Introduction
Almost everyone at the workplace has been directly or indirectly offended by some indecent poster or posters at the workplace. The photo of a girl posing in a suggestive way or of a cartoon saying some lewd joke that is only funny to a select few is not an uncommon phenomenon in most office cubicles. While some people might be a bit hesitant in displaying a poster in your average office setting, those working in blue-collar jobs like construction and car mechanics do not really seem worried about public opinion or the effect it might have on fellow workmates or customers. It is a culture that is also creeping slowly in downtown plush offices where tolerance especially amongst the female members of staff is encouraged so as to “maintain harmony” in the workplace The argument is if you report someone to management and he is reprimanded, the complainant might be ostracized in the workplace and this will affect his or her performance. The second argument is since everyone in the office is an adult and they sort of having the legal right to access whatever material they may wish plus display it in their personal spaces, then whoever is affected should stick to their own side of the fence. This is very primitive thinking since if we justify every decision we make on our rights as stated by the law, then every religious person will practice his freedom of religion to the full extent like praying and singing loudly in the office, the right to freedom of speech will generate fistfights in the offices and countless of lawsuits.
These legislations were passed with good intent and a lot of them depend on common sense to prevail for them to be effective. This means principle should be the guiding factor and not legislation in the day-to-day lives. Whatever decision you may undertaker like hanging a poster at work, the screen saver or wallpaper you select for your desktop, or the joke you might think of scribbling on the bathroom door, take a moment and think the effect it might have on your fellow workmates. The internet is probably the largest source of pornographic materials in the workplace. As much as management has tried to install soft wares to block some indecent sites, people have always found a way to go around the firewalls or simply carry this content in storage devices like flash disks and distribute it in the machines at work. The recent increase in tolerance levels of not only sexual posters but other indecent content can be blamed on the quality of information we are being bombarded with from the various forms of media. The standard bar for sexual content is being set lower and lower. We can take the example of actors in the pornography industry. Back in the 1960s most of them used to hide their faces with dark shades while acting so as to conceal their identities. Today they are recognized professionals in their own right and even have award ceremonies to recognize sterling performance. Companies nowadays have even seen it necessary to explicitly define what is indecent in the dress code of employees or else people will start making their own assumptions. In this essay, we will look at the various forms of sexual posters in the workplace and their effects on not only employee performance but also the relations amongst employees.
Various Forms of Sexual Posters
Other than the hanging of a 4-foot poster on a wall that simply captures your attention the moment you walk into the office, we will focus on the subtler gestures that lie on the borderline of being classified as offensive. There is the hanging of a small poster, we can say smaller than an A4 size paper. This is usually attached to the wall in your cubicle or the inside of a file you commonly use. Most of these photos are usually of naked ladies posing in a suggestive way. Even those with women who are dressed but posing in a manner considered sexual can be offensive to other workmates. A photo of a model holding a banana that is followed with some written text that is open to interpretation can be considered offensive in some quarters. There is the hanging of a swimsuit calendar that honestly speaking, you use to keep track of the days of the month. The other option that was available was to use a regular calendar that advertises the company logo or one with wild animals (Florence, 2000). Displaying offensive posters is not only limited to men. I think having a photo of bodybuilders wearing nothing but their briefs should be held in the same light as that of a naked female model. The subtle photo of muscle bulging construction workers or that of your favorite sportsman without their shirt can be deemed offensive in an office especially if most of the male workers are middle-aged with a couple of kids. I guess the guiding principle should be how would a neutral client react if he came to ask for your services and he or she saw the photo? If you are thinking there is a slight chance they might be offended, it is probably better you pull it down.
The other form of posters or “artwork” in the office is the scribbling of graffiti especially in the bathrooms of the toilet. Even though they cannot be classified as posters, most of them are usually very offensive to a particular person or group of people. The ones that hurt the most are the ones of sexual nature whereby a colleague in the office is ridiculed for the way he or she looks. They are usually written or drawn with a felt pen on the most frequented areas in the office or at the back of doors in the washrooms. Finding the culprit is usually impossible unless management has specific information and when they are caught, a reprimand is the most they get since other than defacing a wall, they haven’t really broken any major laws. For the employees who were the subject of the ridicule, they simply have to learn to cope with the endless jokes and imitations (Florence, 2000).
There are others who simply use a sexy screensaver which they downloaded from the internet. Everyone has done it at one point or another. The swapping of the latest sex videos or photos from Hollywood is also practiced in the office. Everyone is usually a bit curious and they want to take a peek at the Paris Hilton video. The one that is considered as really crossing the boundary (in today’s standards) is when a fellow colleague’s photos starts doing rounds in the office. These could be suggestive photos from the office party or from an employee’s wild days in college. Obviously, this affects a person’s work and the way that he is viewed by his or her colleagues. Most people simply hand in their resignations or they are requested to transfer. Malice is usually what drives most people who post photos of their workmates in the company network. There is also the danger of exposing oneself or the company to lawsuits by the victim.
Effects of Sexual Posters in the Work Place
The most obvious is the decrease in work output by an employee who spends most of his or her time looking at a poster on the wall or fantasizing about their screensaver. While performing pre-assigned tasks where deadlines are known is possible, the problem arises when immediate instructions, like important phone calls, given are not followed because the employee was distracted. There are those who oppose this as a joke but have you ever opened an X-rated site first instead of your mailbox and ended up missing an important deadline? Accessing such sites or even swapping these videos and photos exposes the company’s servers to viruses and an attack by malicious programmers (Florence, 2000).
The relationship amongst the employees has also been affected for example the photo of a nude model at your workstation will affect the female colleagues at your workplace. They would prefer not to be assigned the same tasks as you to avoid making the trip to your desk. The problem is further worsened if you were requested to pull it down and you adamantly refused and this creates an uneasy atmosphere in the office. If an employee picks up a rumor that there is a poster or graffiti that looks like them in the washrooms of the opposite sex, their concentration, and commitment at work are very much affected. The presence of such posters also affects business in that clients will shy from such companies and opt for more “conservative” ones even if they provide excellent service. Prospective job applicants would also shy away from such companies because they will also doubt their commitment to the fight against sexual harassment.
Summary
Even though displaying these posters in the workplace is not outright illegal, the management should discourage them for the sake of maintaining harmony in the office. Some human rights advocates are pushing for displaying these posters to be considered a form of sexual abuse at the workplace. They argue that most of these photos are usually of women and this affects the female employees in that it creates an atmosphere in the office where their male colleagues can use suggestive language when talking to them. The female employees also work under the constant pressure that there are being constantly compared to the women in these posters. (Florence, 2000).
However, the buck stops with the employers in not only enforcing regulations that stop sexual harassment but also deciding the borderline issues of offensive posters. They have to move from just reprimanding employees who intentionally display these posters to actually suspending them without pay or asking for their resignations if they are unwilling to co-operate. The reality is such practices will continue exhibiting themselves in the office due to the kind of content we are continuously being exposed to by the media. While the argument that if such posters are tolerated in some places might be a reasonable argument in these offices, we have to take responsibility and try to do the right thing, or else there will be no turning back once we start going down this road. A clear divide should be seen between the workplace and our homes. Even if it looks like we are infringing on someone’s right to express themselves, I think that is the risk we will have to take in order to increase productivity in the office because enough time is already being wasted on traffic jams as we are commuting to work.
References
Florence Mari, (2000) Sex at Work: Attraction, Harassment, Flirtation and Discrimination, Silver Lake Publishers, pp. 56-78