Prof. dr hab. Dorota Węziak-Białowolska, Full Professor at the Department of Quantitative Methods & Information Technology shows that an organization's response to sexual harassment tests actual care for its employees.
On a plane, you can’t just walk out of a room, close the door, or interrupt a meeting. Flight attendants work in a confined space, under time pressure, with passengers they don’t choose, and in a culture that for decades has portrayed the profession as one based on smiles, patience, and a willingness to help. However, our study shows that when sexual harassment occurs, it is not merely an “unpleasant situation” that can be left behind once the flight is over.
Rather, it reveals that the organization is not adequately protecting the very people it relies on to ensure the safety of others. The consequences can be long-lasting: poorer sleep, fatigue, reduced well-being, increased anxiety, more physical ailments, and a higher risk that a similar situation will happen again.
At first glance, the issue seems obvious
Harassment is wrong, organizations should fight against it, and employees should know where to report abuse. Yet the problem starts when we move from statements to practice.
Many companies have anti-harassment policies, codes of ethics, training programs, and reporting forms. But the question isn’t: “Do we have a procedure?” Instead, the real question is: “Does this procedure work when an employee really needs it?”
This issue is particularly important in industries where employees are in direct contact with customers, patients, passengers, or guests. Airlines are a very good example, but hotels, restaurants, healthcare, education, retail, transportation, and many other service industries face similar problems. In all these settings, employees are expected to be polite, composed, and helpful because they represent the company’s image. Unfortunately, such politeness is sometimes misinterpreted as permission to cross boundaries. And instead of clearly standing by the employee, organizations may expect them to “figure it out on their own.”
Study of flight attendants
Our study included 2,468 flight attendants from the United States and Canada who had participated in the long-term Flight Attendant Health Study, conducted at Harvard University. We analyzed data from two waves of the study, conducted approximately three years apart. This is important because we did not just examine whether people who had experienced harassment felt worse at a given moment; we wanted to see whether the experience of harassment at work was associated with a subsequent decline in health and quality of life.
It turns out that the scale of the problem is significant. In the first round of the study, 37% of women and 35% of men reported that they had experienced unwanted sexual behavior at work in the past year, including words or actions that created a hostile work environment. Some individuals experienced such situations more than once. This means we are not discussing a marginal issue, but events that affect a significant number of the employees responsible for passenger comfort and safety. Furthermore, our findings show that between the two waves this risk increased by nearly 400% among women and by about 230% among men. This suggests that harassment is not necessarily an isolated “workplace incident”. Rather, it can be part of a repeated pattern when an organization fails to respond quickly, clearly and effectively enough This is a key lesson for management.
Organizational culture is revealed not when a code of ethics is signed but when someone crosses the line. Only then it becomes clear who holds the power, who is trusted, who bears the cost of reporting, whether supervisors respond, whether procedures are understandable, whether witnesses remain silent, and whether an employee can count on protection from retaliation.
In many organizations, there is a silent gap between official statements and the employee’s lived experience. The company says, We do not tolerate harassment. The employee asks: What will happen if I report it? Will my work schedule get worse? Will I be seen as a troublemaker? Will anyone believe me? Will the perpetrator really be stopped? Will I have to keep working with him? Will my career suffer as a result? If the employee doesn’t know the answers or doesn’t trust the answers, the procedure exists only on paper.
A good example of the practical implications of this issue is the class-action lawsuit filed against WestJet in Canada. Public documents regarding the proposed settlement mention the sum of 4.5 million Canadian dollars and a commitment to conduct an assessment of harassment reporting mechanisms and obstacles to reporting incidents. Although the proposed settlement does not include an admission of liability or guilt by WestJet, it nonetheless highlights something quite important: organizations can be held accountable not only for whether they had a policy to prevent harassment, but also for whether they were able to implement and enforce it, and thus create genuinely safe reporting channels for employees. Our research provided important evidence in these proceedings.
The conclusions from our research extend beyond the aviation industry itself. Sexual harassment should be treated as an organizational risk, just like the risk of accidents, burnout, employee turnover, reputational damage, or lawsuits. Not because the cost to the company is the most important factor, but because organizations start to take action only once they recognize the risk as real. And this risk is real from the perspective of employees’ health, their quality of work, their trust in the employer, and the organization’s legal liability.
But our study reveals something else as well: sexual harassment can have consequences that an organization does not immediately recognize. An employee may continue to come to work, smile at customers (passengers), perform their duties, and not file a formal complaint. At the same time, they may sleep poorly, feel more tired, experience anxiety, lose their sense of purpose, and lose trust in their employer. In management, it is easy to spot absenteeism, turnover, or a lawsuit. Yet it is harder to notice the hidden costs that emerge earlier: a decline in well-being, loss of health, lower engagement, and a weakened sense of security.
Therefore, the most important takeaway for leaders is simple: workplace harassment is not just a problem for the person experiencing it; it’s a mirror of the system – of behaviors tolerated, ignored, and rewarded with silence or delay.
An organization that truly cares about its people does not wait until the problem becomes a legal one, or a matter of media interest. It builds a system in which employees know that their boundaries matter, that reporting makes sense, and that responsibility for safety is not transferred on the most vulnerable. In this sense, sexual harassment is a test of management: a test of culture, procedures, leadership, and organizational courage. And as the results of our study show, what’s at stake is not just a company’s reputation, but the health and quality of life of the people who work for it every day.
So what should an organization do?
- First, it must stop treating harassment as a “difficult interpersonal issue” best resolved quietly. It is a matter of workplace safety. A company analyzes accidents, operational errors, and compliance violations, and, accordingly, it should analyze situations where boundaries are crossed. It should do so not to create a climate of control but to identify patterns, such as where incidents occur, who is at risk, who reacts, who remains silent, and where procedures fail.
- Second, the organization should design procedures from the perspective of the person filing the report, not solely from the perspective of the legal department. For an employee, specific questions matter: Is the report confidential? Who will see it? How long will it take to get a response? What will happen to the perpetrator? Will I have to tell this story many times? Can I count on support? Will someone check to make sure I was not subject to retaliation? If the procedure does not address these questions in plain language, it will not inspire trust.
- Third, training should be practical. A presentation with the definitions of harassment is not enough. Employees and managers need scenarios that show what to do when a passenger makes comments about an employee’s body or touches her; when a supervisor downplays a report; or when a witness notices a situation but is not sure whether to intervene. This is particularly important because our research shows that passengers are responsible for most sexual harassment experienced by cabin crew (Weziak-Bialowolska et al., 2020). Managers should be trained not only on regulations but also how to immediately respond, as this often determines whether an employee feels protected or left to fend for themselves.
- Fourth, organizations need to measure more than just the number of formal reports. Our research clearly shows that a low number of reports does not necessarily mean the problem does not exist. Instead, it may indicate that people don’t trust the system or don’t label their experiences as sexual harassment. In our earlier studies, when we asked directly about experiences of sexual harassment at work, 26% of participants reported such incidents. But when we asked about specific behaviors, such as leering, touching, unwanted invitations, comments, or inappropriate language, the percentage of people who had experienced at least one of these behaviors rose to 61%. The difference is huge. For organizations, this means it is worth asking about specific behaviors rather than just labelling “sexual harassment.” In many companies, the most important indicator isn’t how many people report harassment, but how many remain silent.
- Fifth, responsibility cannot rest solely on the victim. If an organization requires employees to interact with customers, patients, or passengers, it must provide them with effective tools for protection. For flight crews, this could mean clear protocols for action during the flight, support from the captain and crew, option to report the incident after the flight, protection from further contact with the perpetrator, and repercussions for passengers and employees who cross boundaries.
In other industries the mechanisms will differ, but the principle remains the same: employees’ courtesy should not equal vulnerability.
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The research article is available in Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00127-026-03084-6.
The article was machine translated.
