Harassment at work

I am going to start this article by saying that this is purely based on my personal experience and observations. I am not trying to generalise what harassment represents at work or in general whatsoever and I acknowledge that every case is different.

To me, what seems important to point out and what we often tend to forget is that harassment does not always represent sexual misconduct. It can also take many other forms such as psychological, physical, discriminatory, personal etc. In this article, I will be addressing the psychological and personal types of harassment at work. As ugly as it sounds, adults in general are also capable of harassing others.

It would be wrong to say that any type of harassment only comes from your boss/hierarchy because I have seen otherwise, so that it can also come from your working peers. It can start with several comments, or even derogatory jokes, small ones, but strong ones and then escalate slowly. You let it pass thinking that it might just be temporarily but then, intimidation comes in and plays a role and this can ruin the whole working environment, your joy of going to work and the job you love. This can destroy a person’s psychological sanity and peace within herself or himself.

Therefore, we should take this more seriously than we think. We never think that this is going to happen to us until one day it does, and come on, we know that even if we talk to HR we do not know for sure if we will be taken seriously, if something will be done or even if our future in the company is guaranteed. If they ask for proof, it is your word against the other person’s and one thing is for sure, nothing will ever be the same.

It is important that you decide to talk and open yourself when and if this happens with anybody around you: your friends, family or professionals. And then you decide to act and do something about it. All types of harassments are not acceptable, and whether if it is a working peer or your boss does not make it impossible to do something against this hideous behaviour. I have personally never been psychologically harassed at work, but I have seen several cases and the results of this has luckily been solved, but it took a lot of time and positive energy. I think that we do not have enough programs or help towards harassment. We have seen with the movement #MeToo that a lot of women are now capable of open with sexual harassment and in my opinion, we should be able to talk about these types of behaviours without thinking it is pejorative.