Exploring Equality and Diversity in Corporates: Policy Statement of Google on Sexual Harassment and Creating an Effective Employee Awareness Campaign

This report explores the issues of equality and diversity in corporates, with a focus on sexual harassment. It includes a policy statement from Google on sexual harassment and methods for creating an effective employee awareness campaign. The report highlights the importance of having proper policies and guidelines for sexual harassment in the workplace.

Exploring Equality and Diversity

Contents
Executive summary.....................................................................................................................................3
Introduction.................................................................................................................................................4
Policy Statement of Google on Sexual Harassment for employees in the workplace..................................5
A report on how to create an effective employee awareness campaign on Sexual harassment?...............7
Conclusion.................................................................................................................................................10
References.................................................................................................................................................11

Executive summary
In the below report, a detailed explanation has been given on exploring equality and diversity and the
practices prevailing in corporates. Discrimination is a major concern in every country across the globe
and is creating negative impact on the working atmosphere. There are multiple reasons for such unequal
behavior in corporates. Some organizations treat men and women in different way like their different
pay scale, variation in workload and working hours. These practices are not right from any perspective.
There is an unequal treatment for employees belong to some different communities. In multinational
organizations, there is always a scope of the availability of employees belonging to different
communities and they expect an equal behavior in the organization. A policy statement has been
described on an issue that happened in an organization. It also includes methods for creating an
effective employee awareness campaign that can help for the betterment of employees as well as the
society. There are various methods by which it can be controlled and people become aware of not using
such bad practices in a work organization. In most of the organizations, there is a redressal forum that
helps employees suffering from any kind of discrimination and inequality at workplace. They take
necessary action as well to make it disappear from the organization. There are some major concerns
that need to be followed for the effectiveness and success of the campaign.

Introduction
Exploring equality and Diversity is a very important concern nowadays because most of the
organizations have adopted MNC culture but there is a lot of scope of improvement in some areas like
Equality management and to manage diverse workforce. Diversity in the organization is very common as
people have started exploring opportunities globally that makes it happen. Workforce of the
organization belongs to different diversity and still they work in the same team. It becomes difficult to
manage them as they have different mindset and different way of thinking. Sometimes there are
linguistic issues too. There is huge inequality in the organizations and it has been seen in different ways
like people are discriminated as per their caste, gender, and race. Such inequalities can easily be seen in
the form of different pay for equal talent, sexual harassment in workplace (Lee and Coulehan, 2006).
There should be proper management and practices to remove such negative things from the workplace
to make it safer and healthier. There should be proper awareness campaign that can contribute in
eradication of such false practices and to educate the employees for the better future of the
organization. An organization should be free from such practices as it also impacts the image in the
market. These false practices create a lot of negativity in the organization and directly impact the goals
and objectives. Employees cannot give their hundred percent when they did not find a suitable
environment to work within. They need to be calm and positive to provide effective outcome.

Policy Statement of Google on Sexual Harassment for employees in the
workplace.
Google is a renowned organization that is known for providing amazing flexibilities to its employees and
helps them in every circumstance. Google is also known as harassment-free and inclusive event
experience for everyone without considering gender, sex, disabilities, physical appearances,
neurodiversity, ethnicity, body and size (Kuhlmann and Bourgeault, 2008). As per Google, employees do
not bear harassment of the workforce in any form. Google takes action against the people who do not
follow the policies and then Google respond to them appropriately. Google has very strict policies
regarding sexual harassment as well as any kind of discrimination (Bratton and Gold, 2017). Basically the
organization values their employees and always focuses on providing a comfort zone to everyone.
It has been decided by Google that all the participants of Google must follow some policies. Google want
to provide an excellent experience to all the people connected to the organization regardless of their
sexuality, gender, caste, race and religion. The organization always treats everyone with full respect.
Google tries to make everyone understand that everyone has full right to experience everything without
any fear of discrimination and harassment. Google wants everyone to take care about their actions so
that I can’t harm anyone (Equality & diversity, 2007). According to Google’s policies, harassment need
not to be tolerated by anyone and everyone have right to speak if they know something is happening
wrong in the organization. Sometimes there are some misconceptions too when the person making
someone uncomfortable does not know or aware of the same (Ivancevich and Konopaske, 2013). So in
such cases it is important to make the organization know the reality and bringing attention to their
behavior. It is the responsibility of Google to take action or warning against the people who are involved
in harassment in the organization. Every employee needs to take action against any harassment felt by
them without being silent so that an appropriate and immediate action can be taken without any delay
(Perrewé, 2011).
There is a broad meaning of harassment and includes usage of unappropriated language, any kind of
gender identity, sexual orientation, race, age, religion and sexual imagery at workplace. It is important to
convey every participant to behave in a proper way without hurting anyone and being in limits.
Harassment cannot be tolerated in Google as the organization always listens to their employees keen to
help them. Any employee feeling unsecure or uncomfortable may reach to the appropriate team to
discuss the same and getting a solution of the problems. Google prefer saying “yes” so as to improve

methodology to help in building each other’s ideas. It basically contributes in organization’s growth
(Shivarudrappa, Ramachandra and Gopalakrishna, 2010).
Google’s policy has workshops, forums, hallway conversation, and social media for all the partners,
volunteers, event staff and sponsors (Oswick and Noon, 2012). Google can anytime remove any person
who found behaving in a bad manner or failing to comply with the company’s policy and terms and
conditions. If someone found behaving inappropriately then Google may get a notice of appellation from
the event. The staff wears special badges so that they can be easily identifiable. Google has a zero
tolerance policy that basically means that Google always review allegations of violation of the guidelines
of event community and Anti- Harassment policy. The organization takes all the concerns in a very
serious way and they decide what can be the best appropriate action for each concern. The human
resource department will always be happy to assist people who are facing any kind of discomfort or
harassment and help them to feel safe. This policy is applicable for all the partners, vendor booths and
sponsors. As per the policy, sexualized activities or image should not be used at workplace; the uniform
of booth staff should not be sexualized. If any partner or sponsor found disobeying the policies of the
organization then they are expected to stop such kind of behavior in an immediate way.

A report on how to create an effective employee awareness campaign on
Sexual harassment?
There is a necessity of employee awareness campaign in every organization to remove sexual
harassment practices. The process involves a set of steps. Human Resource department is responsible to
start campaigns or policies regarding such issues (Kochan and Schmalensee, 2003). The steps are as
follow-
1. To identify the audience for the campaign and to find out the best way to communicate with
them in the most effective manner to raise awareness about any issue.
 There is a range of audience like parents, youth, policymakers, media, students,
employees and law enforcement (Dennissen, Benschop and van den Brink, 2018). The
best way is to select a group that has the highest impact in preventing sexual violence
risk of sexual violence where there is the highest (Beer, 2017).
 For making the campaign effective, it is important to partner with any community or
any diverse group. It also depends upon the time invested by the organization like if
they want to invest in a long- term strategy to understand the needs of prevention of
sexual violence then it is necessary to conduct a need assessment.
2. With the help of need assessment, it becomes easy to identify the needs of the campaign and it
can be done by conducting surveys or creating focus groups.
 Without conducting a need analysis, it becomes difficult to check current situation and
information about sexual violence in the society.
 It can also help in learning the statistics related to crime. In this step, it has been
identified that what are the actions that has already been taken to prevent sexual
violence and what was the result of the same.
 In this step, all the strengths challenges of the strategies have been identified by talking
to the stakeholders. This is the major step in the process of creating a campaign (Gupta
and Pallekonda, 2016).
3. Message development takes place.
 The message must be clear if you want to conduct an assessment for the needs of the
community. It is important to provide clear understanding as per the objectives of the
campaign. There are people who understand the meaning of sexual assault but unable

to help anyone suffering from the same (Senyucel and Phillpott, 2011). So it is important
to motivate such people to do some favor to the victimized. In this case, there is a low
possibility of need assessment so the information has to be acquired through the beliefs
and attitudes of the communities for sexual violence (Pajvancic and Petrusic, 2014).
 There should be sensible messages suitable for the target audience. It has been noticed
that people understand a message easily when they relate it to the people or any
scenario. There is one more option in absence of needs assessment that they can
contact people of the communities that have participated in any of the campaign and
the focus groups to get the feedback of the campaign.
 Creation of focus group is one of the best options because of the budget limitations and
timelines. The other option is to partner with some other organizations to spread
awareness as well as to spread awareness. This can also include some informal
communications for getting connected to the general public (Thacker, 2012).
4. This step is to devise strategies helps in getting objectives to real life situations.
 It includes practical tasks like “Write a letter to the Editor”, invite speakers to talk about
the topic, create posters and spread awareness by showing them, spread awareness
messages in events and concerts , send messages with the help of social media (Colgan,
2011).
 Any strategy or strategies can be selected in accordance to the type of audience and
realistic as per the organizational resources and timelines (Enge, 2016).
5. In this step, the testing has been done to check the status of campaign from the target audience.
 It is necessary to know the results of all the planning and hard work to make more
improvements from the same. It helps in gaining more confidence.
 It is a very important step because it can be effective only when audience will fully
focus on the message (Campling, 2008).
6. In step six, overall implementation of the strategy has been done after finalizing the same. It
involves the distribution and posting of material to libraries, gyms, hospitals and malls (Equality,
diversity and inclusion, 2015). The material can also reach to the audience with the help of e
mail as well as social networking.
7. Step seven is related to evaluation and assessment as it is important to evaluate the campaign
to know its effectiveness.

 One of the simple methods to evaluate the campaign is to keep track of the number of
material distributed or how many times it was explained to people. This helps in making
future changes in the campaign to make it better.
 It can also use in comparison of the knowledge of audience before the campaign and
after the campaign. This actually shows the real status of the campaign.
8. The last step is related to the Timeline.
 Before the start of the campaign, a proper planning is mandatory that needs to get start
before launch date. It needs approximately two months to collect information
regarding sexual violence in the community and to find out the gaps in their knowledge
to provide help. Then it takes 10 to 15 days to come up with the major message and
afterwards there is a need to recruit people to collect feedback of the messages
(Herring, 2005).
 The material of the campaign takes two months. If the work has to be done by a
professional designer then it occupies more time in brainstorming and revisions in
comparison to the agency. Then the time comes for getting feedback. Evaluation is a
process that needs to be conducted in the beginning and in the end of the campaign.
Evaluation is important because it is necessary to evaluate the effectiveness of the
campaign. So, all these things need to get complete in the given timeframe (Thacker,
2012).

Conclusion
It has been concluded that every organization should have proper policies or guidelines for sexual
harassment in the organization. They should also start any campaign to control the same. With the help
of a strict policy, all the employees behave in a proper way and they have a fear of action as per the
policy. These are the very common issues nowadays and many employees are facing sexual harassment
in the organization. Some employees remain silent because of fear and never complaint against the
harassment. It actually encourages the culprits. So, it is very important to speak about such issues and
raise a proper complaint so that it can stop at the initial level only. There are many organizations that
have very strong policy for such complaints as they directly fire employees responsible for harassment.
Google has a very strong employee satisfaction because it has a very strict policy that helps in removing
such kind of issues from the organization. They have a separate committee that helps employees facing
any kind of harassment in the organization. Anyone found guilty has to suffer the same outcome
whether it is for any partner, sponsor or any of the employees.

References
Beer, M. (2017). Developing strategic human resource theory and making a difference: An action science
perspective. Human Resource Management Review.
Bratton, J. and Gold, J. (2017). Human resource management. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Campling, J. (2008). Management. Milton, Qld.: John Wiley & Sons Australia.
Colgan, F. (2011). Equality, diversity and corporate responsibility. Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An
International Journal, 30(8), pp.719-734.
Dennissen, M., Benschop, Y. and van den Brink, M. (2018). Diversity Networks: Networking for
Equality?. British Journal of Management.
Enge, E. (2016). Are Links Still A Powerful Google-Ranking Factor?. International Journal of scientific
research and management.
Equality, diversity and inclusion. (2015). London: Emerald Group Publ.
Gupta, D. and Pallekonda, V. (2016). Workplace Romance Can Be Sexual Harassment. Workplace Health &
Safety, 64(10), pp.516-516.
Herring, K. (2005). Toxic Attention: Workplace Sexual HarassmentToxic Attention: Workplace Sexual
Harassment. PsycCRITIQUES, 5050(1515).
Ivancevich, J. and Konopaske, R. (2013). Human resource management. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Kochan, T. and Schmalensee, R. (2003). Management. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
Kuhlmann, E. and Bourgeault, I. (2008). Equal opportunities international. [Bradford, England]: Emerald.
Lee, M. and Coulehan, J. (2006). Medical students' perceptions of racial diversity and gender
equality. Medical Education, 40(7), pp.691-696.

McCarthy, C. (2018). Take steps to prevent, address sexual harassment in the workplace. Campus Legal
Advisor, 18(8), pp.1-5.
Oswick, C. and Noon, M. (2012). Discourses of Diversity, Equality and Inclusion: Trenchant Formulations
or Transient Fashions?. British Journal of Management, 25(1), pp.23-39.
Pajvancic, M. and Petrusic, N. (2014). The importance of institutional mechanisms for exercising gender
equality. Zbornik radova Pravnog fakulteta, Nis, (67), pp.25-44.
Perrewé, P. (2011). The role of personality in human resource management. Human Resource
Management Review, 21(4), p.257.
Senyucel, Z. and Phillpott, S. (2011). Sexual equality and diversity in UK local councils. Equality, Diversity
and Inclusion: An International Journal, 30(8), pp.702-718.
Shivarudrappa, D., Ramachandra, K. and Gopalakrishna, K. (2010). Human Resource Management. New
Delhi: Himalaya Pub. House.
Thacker, R. (2012). Introduction to special issue on Human Resource Management certification. Human
Resource Management Review, 22(4), p.245.