From the outside in

A new Western University study finds workplace harassment and violence increasingly comes from outside the organization, and it’s time for HR to do something about it

WHEN TALKING ABOUT workplace harassment and violence, the greatest risk isn’t coming from coworkers or superiors, a new Western University study has found — it’s more often coming from the people who walk in the front door.

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Then new survey comes from Western’s Centre for Research and Education on Violence Against Women & Children (CREVAWC), working with the Canadian Labour Congress, and found that seven in 10 respondents had experienced some form of violence or harassment at work. While that was roughly the same rate as when the survey was conducted in 2022, what had changed was the source of it: less of the harassment was coming from colleagues, and more was coming from customers, patients or other third parties.

While rates of coworker harassment is down 6 per cent (falling from 39 to 33 per cent in the latest report), harassment from third parties went from 30 per cent to 36 per cent; when it came to cases of sexual harassment and violence, rates of third-party harassment climbed from 33 per cent in 2022 to 41 per cent in 2026.

The researchers behind the survey say the fact that external harassment and violence appears to have overtaken cases that are coworker-to-coworker should be a real moment of reflection for the human resources sector in terms of how they operate and respond to issues. “It’s not solely an HR issue, and it shouldn’t be relegated to someone only in HR,” said Western professor Adriana Berlingieri. “Zero-tolerance policies or statements are not enough.”

Siobhan Vipond of the Canadian Labour Congress said the results are in part due to the more complex way workplaces are organized now. Some may have external contractors or gig workers mixing with employees in the workplace, in such a way that makes it hard for HR to map clear jurisdictional boundaries. Other times, she noted, deference to the customer is helping depress rates of workers reporting issues and preventing workplaces from taking protective measures.

“We need to get past things like ‘the customer is always right,’” Vipond told HR Reporter. “We have to have an expectation of how we want people to behave in these places.”

The authors note the costs for these kinds of things can be rather staggering, and that’s even assuming it’s possible to calculate an all-in cost to businesses. “What does that do to creativity? What does that do to innovation?” Berlingieri asked, adding that determining cost implications is one of the next things their team wants to look at. “If you put all the forms of harassment and violence at work together, it’s costing hundreds of thousands of dollars per worker, and we don’t even know all the costs.” Kieran Delamont