Harassment training: teach managers and witnesses to react

Workplace harassment training serves one purpose: enabling a manager or a witness to react properly, straight away, in a real conversation. It also meets a legal obligation, but the annual slide deck is not enough to fulfill it in practice. What matters is that everyone knows what to say, who to talk to and what to record.

This article recalls what the French Labor Code asks of employers, then proposes a method for training managers, designated contacts and witnesses. It is part of our overview of mandatory compliance training. The legal references below are French. If you work in the US, start with our guide to sexual harassment training requirements.

What does the law say about preventing harassment?

The French Labor Code (Code du travail) sets out the principle in Article L1152-1: no employee must suffer repeated acts of psychological harassment. These acts have the object or effect of degrading working conditions. They may infringe rights, dignity or health, or jeopardize a professional future.

Article L1152-4 requires the employer to take all necessary measures to prevent these acts. Article L1153-5 uses the same wording for sexual harassment. This obligation applies to all companies, whatever their size.

Psychological harassment is also a criminal offense. Under Article 222-33-2 of the French Criminal Code, as published on Légifrance, it is punishable by two years' imprisonment and a fine of 30,000 euros. Article 222-33 provides the same basic penalties for sexual harassment.

Two other mechanisms structure prevention. In any company with at least 250 employees, the employer designates a contact person responsible for guiding, informing and supporting employees (Article L1153-5-1). The social and economic committee (CSE), the French staff representation body, also designates its own contact among its members, under Article L2314-1.

Why an online module does not prepare you to react

A module explains definitions, sanctions and procedure. It never puts the manager in a situation where nobody says anything clear. Yet harassment rarely appears in textbook form.

Take a manager who hears, in a meeting, an inappropriate remark that has become habitual. They know they should react. But they hesitate: the person targeted laughs, the colleague is well liked, the meeting carries on. Knowing is not enough; you must already have said the sentence once out loud.

Three mechanisms explain the gap between knowing and acting:

• the social pressure of the group, which pushes people to let it pass;
• the fear of choosing the wrong word and making things worse;
• the lack of a ready sentence, hence silence by default.

Role-play works on precisely these three points. You rehearse a short, calm, factual reaction until it becomes available when stress rises.

The situations to train first

It is better to choose a few situations and replay them than to skim over everything. Here are the ones that come up most often in exchanges between trainers and HR managers.

The manager who is confided in

A colleague says: “I don't want this to go any further, but I can't stand his jokes anymore.” The manager cannot promise absolute secrecy, because the employer must act. Yet they must keep her trust.

One possible wording: “Thank you for telling me. I cannot act as if I did not know, but I will explain what I am doing and you will stay informed.”

The witness facing a sexist remark

The witness does not have to hold a trial. They can interrupt calmly: “That remark is not acceptable here, let's move on.” They can then go to the person targeted: “I heard what was said. Do you want us to talk about it?”

The manager who is accused

A manager learns that their behavior is being complained about. Their first reaction (justifying themselves, minimizing, trying to find out who spoke) is precisely the one to avoid. They practice listening without counter-attacking: “I take what you are telling me seriously. I am not going to defend myself now.”

The contact person who receives a report

The contact person must guide without investigating alone, explain the possible next steps and note the facts. They learn to ask open questions: “What happened, when, in front of whom?” They avoid questions that suggest the answer.

How a trainer builds an effective session

A useful session always follows the same logic: a specific situation, a conversation played out, factual feedback, then a second attempt. Here is the method step by step.

1. Start from a real case in the company, anonymized: a recurring remark, a private disclosure, a conflict that gets out of hand.
2. Set the objective of the conversation: listen, interrupt, guide, record. One objective per session.
3. Have the scene played out loud, with a counterpart who does not make things easy.
4. Debrief on exact quotes: what was said, what was avoided, what reassured or put people on the defensive.
5. Replay the scene with a corrected wording.

Sessions should stay short, ten to fifteen minutes. Repetition matters more than duration.

Rhythm matters as much as content. A short session each quarter, centered on one situation, leaves more traces than a single day. The manager compares their first and second attempts. They leave with a sentence they can reuse the very next day in a team meeting.

Common mistakes in prevention programs

• Treating everything at once. Psychological harassment, sexual harassment, sexist behavior and discrimination get mixed up, and nobody remembers the right conduct for each.
• Training only managers. Witnesses, colleagues and contact persons are just as exposed to the situation.
• Forgetting what follows a report. A manager who does not know what happens after escalating often prefers to say nothing.
• Confusing information with training. Posting the criminal text informs, it does not teach people to speak.
• Claiming to decide. The manager does not investigate, they listen, protect and pass on.

Checklist: what a manager should be able to do after training

• Interrupt an inappropriate remark in one calm sentence, without accusing the person.
• Receive a private disclosure without vowing a secrecy they cannot keep.
• Explain who they pass it to (HR, contact person, staff representative) and why.
• Note the facts: date, place, words, witnesses, without interpretation.
• Stay neutral when they are themselves accused.

Training for the conversation with a role-play

A role-play lets you play these conversations without exposing real people. With Face Up, the trainer writes their scenario from their real cases: the learner talks to a persona played by an AI, for example a colleague who half confides. After the session, a debrief takes up the learner's quotes, their strengths and their areas for progress, and they can replay.

The trainer keeps control of the content and the limits of the scenario. Role-play replaces neither the legal framework nor the human support for real situations, it prepares for the first sentence. For the general principle, see our page on role-plays.

Measuring what the training really changes

The number of people trained says little. Three indicators are more telling: how quickly a manager passes on a report, the quality of the notes taken (facts, dates, witnesses) and the confidence teams have to speak about it.

During a role-play session, the trainer can also observe simple criteria. Did the manager listen without interrupting? Did they avoid minimizing? Did they announce the next steps clearly? These observations, taken from one session to the next, show concrete progress. This follow-up helps the trainer as much as the HR manager who must report on prevention.

Frequently asked questions

Is harassment prevention training mandatory?

The French Labor Code requires the employer to take all necessary measures to prevent harassment (Articles L1152-4 and L1153-5). Training managers and teams is among the measures commonly put in place, but the text sets no precise format. What matters is being able to show real actions.

Who should be trained first?

Managers, HR and contact persons, because they are the ones who receive reports. Witnesses count too: a team where everyone knows how to interrupt a remark changes the climate. A path by role works better than a single content.

Is a contact person mandatory in my company?

The employer must designate one from 250 employees (Article L1153-5-1). The CSE designates its own whatever the size of the company (Article L2314-1). The contact person needs practice in listening, not just legal content.

How do you prove that prevention is real?

Keep the action plan, the dates, the audiences trained, and ideally a record of what participants were able to do. Our article on proving training in an audit details the useful documents.

To see how a scenario of this kind is built and played with your managers and contact persons, book a demo. To go further on other obligations, also see code of conduct training.