A memory scientists advice on reporting harassment and discrimination Julia Shaw
Me Too and Time’s Up have highlighted
that harassment and discrimination
are a shockingly common part
of many people’s lived reality,
and that this reality
extends into the workplace.
Whether in tech or finance,
sports or the service industry,
every day we seem to hear another story
about an abuse of power
or another grossly inappropriate
workplace behavior.
People are furious.
They’re taking to Twitter and social media
to voice that this must change.
But it’s time to move beyond the hashtag.
It’s time for us to report
harassment and discrimination
to those who can fix this mess.
And it’s time for us
to talk about harassment
in a more inclusive way:
not just about sexual harassment,
but to encourage people to come forward
about harassment and discrimination
based on other characteristics
such as age, disability or ethnicity.
Because only together can we fix
the underlying causes
and consequences of harassment.
You see, most of us will,
at some point in our lives,
experience workplace
harassment or discrimination.
Research shows that particularly
women, people of color
and people who openly identify as LGBTQI
are likely to be targeted,
and for some people, this is a pervasive
and persistent part of their reality.
And for most of these people –
98 percent according to some studies –
most of these people will never
speak up and tell their employer.
Too often, harassment and discrimination
is a lonely and isolating experience,
but we need to help people
out from under their desks.
We need to empower people to have a voice.
The reasonable first question
that everybody asks
once they’ve been harassed
is “What do I do now?”
And this is what I want to help you with.
Navigating the barriers to reporting
can be absolutely dizzying.
How can we speak up in a society
that too often discredits
or diminishes our experiences?
How can we speak up in a society
that is likely to be
retributive towards us?
How can we deal with the silencing
that goes on all around us?
Making matters worse,
often our memories are the only
evidence we have of what happened.
Now, here’s where I can come in.
I’m a memory scientist,
and I specialize in how we remember
important emotional events.
I’ve particularly focused
on how the memory interview process
can severely impact the evidentiary
quality of reports that we produce.
A bad interview can lead you
to forget details or misremember them
while a good interview can forever
change your life for the better.
After looking at lab reports
and working,
studying this issue both in the courtroom
and in research settings,
I’ve dissected all the different things
that can go wrong with our memories
that can really threaten your case.
And now I’m turning my attention
to helping people tackle
recording and reporting of workplace
harassment and discrimination.
There’s three things that I’ve learned
from my research on this
that you can immediately apply
if you’ve been harassed
or discriminated against at work.
I want to help you
turn your memory into evidence –
evidence that even
a memory skeptic like me
is unlikely to find fault with.
First of all, James Comey had it right.
The former head of the FBI
used to sit in his car,
lock himself in after meetings
with the president
and write down absolutely everything
he could remember about what happened.
The now-famous recordings
proved to be quite useful later on.
Be like Comey.
Now, you don’t need to lock yourself
into your car to do this,
but please, immediately
after something happens,
I want you to contemporaneously
record what happened.
And do this before talking
to anyone else about it.
Because as soon as your share your story
with friends or family
or colleagues or therapists,
you have the potential to distort
or change your memory of the event.
Uncontaminated, contemporaneous
evidence is worth gold.
Second: the type of evidence matters.
Sure, you can do a handwritten
note of what happens,
but how do you prove when you wrote it?
Instead, pull out
your computer or smartphone
and make a note that’s time-stamped,
where you can prove
this was recorded at this time.
Contemporaneous,
time-stamped evidence is better.
Finally, make sure what you’re writing
down is actually relevant.
Too often, we see that people
bring out Facebook messages,
they bring out time-stamped
pieces of evidence,
but sure, they’re
not particularly relevant,
they’re not particularly useful.
It’s easy to write an emotional,
unstructured account of what happened –
understandable because
it’s an emotional experience –
but those might not actually be
the details that matter later on
for an investigation.
Write down this list.
I want you to keep track of this
and simply fill in the blanks.
First of all, what happened?
In as much detail as possible,
describe the situation,
and do it on the day it happened
if at all possible.
Second, who was there?
Were there any witnesses?
This becomes crucial potentially later on.
What exact time and date did this happen?
What location? Where did this happen?
Who did you tell after the event?
How did it make you feel
during and after it happened?
And is there any other evidence
such as WhatsApps, photos or emails
that might lend
more credibility to your case.
These are all details that are incredibly
easy to record contemporaneously
but are also incredibly easy
to forget later on.
Humans, according to research,
often overestimate their ability
to remember important
emotional details later on.
Assume that you’re going to forget.
Assume you have to write it down.
Now, these three pieces of advice
are a good start,
but of course they don’t overcome
a lot of the other barriers to reporting.
According to the Equality
and Human Rights Commission,
which published a report in 2018,
there’s one key recommendation
to overcome some of the other fears
often associated with reporting
these kinds of incidents to your employer.
One piece of advice that they made?
Have an online, anonymous reporting tool.
Only that way, they say,
can you truly overcome many
of the fears associated with reporting.
Now, in line with this,
and informed by what
was happening all around me
and taking and applying
the memory science,
the science that I had
been doing for many years,
I sat down with a number of people
and we together created TalkToSpot.com.
Spot is an online,
anonymous reporting tool
that helps you record and report
workplace harassment and discrimination.
It allows you to do it anonymously,
it allows you to do it for free,
and it’s completely evidence-based.
You don’t have to talk to a person,
there’s no fear of judgment,
and you can do it
whenever and wherever you need.
Now you have the power to walk through
an evidence-based memory interview.
Now, this is called a cognitive interview.
This is the same technique that police use
when they’re doing their job properly.
So in best-case scenarios,
people who are being asked
about important emotional events
are being asked in line
with the cognitive interview.
Now, this walks you through
all the relevant information
so that at the end,
after you’ve talked to the bot –
which is an automatic messaging system –
after you’ve talked to the bot,
it generates a PDF record
that’s time-stamped and securely signed
that you can keep for yourself as evidence
in case you want to share it later,
or you can submit it
to your employer right away.
And in line with recommendations,
you can submit it
to your employer anonymously.
But a reporting tool is only as useful
as the audience that’s listening.
So if your employer
is truly committed to change,
we’ve decided to also offer them
the tool to respond.
So if organizations work with us
and are truly committed to doing something
about workplace harassment
and discrimination,
they’re also able to respond to you
even if you’ve chosen to stay anonymous.
We think it’s important that you can work
together with your employer
to tackle this issue.
We think that everybody wins
when we bring light into this dark issue.
Whether it happens to you
or to someone you know,
recording and reporting what happened
can really improve
how we talk about these issues.
And if you’re an organization,
this is a call to give
your employees access
to better and more effective
reporting mechanisms.
We know that the current methods
that are used in most organizations
don’t work effectively.
It’s time to change that if you’re
committed to inclusion and diversity.
It’s time for us
to celebrate our diversity.
It’s time for us to give a voice
to those who have for too long
been denied one.
It’s time for us to celebrate
those who come forward,
even if they feel
they need to stay anonymous –
to stay masked to do so.
It’s time for a reporting revolution.
Thank you.
(Applause)