Feature
There’s nothing new about harassment. It’s long been an issue in the workplace, but the difference today is the call isn’t always coming from inside the house.
Public-facing employees are now contending with scary behavior from customers, prospects and even complete strangers online. While it may feel unavoidable, employees shouldn’t have to take this kind of abuse. So what can — and should — employers do to support their employees?
Attack of The Trolls
Online harassment can include anything from name-calling, cyberstalking to physical threats and even doxxing attempts. It should be a familiar concept to anyone who is active online, but particularly those on social media. Nearly half (44%) of Americans reported being harassed online according to an 2020 report by the Anti-Defamation League.
Certain jobs tend to be at higher risk for harassment, such as those in journalism, academics and politics. For individuals from marginalized groups, the risk is compounded.
Case in point: a recent report from the International Center for Journalists found that 73% of female journalists surveyed experienced online violence, with 25% of the messages they received threatening physical violence and 18% threatening sexual violence.
Last year, Boston Children’s Hospital had to respond to violent threats made to employees which followed a coordinated online campaign against the care it provides transgender youth.
Leigh Honeywell, founder and CEO of Tall Poppy, has used her cybersecurity background to help support victims of online harassment for well over a decade. According to her, employees within an organization who have to ban or reject customers from platforms or services also bear the brunt of their responses.
“When you have to say no to the public, some percentage of them are going to flip out and engage in misconduct, stalking or otherwise negatively target the people who told them as much,” Honeywell explained.
Related Article: Well-Being Efforts Need to Start in the C-Suite
Solving Harassment as an EX Imperative
Honeywell, a former Technology Fellow at the ACLU's Project on speech, privacy, and technology, founded Tall Poppy with the idea that employers should be responsible when employees encounter harassment in their line of work. The company offers a variety of tools and services to help prevent and fight back against harassment.
"This is about harassment from outside the company. HR, in theory, is supposed to handle [internal incidents]," Honeywell said. "We really wanted to focus on the stuff that's coming from outside the house because that was a particular area that was underserved by existing technology, existing companies."
Employment lawyer Kate Bischoff shed additional light on the responsibility — legal and otherwise — companies bear when employees are harassed online.
“There's liability because you as an employer, when a third party harasses our employee, put them in that spot,” Bischoff said. “In addition, if we put them out there and we don't take action, we have that liability but we've also created a situation where every other employee is watching this happen, and now we're the awful employer who does nothing about it.”
Honeywell said that mitigating this harassment should also be tied into DEI initiatives.
“There has been a lot less spending on keeping people who are underrepresented in [high-profile] roles, and making sure that the work is sustainable,” she said. “If you've spent all this money as a company to recruit underrepresented people, but they are getting harassed out of the job, you've still failed.”
Related Article: DEIB Is Ready for a Reboot
Security Risks
Online harassment can and does escalate. According to Honeywell, some of the most common issues are doxxing or account takeovers and hacking.
Employers should also be aware that personal threats to employees can be a risk to the organization as well. This can include employees being extorted based on information stolen from their accounts or passwords stolen from an employee’s account being used to access workplace systems.
“All of these issues really exist at the intersection of harassment and cyber security,” Honeywell said.
Honeywell added that it gets trickier with platforms like LinkedIn, which blur the lines between personal and professional. While not an official part of the digital workplace, these platforms are a necessity for certain employees to use.
“In our experience there's like a vanishingly small number of employers who are actually equipped to deal with these kinds of personal security and cyber security threats,” she said.
Related Article: 4 Collaboration Habits That Open the Door to Security Breaches
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Action Items For Employers
There’s no easy solution for online harassment, but employers can take a number of proactive steps around employee safety and well-being. Honeywell recommended the following:
- Establish a duty of care requirement for workplaces to provide support, resources and tools for employees facing harassment.
- Develop and communicate clear internal policies and procedures, including a social media policy, to support and protect employees.
- Deploy a password manager organization-wide.
- Identify the most visible public-facing individuals within the organization and ensure no compromising or personal information is available online.
- Ensure that benefits plans include adequate mental health support for employees.
Bischoff also recommended reconsidering whether you need to personally identify employees during customer service interactions.
“I see some organizations creating multiple versions of their own handles so that they can provide some level of personal protection to their employees and have more control over the accounts,” she said.
Simply being upfront that it happens can go a long way to address the hurt and frustration it causes, she added.
“We know we can't eliminate the risk,” Bischoff said. “We might as well talk about what that risk looks like. I don't assume that an employee who goes online knows the risk and they're just gonna be OK with it."
