The harassment audit

January 29, 2010

Bilheran, A. "L'audit en matière de harcèlement", in Revue Psychologues & Psychologies, October 2010.

Harassment in the workplace is a delicate subject to deal with. Moreover, company management and, more generally, all the social actors concerned, seem helpless when accusations of harassment emerge. Most often, it is panic, giving rise to inertia or, on the contrary, to escalation.

What to do? How to intervene? Are these accusations founded? What are the responsibilities of each party? So many questions that surface when the word harassment is uttered.

Harassment cases systematically have two aspects: a psychological aspect and a legal aspect. The two aspects do not always match and the consultant auditor must master them perfectly before embarking on an adventure that involves his own responsibilities (particularly criminal) in what he will say and write.

Harassment and suffering at work: What is the connection? What is the difference?

Harassment should in no way be confused with suffering at work. It is true that all harassment as a process of repeated aggression (moral and/or sexual, and/or physical) causes suffering at work, just as suffering at work can cause harassment attitudes. Furthermore, like psychosocial risks (a term that groups together the risks relating to suffering at work), harassment can be descending (by the hierarchy), ascending (by subordinates), but also horizontal (between colleagues). It is therefore not exclusively the work of the hierarchy on individuals or groups (unions), and a hierarchy can sometimes itself find itself harassed.

Harassment is a harmful and reprehensible behavior. Its existence in a company always comes from organizational problems, from an organizational dysfunction giving way to attitudes such as violence and repeated pressure.

Harassment is a psychosocial risk, but we should not confuse the new work organizations due to economic pressures with the very nature of harassment. The former consist of restructuring of working hours, increased pressure on results, without it being possible to identify a person responsible for this phenomenon. Everyone suffers from it on a relational and human level. They cause terrible suffering at work, can borrow certain "techniques" used in moral harassment, but should not be confused with harassment.

Indeed, moral harassment at work presupposes the presence of a person (or group) who is "harassing", a person (or group) who is "harassed", as well as witnesses, whether they are passive, accomplices of the harasser, or adjuvants of the harassed.

Great care should therefore be taken not to confuse institutional abuse and harassment. Institutional abuse can be involuntary (sometimes one even feels like one is "doing the right thing"), without losing any of its violence. In this case, there is not necessarily a perpetrator who derives pleasure and psychological benefit from the situation, but an organization that is dysfunctional, whose system is out of order, and which is going "crazy". The individual is then trapped, condemned to dead ends and conflicts of loyalty (e.g.: given an objective without the means to achieve it); he is the victim of a system in which he may have participated, sometimes in spite of himself.

Conversely, in harassment, the relationship is asymmetrical, based on the abuse of power, the balance of power, the intention to harm dignity and to subject others through coercion. Sometimes, abusive systems will even be fertile ground for the emergence of harassment, and for the impunity of harassing behavior. These systems are abusive in themselves but not harassing, although they encourage the outbreak of harassment. Clearly, when pressure and stress are increased, we see an increase in harassment, because everyone becomes more aggressive, more anxious and more fragile. In short, it is proven that certain work organizations encourage the establishment of this process, but they cannot be responsible for it: it is individuals, their complicity in particular – active or passive – in the instrumentalization of others, who encourage the explosion of this phenomenon.

Are there any risky environments and risky situations?

Some companies, or certain sectors of the companies, are subject to very strong economic pressures. These are those where a logic of results is advocated, at the cost of the employee's health, which is ultimately counterproductive, whatever the human price to pay. Here, it may more generally be a question of savage management and general suffering linked to the organization of work, with harassment in good place. Places with a strong culture of secrecy, hierarchy, and humiliation are also particularly concerned by moral harassment. However, it can also be environments where, on the contrary, the result has no importance, as is often the case in the civil service, where "job security" sometimes allows a strong feeling of impunity.

Some phases of company growth are particularly critical when they involve periods of major change, crisis, and destabilization. Thus, while movement is a constant in human beings, change is not. Any change within a company can be experienced in a very insecure way for employees, especially if this change is not accompanied by education (the reasons for the change, its merits, etc.). Any poorly managed change situation is a risky situation for the emergence or re-emergence of harassment. In fact, a change situation often causes a feeling of insecurity among staff. In order to adapt to it, it requires resources that mobilize stress and sometimes generate anxiety. It is on this weakened ground that harassment can develop. On the other hand, when a change is well managed in a company (this is the nature of change management), then the risk, which is not one, is rather to shed light on existing practices, and to be able to resolve them.

Among the changes often resulting from poor personnel management, we can cite: mergers/restructurings, department reorganizations, the implementation of a new change program, relocations, abrupt manager mobility. Poor change management essentially comes from a lack of education for staff (for example, a lack of explanation of the reasons and the merits of this change) but also from a lack of visibility on the future, and/or a lack of communication with staff. Most of the time, due to a lack of change management, employees are faced with the fait accompli of a change whose necessity they do not understand. This poor control of human representations causes a feeling of insecurity, uncertainties about the future, and increases the likelihood of harassment emerging. It is also imperative to specify that it is not change that is the cause of trouble, but poorly managed change. On the other hand, resistance to change, during a change that is poorly managed, poorly explained and not desired by the staff, can be the cause of harassment. This is how people can "want the skin" of the new director of the establishment who came to announce the change, based solely on the anxious representation of what this change would be.

What are the worrying indicators?

Some indicators in Human Resources can suggest the potential existence of harassment, when they are cumulative. This is the case for absenteeism, turnover , and the increase in workplace accidents. There are organizational indicators for the company that Human Resources, Management and Directors do not systematically think to implement, or do not prioritize enough: turnover, absences, sick leave, drop in productivity, persistent conflicts, etc. These indicators must be added to the physical and psychological symptoms manifested by employees, and it is important that Human Resources dialogue with occupational health to study the annual reports.

All psychosocial symptoms (observable signs that make sense) demonstrate the psychological impact of the employees' relationship to their work. Within the organization, they are to be appreciated as a collective phenomenon that disrupts the proper functioning of work. They indicate in themselves a disruption of the organization, which becomes pathogenic (generating the very ills from which it suffers) and which requires help to reposition itself in harmonious functioning.

Psychosocial indicators indicating the possible existence of harassment may be the following: poor team climate, fear, mistrust, suspicion, increase in various complaints, etc. It is therefore essential that the company can equip itself with tools to understand staff representations. The tools to be created include the existence of regulatory spaces, i.e. free expression, thought, collective reflection, where staff can express themselves. In this regard, staff representative bodies such as the CE and the CHSCT have their place and must operate in a dynamic, unmuzzled manner.

Harassment and pathogenic organization?

Harassment in the workplace can only flourish in a pathogenic organization, namely an organization that is sick in terms of its effective human relations, but also an organization that generates its own illnesses (e.g.: lack of respect in daily relationships, isolation and loss of social ties between employees, etc.). Entire sections of the organization are affected, particularly human resources, which no longer really function to protect employees, but are transformed into controllers and censors (identifying unproductive people, arbitrarily summoning employees to obtain information on others, etc.). In some companies, they are then renamed by employees as "inhuman resources".

The pathogenic organization often lacks spatial references (allocation of a specific space to each employee to carry out their work), temporal references (working in an emergency, etc.), historical references (loss of collective memory of the history of the organization, recreation of another, falsified history, impossibility of dating events, etc.).

The presence of harassment in an organization is a serious indicator of psychosocial disorders. Moreover, cases of serial suicides in companies are very frequently linked to the existence of harassment. It is extremely reductive, although very reassuring, to conceive of harassment as a personal problem between two individuals, and which has nothing to do with the organization. When in fact an organization suggests a relational permissiveness such that some people arrogate to themselves the right to harass, it is already a pathogenic organization, which encourages, sometimes unwittingly, certain counterproductive relational practices (humiliations, pseudo-humor, isolation strategies, etc.). Moreover, some organizations wish above all to "stifle the scandal", and then implicitly or explicitly designate the harassed person as a person to be "eliminated" from the organization. Harassment is thus "endorsed" in whole or in part by the company, and even, in some cases, encouraged. Because one of the ways of expressing this individual, group, organizational and societal anxiety is through harassment.

Organizational anxiety creates defensive strategies, of which harassment is one. Harassment logics allow group alienation to be achieved, and counter the company's fear of death (I control, therefore I live, and I control so as not to lose).

In some organizations, for example (but not only) in sectors that are particularly competitive and trigger massive anxiety, harassment is instilled by management itself, either because management wants to control to prevent employees from becoming aware of certain wrongdoings (e.g. embezzlement), or because management wants to prevent the competition from taking over its employees (and in doing so, in spite of itself, does everything it can to make them leave!), or because management lets this logic be dictated by the demands of short-term shareholders (on which the survival of the company also depends). These factors (and others, of course, the list is not exhaustive) can accumulate. Therefore, management and top management can go so far as to incite harassing practices, and encourage the active promotion of subjects that present perverse processes.

In any case, an organization that allows harassment, whether it encourages it, tolerates it, or does not punish it, finds itself caught in a system over which it no longer has control. This is a system where the framework is no longer efficient, since "everything is permitted", and where the manifestations of this "relational anarchy" can have serious implications not only for employees, but for the organization itself, which finds itself caught in its own trap. The ability to undertake is in fact inversely proportional to authoritarian or lax logic. It requires a framework, authorities, guarantors, and a coherence of the project over time, of the projects between them, whether they are one-off projects or larger organizational projects.

The audit: some milestones

In any case, in this type of situation, Management must above all maintain an attitude of caution, without deviating from its responsibilities. It will have every interest in acting as an arbitrator, and in hearing the parties concerned, or even in organizing a confrontation and, depending on the materiality of the alleged facts, in contacting the occupational physician, the syndicalistic committee, or even the labor inspector. But above all, in the event of suspicion, it may be absolutely necessary for the employer to resort to an audit with an external firm. The audit in matters of harassment is important, in that it allows to identify these indicators and the origin of this suffering at work, and to propose that they be increased and/or improved. Thus, a symptom of a harassment complaint can hide other problems in terms of suffering at work.

Auditing a harassment complaint situation necessarily involves a clear ethical position. First of all, it is in no way for the auditor to judge that it is harassment, which is, once again, a legal concept. Only a judge can rule on the existence of harassment. Nevertheless, the auditor must work to confirm/deny a bundle of presumptions concerning the existence of repeated moral and/or sexual pressure on all or part of the company.

It is important to remember that harassment is not only the work of a hierarchy and/or management. It can also be the work of colleagues, subordinates or, more rarely, unions. This is how we can encounter, depending on the missions, harassment of management on unions (including union discrimination) or, on the contrary, management harassed by unions. The harasser does not have a predefined role in the company. The common point is nevertheless that the harasser has excessive power in the company, which can also be the expression of a counter-power.

The audit may be instituted at the request of management questioning accusations of harassment, or of a steering committee composed of the CHSCT (syndicalistic committee) and management. In cases of denial by management and inability to reach an agreement, the syndicalistic committee has a duty to mandate a syndicalistic committee's expertises appraisal for serious risks to the health of employees, in order to shed light on complaints of harassment. In the latter case, the syndicalistic committee will choose a firm approved by the Ministry of Labor to conduct syndicalistic committee's expertises appraisals.

It is obvious, but sometimes important to remember, that the audit must be conducted by external consultants specializing in the issue of harassment. The audit must obviously guarantee the confidentiality of the interviews, and protect any person wishing to speak out. It gives rise to a final restitution report in which it is excluded that the names of employees appear, or testimonies allowing the employees to be recognized. Furthermore, it is important to keep in mind that, on these issues, the audit will be considered as the first "proof", and that it may appear in a legal file, particularly in the event of a criminal investigation. Each word must therefore be weighed, and there can be no assertion without solid evidence, which will have to be produced to the judge, if necessary, if the judge requests to hear the consultants who carried out the audit.

Shedding light on a harassment situation, what does that mean? First, it will involve interviewing any person who wishes to express themselves on harassment complaints, analyzing the symptoms of the people, and identifying possible psychological mechanisms of constraints, whether inter-individual, group, or organizational. To do this, it is necessary to be able to establish a bond of trust with the employee being heard that is strong enough for them to be able to express themselves despite the terror felt, if the situation is harassing. On the other hand, it is essential to have clinical and psychopathological knowledge to identify harassment, beyond the speeches given (and which can sometimes be "pre-chewed" speeches, imposed by unscrupulous management), the symptoms and psychological processes at play.

But that's not all. Because if harassment really occurs in an organization, it is necessary to analyze the organizational context and make connections with the rest of the company's social climate. For this, other interviews are essential, with key players in the company and employees taken "at random" from the organization chart. But a documentary and historical analysis of the organization is also fundamental (analyzing professional developments, the social report, occupational health surveys, the functioning of social dialogue and social bodies, etc.). Why did harassment occur? Why did the harasser have "free rein" to harass? Has the company been weakened by major stages in its development (restructuring, developments, sudden and poorly conducted change, etc.)? Does the company have a disciplinary policy that discourages this type of practice? etc. The audit report must propose solid, tailor-made recommendations that can be implemented by the company in order to resolve the situation of suffering at work, whether or not it is caused by harassment.

Furthermore, it is almost systematic that, when audits on potential harassment are conducted, consultants are subject to attempts at instrumentalization and manipulation on both sides. It is therefore essential to clearly define the initial methodology, to ensure that it has been well understood, and to maintain "the course" in the ethics of the intervention, regardless of the attempts at pressure. In the same way, external stakeholders allow "third parties" to be "acted" and to help the consultant in his intervention, particularly with regard to occupational health and labor inspection, which often have an informed idea of the situation the company is going through.

The audit is valuable for companies. If it reveals that the situation is one of organizational mistreatment and not of repeated intentional moral pressure, Management will have avoided sanctioning innocent people, and will have to take measures to optimize the social climate. On the other hand, the audit can confirm complaints of harassment, and in this case, Management has the latitude to position itself. Because beforehand, it must be remembered, Management has little other solution than to act as an arbitrator: no disciplinary sanction and no dismissal can be based on a simple suspicion, whatever the reason. This response is based on a major provision of the law on dismissal set out in Article L 1333-1 of the Labor Code, which specifies that in matters of dismissal "if a doubt remains, it benefits the employee". It is also on this basis that a good number of decisions, sometimes misunderstood by employers, result in their condemnation.

At the end of the audit

The outcome of the audit can be multiple. If the complaints are confirmed and supported, the employer must sanction or most often dismiss the person for serious misconduct (if not gross misconduct, in certain cases). But it remains to reconstruct the group that will have suffered the harassment (direct victims and witnesses). Because it is important to understand that it is not because the department is "freed" from one or more harasser(s) that the department is necessarily "cured" (this can however happen!). In all cases, it is important not to isolate the psychological problems encountered from the problems encountered by the company (for example, a context of restructuring). This also allows solutions to be found by dealing with the origins of the problems.

Any department that has experienced or witnessed harassment has also been subjected to traumatic effects. It is essential not to act as if nothing happened, and to take the time to take stock. What does that mean? Taking stock means that the group takes a moment, reweaves the history of events, the implications of each party, but also that each person questions themselves and learns lessons from past harassment. This reconstruction must be done with an external professional psychologist, in the form of discussion groups and team supervision.

The first action to implement is to offer employees a post-traumatic debriefing that will help them put words, collectively and then individually, on what happened, to manage the possible guilt of not having acted sooner, to restore understanding between everyone. This post-traumatic debriefing must be governed by the intervention of an external psychologist, governed by professional secrecy and practicing benevolent neutrality. A debriefing is often a matter of one to three days maximum.

Furthermore, it may be relevant to set up team supervision, especially if the harassment has lasted for years. Team supervision allows for a regular review (for example once a month) of team conflicts, resentment, unspoken issues, and is an opportunity for people to distance themselves from emotional issues at work. In the case of a post-harassment situation, supervision can make it possible to "work together" again. The reconstruction of the department can also be supplemented by personalized managerial support. Because management must also be able to express itself, either in the form of personalized support or within the supervision itself. In fact, supervision must involve all the actors who were concerned in the department in question. These speaking times are far from useless. They allow for a return to meaning, to put things back in their place, to anticipate conflicts and tensions that could be brewing.

In any event, the consultant auditors cannot under any circumstances then be those who intervene in the debriefing or team supervision, so as to maintain an ethical neutrality which will benefit the company above all, and will participate in its "healing" process.

Finally, a post-harassment situation must be an opportunity to restore social dialogue and to mature the bodies: improvement of HR tools and disciplinary policy, training in psychosocial risks and team management for management.

In short, auditing harassment is no small matter, and requires at least the following qualities and skills from consultant auditors: prudence, a developed ethical sense, strong clinical knowledge of mental manipulation, knowledge of the unofficial strategic and political workings of the company, mastery of the functioning of social bodies and stakeholders in mental health (in and around the company), in-depth legal and jurisprudential knowledge, a detailed understanding of power issues within the organization as well as the different levels of analysis (individual, group, organizational)...

Reading Tips

Bilheran, A. (2011), «La soumission psychologique au travail. Comment un harceleur parvient à soumettre tout un groupe d’adultes pourtant bien constitués, et ce qui s’ensuit», in Les Cahiers des Facteurs Psychosociaux.

Bilheran, A., Bouyssou, G. (2011), Les Risques Psychosociaux en entreprise, Paris, Armand Colin.

Bilheran, A., Bouyssou, G. (2010), Harcèlement en entreprise: comprendre, prévenir, agir, Paris, Armand Colin.

Bilheran, A. (2010), Le suicide en entreprise, Paris, Ed. du Palio/Sémiode Editions.

Bilheran, A. (2010), «Comprendre les risques psychosociaux par l’approche organisationnelle», in Combalbert, N. (coll.) La souffrance au travail, Paris, Armand Colin.

Bilheran, A. (2009), Harcèlement, Famille, Institution, Entreprise, Paris, Armand Colin.

Bilheran, A. (2009), L’autorité, Paris, Armand Colin.

Bilheran, A. (2009), «Les risques psychosociaux sont-ils en lien avec des problèmes d’autorité?», in Les Cahiers des Facteurs Psychosociaux.

Bilheran, A. (2009), «Le management face aux vrais/faux harcèlements: comment décrypter pour réagir?», in Revue des Centraliens.

Bilheran, A. (2009), «L’éthique des pratiques professionnelles en entreprise: être psychologue fait-il une différence? Quelques réflexions sur l’intervention dans les risques psychosociaux», in Revue Psychologues et Psychologies du Syndicat National des Psychologues, nov. 2009.

Bilheran, A. (2009), «Du suicide : à qui la faute?», in Les Cahiers des Facteurs Psychosociaux, déc.

Bilheran, A. (2008), «Harcèlement, système et organisation», in Les Cahiers des Facteurs Psychosociaux, août.

Bilheran, A. (2006), Le harcèlement moral, Paris, Armand Colin, rééd. 2010.

Note

[1] In Revue Psychologues & Psychologies, October 2010.