One glaring example of this is mental health. How many of your managers have even the barest of training in how to deal with mental health issues on their team? How many have more than a cursory knowledge of what your employee assistance program offers and the requirements for accommodations for your area and industry?
I’ve mentioned before that in some of the worst of my mental health struggles, I had a manager who helped me manage the process and was incredibly supportive of me doing what I needed to do, and I later had a manager who made the entire thing awkward and unbearable for me. This was at the same company. Nothing about the rules or the program changed, but my manager did. That made all the difference between me staying and being productive and walking out the door.
That doesn’t mean we won’t make a mess of things getting there. Some employers will go through rounds of layoffs, hoping to replace workers with AI writers, photographers, coders, etc. Plenty of companies will rush to add something they can call “AI” to their products to look innovative, and everyone will stumble along learning what AI might be useful for.
Then, we’ll end up using the AI built into all the same tools we use now.
The article offers some suggestions on educating your employees about harassment and what you should be doing with programs, but I want to get brutally honest here.
What workplace hasn’t already held a sexual harassment seminar? Is it making any difference? Not when you tell me that remote work was the most effective way to lower incidences of harassment. Essentially, keeping people away from each other was the only way we found to significantly dent the overall statistics.
Want to know what would make a dent? Fire people. On the spot. Publicly. The first time it happens.
This should be obvious, but I suspect it isn’t.
Managers play a vital role in fostering a culture of continuous learning within their teams.