Love or Lust at the workplace?

Edition 4: Valentine's Special - 2025!

Welcome to Edition #004 of People Please! My goal with this newsletter is to help 100,000 professionals shift from "people pleasers" to culture-builders.

People Please Edition #003, was crafted for HR & L&D professionals, leaders, design thinkers, and HR enthusiasts, exploring The Seven Pillars of Internal Campaign Design with insights from the Gutenberg Printing Press. I delved into Pillar One: A Visionary Leader, examining leadership through Winston Churchill’s story of a missing trait and Satya Nadella’s visionary leadership and his first email as Microsoft’s CEO, a masterstroke step.

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What’s Inside Edition #004:

🔹 Section 1: The Confusion Between Love and Lust
Understanding seven common motivations in professional spaces and their link to sexual harassment risks. A must-read for all professionals.
📖 Reading Time: 1.5 minutes

🔹 Section 2: Preventing Sexual Harassment Before It Starts
Exploring Pillar 2 with historical insights and workplace lessons, featuring The Lalit Suri Hospitality Group case study. Essential for leaders, HR, and L&D professionals.
📖 Reading Time: 1.5 minutes

🔹 Section 3: Making Sexual Harassment a Common Enemy
Three key steps for organisations to drive urgency and action, plus my own journey—how Be.artsy started as a mission, not a business. Relevant for all professionals.
📖 Reading Time: 2 minutes (Including Video)

This edition is packed with insights on designing impactful workplace campaigns to prevent sexual harassment. Let’s dive in! 🔎

Section 1

The Confusion Between Love and Lust

One of the core reasons sexual harassment persists in workplaces is the confusion between love and lust at the workplace. While romantic relationships can form organically in professional settings, misplaced intentions, power dynamics, and blurred boundaries often lead to inappropriate behaviour. Understanding different workplace motivations can help organisations create a safer environment by identifying where risks of harassment are highest.

Workplace Motivations & Their Harassment Risk

Below are seven common motivations people have in professional spaces and their correlation to sexual harassment risk:

Workplace Motivations & Their Harassment Risk

1️⃣ Seeking Romantic Relationships
🔸 Risk: Moderate to High
🔹 Why? Repeated advances toward uninterested colleagues create discomfort and cross boundaries.

2️⃣ Seeking Casual Relationships
🔸 Risk: High
🔹 Why? Prioritizing non-committal relationships often disregards boundaries and consent, increasing the risk of harassment—especially in hierarchical structures.

3️⃣ Unintentionally Finding Relationships
🔸 Risk: Low to Moderate
🔹 Why? While organic relationships aren’t inherently problematic, misinterpretation can lead to discomfort.

4️⃣ Seeking Power & Validation
🔸 Risk: Very High
🔹 Why? Those driven by power may exploit authority to intimidate or coerce, contributing to a toxic culture.

5️⃣ Focused on Career Growth
🔸 Risk: Low
🔹 Why? These professionals rarely engage in harassment but may be vulnerable to exploitation.

6️⃣ Building Community & Camaraderie
🔸 Risk: Low to Moderate
🔹 Why? While fostering positive relationships, over-familiarity can lead to boundary-crossing behaviour.

7️⃣ Disinterested in Interpersonal Connections
🔸 Risk: Low to Moderate
🔹 Why? While unlikely to harass, their detachment may prevent them from reporting inappropriate behaviour.

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Section 2

Stopping Sexual Harassment Before It Starts

Most organisations focus on redressal—handling complaints, setting up ICs, and ensuring compliance. But isn’t that just firefighting? POSH stands for Prevention of Sexual Harassment, yet too many workplaces treat it like ROSH (Redressal of Sexual Harassment)—reacting only after harm has been done.

A truly safe workplace isn’t one where complaints are registered and efficiently managed; it’s one where they rarely need to be filed. Respect, dignity, and safety should be the norm, not an afterthought.

How can this be achieved? By launching a strong awareness campaign and a clear communication strategy that reinforces Zero Tolerance for any misconduct especially sexual.

In People Please Edition #003, I introduced the Seven Pillars of Powerful Campaign Design and detailed Pillar One. This edition elaborates on Pillar Two: A Common Enemy Creating Urgency."

A Common Enemy Creating Urgency is a foundational pillar in designing a strong Zero Tolerance campaign. Rather than a top-down approach, the campaign must be by the people, of the people, and for the people.

It should unite employees around a shared cause, create urgency, and embed safety and prevention into workplace culture—not reduce it to a mere engagement activity or a checkbox initiative.

Throughout history, successful campaigns and movements have thrived by rallying around a common enemy, igniting a sense of urgency—whether it’s an oppressive ruler, a corrupt institution, or an unjust system.

Historical Examples:

✅ The Women's Suffrage Movement (late 19th–early 20th century) – Women across the world united against systemic oppression and fought for the right to vote, challenging deeply ingrained societal norms.

✅ The Anti-Apartheid Movement (1948–1994) – South Africans and global allies rallied against racial oppression, showing how collective resistance can dismantle deeply rooted injustices.

Lasting change happens when people recognise a common enemy—be it discrimination, harassment, or systemic bias—and take action together.

Workplace Lesson:

🔹 Case Study: The Lalit Suri Hospitality Group is a standout example of a company that has embedded LGBTQIA+ inclusion into its core values, treating it as a movement rather than a compliance requirement. Their sustained commitment has build a workplace culture where diversity, equity, and inclusion are non-negotiable.

Key Initiatives:

• Inclusive Hiring: Actively recruits LGBTQIA+ individuals and people with disabilities. indiacsr.in

• Education & Empowerment: Offers scholarships to transgender students at The Lalit Suri Hospitality School. EveryQueer

• Awareness & Advocacy: Organises cultural events and sensitisation workshops, such as Drag Queen Story Hour, to foster inclusivity. The Lalit

• Community Support: Provided essential supplies to the transgender community during COVID-19. The Quint

Impact:

The Lalit’s unwavering commitment to inclusivity has built a workplace where employees actively drive DEI initiatives, united by a shared cause and a sense of urgency. Their commitment has earned global recognition, including accreditation from the International Gay & Lesbian Travel Association (IGLTA)—making them the first hotel chain in the world to receive this honour.

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Section 3

How Companies Can Make Sexual Harassment a Common Enemy and Urgent Priority Among Employees

1️⃣ See Sexual Harassment as a Workplace Threat – It’s not just a legal issue; it affects safety, trust, and productivity, which in turn impacts business success.

2️⃣ Focus on Prevention, Not Just Complaints – Instead of only training employees on legal rules, companies should invest in prevention programs that create real behaviour change and a culture of respect.

3️⃣ Give the Right People a Voice – Awareness campaigns should feature experts and advocates who see POSH as a mission, not just a rule to follow. Their passion brings real engagement and drives meaningful action.

Across India, many POSH experts work not as service providers but as change-makers, dedicated to building safer workplaces. My own journey in this space started with a purpose, not a business idea — driven by the need to create real change..

Here’s how and why Be.artsy began as a mission—and continues to make an impact…

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Best | Shikha Mittal | Founder, Be.artsy

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Why Trust Me?

Over the past 15 years, I’ve collaborated with 450+ organisations across 41 industries, designing and delivering learning and developing programs impacting over 500,000 professionals through my enterprise, Be.artsy. which I founded in 2010 in Delhi, India.

Since 2010, Be.artsy has pioneered innovative, arts-driven approaches to workplace inclusion.