Sharing experiences provides new solutions in tourism and hospitality

The project Sexual Harassment in Tourism and Hospitality: Using the past and present to inform the future studied strategies to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace and in working life organisations in the tourism and hospitality industry in Norway, Iceland and Sweden. The project’s researchers used workshops and interviews with participants from government organisations, trade unions and the industry, and a large number of reports, policies, and campaign and marketing material, to ask questions about current and previous preventive strategies and interventions and study how sexual harassment is defined in the sector in different Nordic countries. Can a broader understanding of what sexual harassment is and analysis of the steps that have been taken and are being taken lead to new preventive strategies?

Women are the group that is most vulnerable to sexual harassment in the workplace and women make up the majority of staff in the Nordic tourism and hospitality industry. Many, on both the staff and management side, are young and many are recent immigrants from countries outside the Nordic region. Precarious employment conditions, low levels of education or a migrant background, plus factors such as a different sexual identity or ethnicity from the majority population, increase the risk of experiencing sexual harassment. Many of the project’s participants confirm that sexual harassment is often seen as part of the job. It also emerged that many think that the legal definitions of sexual harassment that do exist are difficult to apply when events that fall into a ‘grey area’ are common and part of your daily life at work.

“How sexual harassment is seen affects which situations are reported and investigated. We need to work on the way sexual harassment is defined in the legislation and the way it’s perceived and interpreted both by the victims and in the workplace as a whole,” says project lead Tara Duncan, Professor in the School of Culture & Society at Dalarna University in Sweden.

The Nordic tourism and hospitality industry is largely made up of small businesses and according to the project, small businesses with few employees need more support to prevent and tackle cases of sexual harassment.

“Smaller organisations and business owners need more help to prevent sexual harassment and more information about how to deal with incidents that are reported effectively and appropriately,” says Tara Duncan. “Small businesses often lack the resources in terms of time, knowledge, policies or money needed to tackle reported cases of harassment.”

Information initiatives on sexual harassment are already being carried out in the industry, by the unions and by employers, but the project shows that this information is often failing to reach its target group.

“Language and culture easily pose barriers,” Tara Duncan points out. “We must involve younger managers and younger members of the workforce when producing information material and campaigns, and make sure the information is available in several languages so that it really reaches the people who need it.”

The researchers say that everyone in the workplace needs training and that preventive initiatives need to be carried out as part of long-term strategies to a greater extent, not just as one-off campaigns.

“Campaigns are good but they have a ‘shelf life’ and don’t guarantee that harassment will decline over a longer period,” says Tara Duncan.

Norway: “Involve health and safety representatives and union representatives more”

We focused on grey areas and the gap between more formal definitions of sexual harassment and how they are applied in practice. Just because something isn’t illegal doesn’t mean it’s OK so where do we draw the line? There are many young staff in the hotel and hospitality industry and also many young and inexperienced managers who find talking about and dealing with issues of sexual harassment incredibly difficult. Language was also key and we tried to avoid bureaucratic, academic language and instead used language that spoke to a wider target group. We realised that health and safety representatives and union representatives need to be much more involved and, in our view, they need to be given the same training on sexual harassment as the management. It’s important to have simple, safe and accessible systems that can be applied in practice, plus tools for facilitating dialogue using role play, case studies, stories and digital solutions. We talked about the importance of including different groups and not just looking at sex but also age, nationality and LGBT perspectives.

Tone Therese Linge, Norwegian School of Hotel Management, University of Stavanger

Sweden: “Different actors in the industry need to work together”

We saw similar results in Sweden and Norway, and in our groups, communication and getting the information out were a major issue. Campaigns are run but the information doesn’t always get to the people who need it. Might there be a need for clearer frameworks for bottom-up feedback from ordinary staff and managers, so information material can be produced and tailored to different occupations and groups of employees? There is a gap between definitions in legislation and how sexual harassment is viewed. There was a high degree of recognition among participants in the workshops that sexual harassment is seen as part of the job, that it shouldn’t be that way but that’s how it is, and that a certain level of sexual harassment is ‘OK’. Different actors in the industry need to work together more and we need more ongoing and wide-ranging preventive measures out in the workplaces. Preventive initiatives are carried out but these are often isolated from other stakeholders rather than being collaborations to find solutions. Our project has shown that there is huge interest in existing campaigns and material about preventive initiatives.

Tara Duncan, School of Culture & Society, Dalarna University

Iceland: “The most important thing is getting the issue on the agenda”

In Iceland, the number of migrant workers in the tourism and hospitality industry has soared in the past three years and today almost half the people working in the sector are migrants, mainly from Eastern and Southern Europe. Not much work has been done on sexual harassment in the industry so the project’s most important job was getting the issue on the agenda. The participants were willing to cooperate, but we came up against the difficulty that 80% of the companies have fewer than 10 staff. One direct result of the project is that the Icelandic industry organisation, the Tourism Competence Center, has included information on sexual harassment in its training platform, specifically geared to small businesses. The workshops highlighted the importance of information in employees’ native language, and that guests should also be informed of the company’s sexual harassment policy.

Magnfríður Birnu Júlíusdóttir, Department of Geography and Tourism Studies, University of Iceland

How sexual harassment is seen affects which situations are reported and investigated. We need to work on the way sexual harassment is defined in the legislation and the way it’s perceived and interpreted both by the victims and in the workplace as a whole.

Tara Duncan, Dalarna University

Key messages from the project

Provide simple, safe and accessible systems that can be used in practice, plus tools for facilitating dialogue using role play, case studies, stories and digital solutions.
Involve elected representatives and union representatives in training initiatives and work to combat sexual harassment in the workplace. New staff should also be given the training and information about sexual harassment that managers receive.
Small businesses in the tourism and hospitality industry need more support and more toolkits to prevent and tackle cases of sexual harassment.
Information about sexual harassment, how to prevent it, react and report must be clear and accessible for managers and other staff. Also inform guests of the company’s ‘zero tolerance policy’.
Language and culture can create barriers, so communication needs to be tailored to the generation and given in the employees’ mother tongue. Younger managers and younger staff need to be involved in campaigns and information material to make it relevant to them.

More about the project

The project Sexual Harassment in Tourism and Hospitality: Using the past and present to inform the future was allocated funding in the second call of the research initiative. This targeted practice-based research activities in collaboration, focused mainly on preventative measures and methods for intervention through industry studies and comparative studies of different industries. The applications built on partnerships between several Nordic countries.

Project partners

Dalarna University, Sweden (primary applicant), the Norwegian School of Hotel Management, University of Stavanger, Norway, Geography and Tourism Studies, Faculty of Life & Environmental Science, University of Iceland, Iceland, and the working life partner, the Norwegian Labour Inspection Authority.