Defending Against Sexual Harassment at Credit Unions

For Lynn Heckler, the most effective way to prevent workplace sexual harassment is not about policy and training, it’s about changing the organization’s culture. After all, as she pointed out, if policies and training were working, anti-sexual harassment social movements such as #MeToo and Time’s Up would not exist.

Heckler, EVP and chief talent officer for PSCU in St. Petersburg, Fla., has become one of the industry’s outspoken proponents of the need for cultural transformation within credit unions –and all organizations – to prevent workplace harassment. She’s already given several presentations about it at credit union conferences, including the World Council of Credit Unions conference in Singapore earlier this summer. What’s more, Heckler and Susan Mitchell, CEO of Mitchell, Stankovic and Associates, a credit union consulting firm in Boulder City, Nev., were extensively quoted in a white paper produced by CUNA’s HR & Organizational Development Council, which takes a deeper look at the overall impact of the #MeToo movement and how credit unions can respond and make changes to address workplace sexual harassment issues. “We’ve had policies and procedures for reporting and dealing with sexual harassment complaints when I got started in the industry in the 80s, but it’s really not about policies and processes,” Heckler explained. “It’s about what you tolerate in your culture, and it’s about the norms that you put in place for senior leadership behavior. That’s really at the heart of this.”

Mitchell said it’s time for credit unions to be preemptive in their approaches, and not wait for a problem or lawsuit.

“Credit unions want to ensure a safe, effective and engaging work environment for everyone – men and women,” she said. “This isn’t just a gender discussion. This is an opportunity to position for the future and encourage diversity, as harassment prevention is a good business practice, period.”

Fully 30% of the 80,000 to 90,000 discrimination charges the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission receives annually include a harassment allegation. EEOC’s research also shows that more that 80% of individuals who experience harassment never filed a formal complaint and nearly three out of four individuals who experience harassment never even raise the issue at the workplace.

What’s more, according to EEOC data, the “finance and insurance” sector generated the ninth-largest number of sexual harassment claims filed with the agency from 2005 through 2015. The financial services industry employs more than six million people.

Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nevada), who have been reviewing sexual harassment issues in the financial services industry, pointed out that while other “high-level financial managers were forced to step down amid harassment allegations” in the last year, the financial sector “has had fewer public revelations of sexual harassment” than other industries.

The senators brought this issue up in a letter earlier this year to the Securities and Exchange Commission and Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.

In their letter, the lawmakers suggested that the financial sector has had fewer public revelations of sexual harassment because of “strong ‘cultural and financial forces’ in the industry that discourage speaking out, including payout of large settlements with nondisclosure agreements to harassment victims, class-action prohibitions and forced arbitration.”

For Heckler, a tipping point in breaking through those apparent cultural and financial forces arrived in November 2017 when she was driving to work and heard the news that Matt Lauer had been fired from the “Today Show.”

“I remember saying, ‘Wow! This guy has been in my living room for 20 years and he’s a creeper,’” she said. “I also said to myself that today is the day we make a proactive statement at PSCU and I’m not going to wait until tomorrow. So I was talking to Siri on my cell phone to get my thoughts down as I drove to work. I crafted it into a statement, met with my CEO, and he said, ‘Yes, let’s do it.’”

On the heels of Lauer’s shocking sexual misconduct allegations, the PSCU executive management team distributed a proactive statement that any kind of sexual harassment will not be tolerated.

“You have to put that stake in the sand and then you have to talk about it,” Heckler explained.

But how does a credit union transform its culture so that sexual harassment is prevented?

In Heckler’s view, the credit union culture is defined by the behaviors that are tolerated by the CEO, the senior leadership team and the board of directors.

“You can put whatever you want into a vision, mission and values statement, but the culture is really defined by the behaviors that the employees see demonstrated by senior leadership,” she explained.

In other words, if employees see questionable behaviors from senior leaders, then that sends a direct signal to employees that those types of behaviors are tolerated or perhaps even encouraged to succeed in a workplace.

Part of a culture change also requires the way sexual harassment can be reported and addressed.

It’s important, for example, to allow employees to report sexual misconduct to any senior leader that employees may trust or feel comfortable with, not just an HR professional, Heckler noted.

This says to employees that everyone on the executive team is open to talking about sexual harassment incidents with assurances that they will be investigated confidentially and quickly, appropriate action will be taken and there will be no retaliation for reporting sexual harassment incidents.

“The leadership training is a bit different because we need to make them understand that they are responsible for the [workplace] environment,” Heckler said. “There’s liability if you’re in an organization of more than 50 employees in that there can be personal liability for sexual harassment that you perpetuate or that is going on in your work environment that you should have known about and should have addressed.”

With training and education, credit unions can also empower their employees to recognize and address sexual harassment when they experience it.

“Our training is online and includes a video, which is very good because it helps you understand and recognize sexual harassment even if it’s not directed at you,” she said.

Other employee training methods include live events, increasing the frequency of sexual harassment training, tailoring the training content and varying it over time, according to CUNA’s white paper. It’s also important to assess the effectiveness of employee training.

Heckler’s views are supported by research from the American Psychological Association that concluded leadership support of a civil and respectful organizational culture, along with training and clear policies, can change individual behavior and workplace culture.

At organizations that took new steps to prevent and address sexual harassment, employees reported better outcomes than organizations that did not, according to research conducted by the APA and the Center for Organizational Excellence.

Among employers who took new steps to prevent and address sexual harassment, 78% of employees said they would be more likely to report workplace sexual harassment if experienced, according to APA research. Additionally, 82% of employees said after witnessing sexual harassment, they would be more likely to report it and 78% of employees said they would be more likely to confront a co-worker for engaging in inappropriate sexual behavior at work.

However, the APA research also found that following the massive media coverage of the #MeToo movement, only 32% of employers said they have taken steps to prevent and address sexual harassment, while 18% of employers have reminded employees of existing sexual harassment training resources, 10% have added additional training or resources related to sexual harassment, and 8% have implemented a more stringent sexual harassment policy.