What follows is a recent interview with Morgan Lewis partner Sharon Masling
Question: How would you describe the work you do?
Answer: As one of the leaders of Morgan Lewis’s Workplace Culture Consulting and Training Practice, I counsel employers on workplace culture issues, including harassment, discrimination, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), and returning to work after COVID.
Q: How did you get involved in looking at workplace culture issues in sports?
A: In the past few years, my work has naturally evolved to include work with professional teams, sports-related retailers, and university sports programs. In some cases, the work is reactive: for example, helping an organization respond to high-profile allegations of misconduct. In other cases, the work is proactive: for example, conducting focus groups or developing strategic plans to foster safe, respectful, and inclusive workplaces.
This practice grows from my time at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), where I was Chief of Staff and Senior Counsel to one of the EEOC’s commissioners. While at the EEOC, I helped develop, prioritize, and implement the commissioner’s multi-year policy agenda on a broad range of issues, including harassment prevention, disability rights, LGBT rights, and DEI.
Q: Why is it important for sports organizations to examine their workplace culture?
A: Too often, sports organizations, like companies in other industries, find themselves scrambling to respond to what is, at first glance, a one-off issue, only to find that the actual issue is deep-seated and systemic. Many times the actual issue is a by-product of poor workplace culture controls.
Workplace culture assessments provide such controls. When developed organically during an investigation of a so-called “discrete” problem, whether through standardized questioning of witnesses or by analyzing witness statements and documents and teasing out common themes, such reactive assessments can be helpful to gather meaningful feedback in a confidential setting and then determine remedial measures.
The best way to prevent misconduct, however, is not to only try to ferret out bad actors, but rather to focus on creating a culture of safety, respect, and inclusion, where all forms of disrespectful behavior—from rudeness and incivility to bullying, discrimination, and harassment —are not tolerated. Incivility is often a gateway drug to bullying and harassment. If an employer stops the small behaviors, the large ones are less likely to flourish.
Q: How are you seeing issues related to discrimination playing out already in the sports world?
A: The past 12 months have been difficult for sports, irrespective of league or country. In the Americas, major sports leagues have been rocked by high-profile investigations into allegations of sexual harassment, racism and bullying. The National Football League, for example, fined one football team after a yearlong investigation found a “highly unprofessional” culture of sexual harassment, and there have been recent allegations of racial discrimination with respect to the hiring of coaches. At least two National Basketball Association teams are working through their own investigations into allegations of toxic workplace culture. And Major League Soccer (MLS) recently commenced an investigation into a team’s treatment of misconduct allegations against its former women’s coach, which, according to MLS, will assess “overall culture” to provide players and staff alike with a safe work environment “free of all forms of harassment and fear of retaliation.”
Q: Are you seeing a shift in teams and related companies wanting to do more proactively in their own workplaces?
A: The current environment is ripe for change. Between a renewed call for social justice coming from players and employees and high-profile discrimination and harassment claims made public in a number of organizations, there is now a desire from companies and sports organizations to get ahead of problems before they happen. Many employers have put measures in place to create safe, respectful, and inclusive workplace cultures. And that starts at the top. Sports executives can first lay the groundwork by explaining to the entire organization why workplace culture assessments will help the team. Executives who lead by example can help ensure that a positive culture is pollinated across the organization and reinforced at all levels. If leaders state their values and their expectations and hold people accountable when employees fail to meet these expectations—even when the person who has engaged in misconduct is at a high level—that can go a long way toward creating a culture where everyone wants to come to work and be a member of the team.
