Speaker Profile
SUSAN STRAUSS
Dr. Susan Strauss is a national and international speaker, trainer, consultant, and a recognized expert on workplace and school harassment and bullying. She conducts harassment and bullying investigations and functions as an expert witness in harassment and bullying lawsuits. Her clients are from business, education, healthcare, law, and government organizations from both the public and the private sector.
Dr. Strauss has conducted research, written over 30 books, book chapters, and journal articles on harassment, bullying, and related topics. She has been featured on 20/20, CBS Evening News, and other television and radio programs as well as interviewed for newspaper and journal articles such as Harvard Education Newsletter, Lawyers Weekly, and Times of London.
Susan is the recipient of the Excellence in Educational Equity Award from the Minnesota Department of Education for her work in sexual harassment in education. She has spoken about sexual harassment at international conferences in Botswana, Egypt, Thailand, and the U.S. She consulted with the Israeli Ministry of Education, as well as with educators from Israel, England, Australia, St. Maartin, Bali, and Canada. She traveled to Poland and conducted research on sex discrimination and sexual harassment in Polish workplaces with Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights. She has consulted with health professionals in Beirut regarding violence in healthcare. Susan has a doctorate in organizational leadership. She is a registered nurse, has a bachelor’s degree in psychology and counseling, a master’s degree in community health, and a professional certificate in training and development. She has been involved in the harassment and bullying arena since 1985.

Women’s Hostility to Women at Work: Myth or Reality
Are women really each other’s worse enemy or is it just a myth and a stereotype? What does the research show about women’s hostility to other women, sometimes called bullying, in the workplace? Bullying is a learned behavior that gets fine-tuned during our school years. Girls and women tend to bully using more subtle nuanced types of tactics that are relationship-based. Men’s ways of bullying tend to be mor..

Dress and Appearance Code: Rights, Responsibilities, and Potential Liabilities for 2022
From the style and length of one’s hair, to the number and location of visible tattoos, to recognizing gender non-conformity style, to creating a summer dress code, employers are facing an increased need to determine their organization’s culture and policies, as well as following federal and state laws. How does an organization balance employees’ rights to express themselves with the organization’s ri..

EEOC Report: Workplace Discrimination and Harassment Prevention Not Working - Workplaces Fail To Implement Systemic Changes
You have been in Human Resources or management for years. Your plate is full too much to do and to know in your increasingly stressful job. You are expected to stay current in discrimination and harassment case law for all the federal and state protected classes. Are you current? It seems like an unending responsibility. You remember hearing something in the news about a change in the pregnancy law, but can..

Essentials for Documenting Investigations: HR and Management’s Responsibility to Minimize Liability
As the saying goes - If it isn’t documented, it didn’t happen! Documentation is essential for many legal issues, disputes, audits, meetings, and decision making, to name a few. Perhaps nowhere is it more critical than when documenting your investigation. Your documentation memoralizes the entire investigation, it minimizes confusion, corroborates stories and evidence, demonstrates patterns of behavior and s..

Violence at Work: From Disgruntled Employees and Domestic Violence to Mass Murder
According to the U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 5% of U. S. businesses experience workplace violence yearly. The percentage of workplace violence increases to 50% for organizations with 1,000 employees. The FBI stated that in 2014 an active shooting incident occurred, on average, once every three weeks. However, given the size of the U. S., the chances of being a victim of a workplace shooting is statist..

LGBTQ Inclusion in the Workplace: Navigating Policies, Procedures, and Practices
Workplaces have made progress towards LGBTQequality, yet LGBTQ workers still go to work every day with fear that they might lose their jobs because of who they love and who they are. There is no federal law protecting the LGB community from workplace discrimination and harassment. There is confusion among organizations as to whether the federal civil rights law Title VII protects gay, lesbian, and bisexual ..

BEST SELLER - How Do They Work Together—Or Not? : The Complexity & Interplay Among the ADAAA, FMLA, and Worker’s Comp
Challenges - It’s confusing, isn’t it? How are we supposed to keep it all straight when there are times when the legal requirements of both the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and the American Disabilities Act Amendment Act (ADAAA) are similar, yet at other times one law contradicts another? We find that we can’t comply with both laws at the same time, so which one takes precedence over the other? And where..

BEST SELLER - How to Conduct a Harassment & Bullying Investigation
The EEOC requires that employers receiving a complaint, or otherwise learning of alleged harassment in the workplace, “investigate promptly and thoroughly…take immediate and appropriate corrective action by doing whatever is necessary to end the harassment, make the victim whole by restoring lost employment benefits or opportunities, and prevent the misconduct from recurring”. That’s a tall order to ensure ..

BEST SELLER - LGBT Inclusion in the Workplace: Navigating Policies, Procedures, and Practices
Workplaces have made progress towards LGBTQ equality yet LGBTQ workers still go to work every day with the fear that they might lose their jobs because of whom they love and who they are. There is no federal law protecting the LGB community from workplace discrimination and harassment. There is confusion among organizations as to whether the federal civil rights law Title VII protects gay, lesbian, and bise..

BEST SELLER - Nurse to Nurse Bullying: A Sepsis in Healthcare
Nurse to nurse bullying threatens the safety and well-being of patients and nurses. The misconduct is a major problem to all nurses and causing 60% of new nurses to leave their first nursing position and 1 in 3 nurses to quit the profession. Sometimes the bullying is so subtle it is almost invisible yet causes cumulative damage to the targeted nurse as well as those nurses who witness the behavior. The Join..

Mental Illness, ADAAA, and the Workplace: Taking Responsibility as an Employer
More and more people are complaining of feeling depressed, hopeless, and just plain out of sorts. Therapists indicate that more and more people are seeking therapy, especially since the 2016 election. Millennials, the largest workgroup in our workplaces, have an increase in depression. These are your employees—what are your responsibilities as a manager or HR professional in recognizing and helping them? Ho..

Virtual and in-person Onboarding: Beyond Handbooks, Benefits, and Photo IDs
Whether you call it Onboarding, Induction, Enculturation, or New Employee Orientation (NEO), the process used to welcome and train your new employees while capturing their excitement of a new job and reducing their new job jitters is critical to their success. NEO is not a one-day event, but rather a process that begins after their acceptance of the job and extends through the first year of their employment..

A Leer, A Pat, A Joke, A Gesture, An Innuendo, A Kiss: Are You Prepared To Be the Next Social Media Blitz, Identified on #MeToo, or a Headline in the Newspaper?
Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose, Al Franken, Garrison Keillor, members of Congress, and various State lawmakers have been accused of sexual harassment and/or sexual assault. But there is a difference between pulling one’s pants down in front of a female colleague at work and touching a woman on her buttocks during a photo op—isn’t there? What is that difference? Are both examples considered sexua..

Diversity & Inclusion Strategy: A Necessary Workplace Survival Tactic
What do we mean when we think about – Diversity? Inclusion? Is it referring only to race, disability, and gender? Diversity and inclusion strategies have expanded to include the differences among us in the way we do our work, how we think, as well as where we work in the organization. This webinar will discuss the forms diversity and inclusion take within our workplaces, and how that translates into the cri..

How Do They Work Together—Or Not? : The Complexity & Interplay Among the ADAAA, FMLA, and Worker’s Comp
Challenges - It’s confusing, isn’t it? How are we supposed to keep it all straight when there are times when the legal requirements of both the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and the American Disabilities Act Amendment Act (ADAAA) are similar, yet at other times one law contradicts another? We find that we can’t comply with both laws at the same time, so which one takes precedence over the other? And where..