Building a Safe Workplace for all SOIL Staff

Since it was first published in 2015, SOIL’s Human Resources Manual has served to guide, unite, protect, and inform SOIL’s staff. The manual, written in Haitian Kreyòl, contains 24 pages with topics ranging from vacation time to salaries, confidentiality, performance evaluation, conflict resolution, and so on. Even though each employee goes over the entirety of the manual with their supervisors, SOIL felt it was worth investing the time in providing even further clarification and training on one subject: workplace harassment.

After spending almost a year looking for someone who would offer such a training in Haiti, SOIL was delighted to find Nathalie Marc-Charles, a Haitian HR specialist and CEO of the boutique Human Resource consulting firm HR Connect. Nathalie held two trainings, one for each office, and nearly every SOIL staff member was able to attend. Nathalie started off by congratulating SOIL for deciding to address a topic that far too many organizations would rather not confront.

Harassment as we addressed it consists of both physical and sexual harassment. While physical harassment is straightforward for most people to wrap their heads around, the idea that commenting on someone’s clothes could qualify as sexual harassment was a surprise to some. Nathalie presented the definition of sexual harassment and we went through a variety of scenarios as a group to move from theory to practice. We also watched a powerful testimonial video on sexual assault and harassment by Haitian actress and comedian Gaëlle Bien Aimé.

Throughout the training, Nathalie facilitated difficult conversations effectively, and in the end SOIL employees felt that they had a clearer understanding of what harassment, particularly sexual harassment, means in the context of the workplace, as well as a clear path to redress should they feel that they are experiencing harassment at work.

SOIL is proud to have taken this step towards creating the safest workplace that we can and we are committed to ensuring that our Human Resource Manual is well-understood and well-applied.

If your organization is interested in contacting Nathalie at HR Connect, you can call her at +509 4743-4242 or email [email protected]

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