With the 32 years of experience we have, we have found out that when companies do have a clear policy, when employees do know what is acceptable and not acceptable, it makes it much easier for management to deal with the problems. Not everybody is a harasser. A lot of times when you just clarify what it is for them, it stops. Sometimes they say that they were just joking around. Sometimes you have to define to them what is a joke. When I am giving training sessions mostly where there are men, men are usually scared of the fact that it means they can't flirt anymore. When I say that flirting is fine, that it's acceptable, but when someone says “no”, they have to stop, I see their shoulders go back up. They are okay with that now. We didn't change that culture. We're just saying they have to learn how to respect the other person's space.
It sounds good, but we have to see who these managers are, what kind of training they are getting to do this. The timeframe is very important. I can tell you in the eighties, at the provincial government, I saw specific case which took three years to investigate. That's not acceptable.