How AI helps prevent workplace harassment

Over 60 million U.S. workers have been affected by workplace bullying, either experiencing it directly or witnessing the harassment in their workplace.

At Veritas Alliance, Inc., a debt collection agency based in Canada, leadership has turned to artificial intelligence (AI) to mitigate the risk of workplace harassment.

When Veritas Alliance expanded to multiple offices and over 100 employees, they searched for a security strategy that would help prevent harassment across teams without constant Human Resources (HR) oversight. They implemented a workplace harassment prevention solution called AI2HR.

"As the company has grown to over 100 people and several offices, it is difficult for me to know what is going on at the front lines," said John Muglia, President and CEO of Veritas Alliance. "By using AI2HR, we can understand if there are problems at the team level."

The AI tool identifies problems occurring within specific teams and can categorize potential issues from favoritism to communication errors. It can identify 12 risk areas contributing to harassment and connect teams to resources to prevent bullying from taking place.

"It has helped us by identifying issues before they become crises," said Muglia. "Oftentimes, we can correct an action with training and coaching when people are not aware that their style is bordering on harassment. By identifying the cause — not just the symptom — we have become much more preventative instead of reactive. This has lowered the number of complaints and significantly decreased our liability as well."

Madeline Lauver is the Editor in Chief of Security magazine. Lauver joined Security in 2021 as its Assistant Editor, and she covers news affecting enterprise security leaders, including physical security, cybersecurity, leadership and management, risk and resilience and more. Within her role at Security, Lauver focuses on news articles, web exclusives, features and several departments for Security’s monthly digital edition, as well as managing social media and multimedia content. Lauver graduated in 2019 with a B.A. in English, German and Media Studies from Kalamazoo College.

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