Harassment rarely starts with something explicit. It begins in the spaces where saying “no” feels impolite.
It starts with something simple, like this: a manager sees a funny Instagram video echoing a light-hearted discussion from earlier that day. He forwards it to one of his team members with a quick, “Thought you’d appreciate this 😂 it reminded me of you.”
Harmless, right?
Now, replay the same scene through the eyes of the employee who received the email.
It’s 8:17 p.m. Her phone buzzes. The message is from her manager. It’s just a video, no malice right? No inappropriate comment, but the message arrives while she’s sitting in her lounge room, with her partner on the couch beside her, hours after she’s logged off. She hesitates. Should she respond? Ignore it? Is silence rude? She replies with a polite laugh emoji, but she’s thinking about it longer than the video lasts.
Nothing “happened.” And yet, something shifted.
This is where the grey zone of harassment begins. It starts in the small, seemingly innocent exchanges where the balance of power makes consent feel less like a choice and more like an expectation.
Policy is clear. Behaviour is not.
Yet when it comes to policy, most organisations take a simpler view. Harassment is addressed in black and white. Policies outline what’s prohibited — physical advances, explicit messages, coercion — and how to report them.
Beyond these explicit boundaries, many organisations require employees to disclose romantic relationships, particularly when there’s a reporting line. Those measures help manage conflicts once a relationship exists.
But what about the space before that when there’s no relationship, no overt act, but just tone, proximity, and influence? Between the explicit and the innocent lies a quiet, unregulated territory. One where intent may be benign, yet the impact is not.
Here, power is steady and subtle. A manager sends a Facebook friend request to a direct report. The employee doesn’t want to accept it but also doesn’t want to seem cold. Declining feels defiant; accepting feels like a concession.
Few organisations have rules for such gestures. Workplaces are social and where many of us spend much of our awake time, and many relationships (even those that go on to marriage) begin there. Indeed, a 2023 SHRM survey found that 27 per cent of U.S. workers said they are or have been in a workplace romance.
So the question becomes: How do we strike the balance between not dictating personal lives and preventing sexual harassment?
According to the Australian Human Rights Commission’s Fifth National Survey (2022), one in three workers experienced sexual harassment in the past five years. Yet only 18 per cent reported it.
That gap between what’s experienced and what’s addressed, is where boundaries blur and accountability fades.
That’s the essence of the grey zone: it’s not about what’s done, but what’s assumed including things like:
- The assumption that friendliness equals consent.
- The assumption that inclusion equals comfort.
- The assumption that silence equals agreement.
A confidence shared, a boundary shifted
Blurred boundaries and misplaced friendliness at work can gradually shape how those in authority communicate. Before power dynamics become visible, they surface in the smallest interactions. Comments like, “You’ll hear this in the meeting later, but I wanted you to know first” can feel collegial and like a sign of trust. So can comments like “Off the record, senior leadership doesn’t really know what they’re doing.”
But each of these comments shifts the dynamic. They build personal loyalty instead of professional transparency and can create a subtle hierarchy within the hierarchy, of those who are “in” and those who are not.
And so discomfort sometimes begins not with an inappropriate touch or a message, but with moments that seem harmlessly personal. Being confided in. Being included. Being invited to share a secret. None of this is malicious, but it can sit atop uneven ground.
When training misses the point
Most workplace trainings focus on compliance, not connection. It teaches us what to do, but hardly ever explores impact.
What it rarely teaches is how discomfort begins and the invisible thread between authority and approval that makes it hard to say no, even when nothing is technically wrong.
That’s why things like the “we’re all family here” culture is so dangerous. Families don’t have reporting lines. They don’t conduct performance reviews. When leaders forget that, they forget that every word they say carries more weight than they realise.
Awareness is key
The solution isn’t to ban humour, friendships, or connection. It’s to recognise the weight of position before pressing “send.”
Harassment starts in these micro-moments, and the places where courtesy becomes obligation. Which is why we don’t need to stop teaching compliance, but we do need to start teaching context in addition to understanding the compliance.
The grey zone is where perception takes shape and where respect is tested long before it’s broken. If we’re serious about respect, we’ll have to start having the hard conversations including the ones that might make us uncomfortable, and those where we might see ourselves reflected. That’s how discomfort turns into awareness, and awareness into change.