Why workplace harassment training doesn't work

Whether it's an ethnic slur from a supervisor or repeated lewd gestures, getting harassed at work is still all too commonplace, despite a 30-year effort to deter the unlawful behavior. In short: training programs used by U.S. corporations to deter workplace harassment don't work and should be changed.

That's the conclusion of an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) task force, which is out with a report that finds the high level of complaints to the agency unchanged in recent years.

Of the roughly 90,000 claims of employment discrimination filed with the EEOC last year, nearly a third, or 28,000, involved allegations of workplace harassment, the task force found. During 2015, federal employees filed 6,741 harassment complaints as all of, or part of, alleged discrimination, with the complaints making up 43 percent of all filed by federal workers.

Harassment claims have held largely unchanged in recent years, a fact that Commissioner Chai Feldblum, who co-chaired the task force, finds troubling. "They have basically stayed level -high and level, and that's not a good place for it to be," she told CBS MoneyWatch.

Nearly three of four workers harassed on the basis of sex (a category that includes sexual orientation, gender identity and pregnancy), race, disability and religion "fear disbelief of their claim, inaction on their claim, blame, or social or professional retaliation," according to the report.

Infrequent, outdated and poorly designed training methods are part of the problem, along with a focus on simply avoiding legal liability. And, participants often take the mandatory schooling less seriously than they should.

"Everyone treats this training as if it's an episode of `The Office'," said EEOC Commissioner and task force co-chair Victoria Lipnic. "People are required to go to it. It's a 'check-the-box' exercise."

Patti Perez, a shareholder at the law firm Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart, who conducts the seminars for employers, also has a dim view of some programs. For instance, a training video that show "a creepy-looking guy harassing some young woman," she said. "There is not a lot of nuance in these training sessions."

The result can employees and managers fearful of getting into trouble for saying the wrong thing, creating a workplace "less compliant and less effective because you have people who are scared to talk to one another," Perez said.

The issue of harassment is also not taken seriously enough by employees who don't crackdown hard enough, said Gloria Allred, a high-profile Los Angeles attorney who has represented plaintiffs in harassment cases for four decades.

"A slap on the wrist or a mere warning letter or a few days' suspension is just insufficient to stop sexual harassment," said Allred.

Harassment not only affects the employees involved but threatens the bottom lines for companies due to decreased productivity and increased turnover, the EEOC said.

The EEOC's Lipnic advises that companies set up systems where people can report harassment and "know they won't be retaliated against."

Last year, the EEOC recovered $164.5 million for workers who suffered harassment.