Voicing their complaints? The silence of students working in retail and hospitality and sexual harassment from customers

Abstract

This article examines how employees respond to sexual harassment from customers in the workplace. Employing a qualitative method to facilitate a rich understanding, this study uses exploratory interviews with university students working in retail and hospitality in Australia to examine their experiences of customer-perpetrated harassment, the constraints they face in exercising 'employee voice', factors that structure and perpetuate 'employee silence', and the actions that employees take in this situation. Preliminary findings indicate that the employees face difficulty responding to customer-perpetrated sexual harassment due to the constraints of contextual factors, including working conditions, social norms, and the nature of sexual harassment as a workplace problem. While silence is the norm, some employees use informal voice, which has a limited impact because of the power differentials between employees and managers. Other employees use informal coping strategies, which this article coins as 'buffering'. This research is important for understanding the experience of vulnerable employees and for providing insight into potential barriers to eliminate sexual harassment from customers in the workplace.

Sexualisation and harassment in hospitality workplaces: who is responsible?

“…Workplace context and social norms (Folgerø and Fjeldstad, 1995, Good and Cooper, 2014, Sadaraka et al, 2015 help explain why some women dress or behave provocatively at work unless management deters them from doing so. This article has therefore focussed on management's responsibility in this regard.…”

“…No participants reported they had been directed to flirt, nor had any been directed to behave or dress sexually -in fact to do so would probably breach health and safety regulations, given that sexual behaviours may attract harassment. As many participants reported they were expected to behave sexually, this study concludes that this is a perception rather than a reality, influenced no doubt by workplace context and social norms (see Good and Cooper, 2014), but ultimately a matter of personal preference. The tendency for labour to self-sexualise is explained by Liu et al's (2014) observation that 'managers and organizations lack awareness and place emphasis on customer relationships, thereby leaving the onus of customer sexual harassment on employees' shoulders' (p. 350).…”

“…As such, management is not so much requiring staff to behave sexually, but more allowing them to, influenced no doubt by the context and social norms of their workplace (Good and Cooper, 2014). Sexual behaviours may work in management's favour, being attractive to some customers.…”

‘But It's Your Job To Be Friendly’: Employees Coping With and Contesting Sexual Harassment from Customers in the Service Sector

“…Earlier research has documented the nature of customer‐perpetrated sexual harassment in a variety of contexts. Studies have examined the attitudes and experiences of hospitality employees in China (Liu et al , ), New Zealand (Poulston, ), the UK (Guerrier and Adib, ) and Sweden (Folgero and Fjeldstad, ), students working in retail and hospitality in Australia (Good and Cooper, ), as well as sales staff in Taiwan (Liu‐Ming, ), bank tellers and shop assistants in New Zealand (Handy, ), retail workers in Canada (Hughes and Tadic, ), clerical employees in professional services and retail employees in the US (Gettman and Gelfand, ), doctors in Australia (Bratuskins et al , ) and hotel room attendants in the UK (Guerrier and Adib, ) and in Australia (Kensbock et al , ).…”

To ask or not to ask? Investigating workers’ flexibility requests and the phenomenon of discontented non-requesters

“…If the goal of the RTR is to assist those who cannot ask for flexibility without regulatory support, then it has had limited success. As with a recent study of employee responses to sexual harassment (Good and Cooper 2014), we found that employees were constrained and silenced by contextual factors, including working conditions and social norms.…”