This story is part of Restaurant Hospitality’s ongoing series on sexual harassment in the restaurant industry.
Michele Lange, director of training and development at Irvine, Calif.-based Habit Restaurants LLC and president of the Council of Hotel and Restaurant Trainers, offerings these ideas for best practices in sexual harassment training:
1. Make part of the team member handbook with a zero-tolerance policy in place against harassment and discrimination.
2. Make it a non-negotiable topic to discuss on orientation day.
Related: How training can help thwart sexual harassment
3. Ensure managers go through an in-depth training on their first day of training. Include how to how to prevent it, recognize it, steps to take to report and investigate and know what the disciplinary process is. (In California, all managers must complete a two-hour sexual harassment course every two years.)
4. Ensure non-management team members complete an e-learning course or view a video regarding harassment during their orientation. E-learning and video content should be set in a restaurant or hotel environment to be more relatable.
Related: How to stop harassment? Make respect a core value
5. Ensure all team members understand what we call the Y2. Give them the “why” behind why this type of behavior is wrong and the effects it can have on people.
6. Establish an anonymous hot line or specific human resources email address to report issues.
Related: What’s the future of sexual harassment at restaurants?
7. Ensure human resources departments are bilingual to be able to better handle calls from the field.
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