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Certain social cues in organisations effectively "hush" workplace s-xual harassment, and serve to sustain and perpetuate it, new research suggests.

These "signals of silence" are often overlooked, but their harmful effects can be countered by ethical leadership, academics say.

The research team, led by Angela L. Workman-Stark from Canada's Athabasca University, say that to date, "anti-harassment HR policies and programs have focused heavily on victims as the primary agents of silence in organisations".

"Our research exposes a critical flaw in that approach," they say, in a paper published in Human Resource Management.

The scope of responsibility for silence reaches beyond the individual affected by workplace sexual harassment (WSH), to all members of the workplace who "enforce, transmit, and perpetuate silence", the researchers say...