplaces respond.org/harassment. I have tools and resources to highlight for you all. For those taking their first steps to better address harassment in the workplace, there are four top 10 lists. There is one for unions, employers, victim survivors and men. It's available in English and Spanish. Understanding that there is no easy way to respond to those experiencing harassment or violence, or for coworkers that witnessed an appropriate conduct, we have decision trees for survivors and coworkers. It helps inform them of the options as they decide how to move forward. In collaboration with the number of industry partners, workplaces created interactive training curricula for supervisors and managers and staff, as well in three industries. It's healthcare, agriculture and restaurants and those are available on our website. Finally, we have two how to guides for employers to assess and prevent sexual harassment and violence in the workplace. First, a climate survey to help lay the foundation for a tailored response and prevention program and the second is our culture walk. It allows an audit of workplace culture, the climate and the equity, to better support the safety, security and ability of employees to thrive. That is our time. If you have any questions, I know that Eesha is trying to respond to them in the chat box and please feel free to direct them there and will answer them in the last minute we have. Otherwise, thank you for your attention and our contact information is coming up now. If you want to reach out to us for further information on the topics discussed today or any technical assistance for your workplace or workplaces you are supporting, or with policies of domestic violence and sexual harassment, stalking and violence. Thank you for your participation and lively participation. We really appreciate that. As you leave the session, please complete a short evaluation of the webinar so we know how to better improve our assistance and training in the future to create contacts that meet your needs. Thank you, everyone. [ Event concluded ]