'No Excuses' if you fail to prevent SH at work place

Usha Prasad

BANGALORE, INDIA: Cases of sexual harassment (SH) at workplace is on the rise among Indian MNCs. Despite such cases often getting reported in the media and brought to public notice, justice is often denied to the victim due to poor handling of cases by the managements concerned.

May-be, here's an answer, as a beginning, to handle such cases. In order to provide education on diversity awareness and organize focused workshops on preventing discrimination and sexual harassment at the workplace, Bangalore-based start-up firm, Interweave, has developed an extremely well structured and instructive e-learning courseware named 'No Excuses'.

Interweave took shape with the united efforts of two enterprising women -- Nirmala Menon and Suman Joshi. Nirmala specializes in diversity management, with a vast experience of over two decades. She donned the role of Diversity and Employee Relations leader at IBM for five years before venturing on her own. Suman too has a rich experience of 18 years in the field with her last stint at Satyam Computers as general manager (HR).

Said to be a first of its kind in the country, the courseware has been developed by Tarang Software, a leading e-learning solutions provider.

Envisioned as a one-stop service provider for all diversity management requirements, Interweave partners with corporates to provide an integrated suite of diversity management solutions to address their varying needs.

Courseware aimed at IT/ITeS sector

'No Excuses' is designed specifically for the Indian workplace, especially the IT, ITeS sector and investment banks, which have a diverse workforce, and require odd working hours and night traveling. "There's lot of diversity related work happening within the social sector in India. However, it's way far behind in the corporate set up. This seemed to be a niche area for me to enter the market," says Nirmala.

The e-learning module helps large organizations stay compliant on the mandated education on the subject as directed by the Vishaka Guidelines. "With the help of real-life cases, the learner is guided through the subject from recognizing SH to how to prevent and report incidents appropriately," she adds.

"While developing the courseware, we interacted with various companies and tried to understand the policies and committees in place that looked at handling SH cases. We learnt that managers in most companies lacked the required education to handle such issues and were not pro-active," says Nirmala. "Companies should recognize gender issues as their legitimate responsibility," she feels.

"We conducted a lot of workshops and helped frame policies for many companies in the last one and a half year. We felt that managers should go through the sessions with a face-to-face interaction, while the e-learning courseware proved beneficial to the employees," says Nirmala.

User-friendly module

The courseware is designed to 30 and 45-minute duration respectively, depending on a company's preference. Employees can go through this self-paced interactive module at their convenience. The module takes them through a pre-test and a post-test quiz. These programs can be customized to specific in-house requirements. The courseware also helps organizations track the completion of the course by employees, she adds.

Though the courseware was initially designed for medium to large-sized organizations, Interweave is now thinking of going in for the ASP model. "Once the companies get a license to run our courseware, we will offer refreshes and upgrades," Nirmala says.

Interweave is all set to sign off its opening deals with three companies in Bangalore and one based at Gurgaon, near Delhi. "Companies take a lead time of six to seven weeks to run the courseware internally before signing with us. We are looking to grow," she says.

Further, Interweave has plans to develop the courseware in Indian regional languages. "Our product is very reasonably priced and we want more and more people to use it. We are planning to look at the sales and manufacturing sectors as well," says Nirmala.

"There's definitely 'no excuse' for the top management/CEO in neglecting such issues. They should own the responsibility and drive it," Nirmala feels strongly.

Solution

The e-learning courseware is built in Flash using other technologies like XML, ActionScript, HTML and Photoshop. It involved defining the instructional strategy and designing in order to develop a user-friendly courseware. The instructional design strategy used is a combination of the engaging benefits of traditional mascot teaching. Tarang Software has adopted an interactive simulative approach to explain the process.