After a generation or more of societal and political pressure to stamp out sexual harassment in the workplace, employers continue to search for best practices. Yet this complicated and vexing employment issue still grabs headlines, damages company reputations, ruins lives, affects bottom lines, and harms equity values. HR leadership can turn the tide, but the process requires new engagement and new thinking.

Experts describe the tension of enforcing compliance and holding employees at all levels accountable to federal and state prohibitions against sexual harassment. Balancing that is the need to establish a welcoming and sustaining culture within which all employees-and the employer-can thrive. The way forward for HR, according to these experts, is to focus less on command and control and more on accountability and transparency.

Complicating management and HR's task is the changing nature of the work force. American society itself is in tumult on many levels, according to the experts. One issue cited is increasing social informality, which is not only the default interpersonal norm in many workplaces, but a cultural expectation for many of today's workers, especially younger workers and managers.

Simultaneous with this trend toward informality is a loosening of restraints on the content of popular media-television, movies, and especially the internet- which have become increasingly sexually charged. HR has to recognize and respond to changing attitudes and boundaries in contemporary society, while continuing to emphasize professionalism and decorum in the workplace.

This Workforce Strategies report examines cultural changes affecting the workplace, the challenges of hostile work environments, consequences for management, and HR's role in providing a safe and professional work environment. The report provides best practices for managers in the form of clear definitions and procedures when creating an effective sexual harassment policy.