Safer and More
Respectful Workplaces
Equitable Terms
Leading the transformation of workplace accountability practices
Trainings
Building better training courses so you can build better teams.
When you want to bring real change in the way you respond to all forms of discrimination, harassment, sexual harassment and microaggressions, you need to focus on improving your entire organizational ecosystem—in ways that are both achievable and cost effective.
Equitable Terms has turned that ideal into practical implementation through a three-step training approach that can be delivered in-person or remotely.
You begin by upskilling the core responders in your People team in how they handle reports, informal resolutions and investigations in your accountability system. The core of the program is centered on improving compassionate communication skill through a specialized approach called RESTORE your communication, based on brain science and practical tools. By improving communication skills around the most challenging and sensitive conversations on harms in the workplace, your team is then well-equipped to handle all manners of difficult conversations.
Training courses:
- Re-evaluating your safe and respectful workplace policies with a trauma-informed and restorative lens
- Designing and implementing a trauma-informed reporting system
- Transforming your informal resolutions with a restorative process
- Trauma-informed investigation techniques
- Writing a better investigation report
- RESTORE your communication practices: (designed for HR staff to use, monitor and continue to train on good practices for difficult conversations across their organizations)
From there, it’s time to help your managers become better communicators and leaders around difficult conversations involving potential discriminatory harms within their teams, also using the RESTORE communication course.
Training courses:
- Becoming trauma-informed in receiving reports of misconduct and harm
- Transforming your informal resolutions with a restorative process
- RESTORE your communication practices: (designed for managers in their roles as leaders and facilitators in difficult conversations)
Finally, bring all these skills to the rest of your staff through bystander/upstander intervention and communication techniques for more constructive ways to express, as well as listen to, the impacts of words and actions on others to repair harms and maintain relationships.
Training courses:
- Becoming a better bystander: interrupting harms effectively and safely
- RESTORE your communication practices: (designed for all staff to improve imparting and receiving information in difficult conversations)
All trainings are grounded in a trauma-informed approach (and teach what that means in practice). The focus is on building and maintaining relationships by recognizing and repairing harms with a restorative lens.
Courses are tailored for different audiences and different organizational needs, but always underpinned with these foundational approaches:
– Co-create a learning environment that is interactive and collaborative
– Use easy-to-understand frameworks that guide solutions
– Lead scenario-based exercises that facilitate the development of problem-solving skills and ethical decision-making
– Meet or exceed legal requirements—we can be both legally compliant and innovative in new approaches to tackling discrimination and harassment
Services
Outsource your Employee Relations needs
Many organizations and businesses outsource different aspects of their People team functions—from payroll to benefits to onboarding. But employee relations—how your team members get along with each other—are the pieces that sometimes get overlooked. Poorly handled issues can be highly detrimental to well-functioning teams and can also result in potential claims against your business that can be much more expensive in the long run.
Retain a trauma-informed lawyer to get the support you need and when you need it and act as your external employee relations department. On-call retainer services or support for an individual situation are both available.
Conflict Mediation and Resolution
When communication conflicts come up, let’s mediate those differences. I bring an equity lens, and where racist or other oppressive words and actions come up, we ensure they stay on the table for discussion and resolution. Sometimes that means referring for other process when harms are being expressed.
Facilitating Restorative Processes
For those organizations seeking to transform their informal resolution process for discriminatory harms, restorative processes provide an optimal lens for centering impact, acknowledging obligations and repairing harms.
Workplace Investigations
Sometimes a formal investigation is the process most needed, from both a legal and practical perspective. I have conducted or coached hundreds of workplace investigations across the globe—with extensive experience in sexual misconduct cases. I am one of the few Oregon lawyers who commits to using trauma-informed investigation techniques.
About
About Equitable Terms
The Issue
Equitable Terms was formed after years of watching organizations struggle with how to effectively and equitably create workplace standards of conduct and hold people accountable to them.
Many systems used today inadequately consider equity and psychological safety when designing standards of conduct, reporting systems and accountability responses. Equitable Terms aims to change this approach by bringing an equity-informed and trauma-informed lens to creating a Safe and Respectful Workplace framework.
The Mission
Equitable Terms works at the cutting edge of where the law is heading to raise the bar on workplace culture. While law is said to be a reflection of societal values, when those values are in transition, law tends to move at a slower rate of change than public perceptions. As an attorney with nearly a decade of experience leading anti-bias training and capacity development, I combine my expertise in anti-discrimination law and infuse it with an equity lens.
Together, we create systems that recognize harms experienced by staff are issues to be repaired and remedied, not simply punished, or, worse, downplayed or ignored. I draw upon proven approaches like Equity-Informed Mediation and Restorative Justice Practices and adapt them to workplace policies on conduct, trainings, reporting, investigations and accountability procedures. I help organizations create innovative and responsive systems that exceed legal requirements and make their workplaces exemplary in their industry, which in turn leads to attracting and retaining more diverse talent.
The Vision
By guiding teams in developing Safe and Respectful Workplace standards and systems for accountability that recognize the needs of those most likely to be impacted or harmed, we can also maintain fairness to everyone involved in the processes. We create safe and trusted processes to encourage people to address harm at the earliest opportunities– and to ensure that organizational systems and culture won’t cause them to suffer adverse consequences or retaliations for doing so.
I envision that we can co-create an ecosystem of workplace environments that move beyond merely adhering to legal compliance on discrimination, sexual harassment and harassment and engage with being anti-racist, anti-oppressive, inclusive and equitable for everyone.
About Carolyn Bys
Over the past 20 years, I have gained unique perspectives from my diverse experience—and that experience resonates with my current focus practicing at the intersection of civil rights and employer responsibilities as advice and counsel. My work life has included leading the global ethics and investigations unit of a large, international non-profit in the international humanitarian and development sector with offices in 40+countries, practicing as an appellate criminal defense attorney, and working internationally as an anti-bias trainer and training prosecutors and law enforcement on investigating hate crime.
When not helping organizations create Equitable Terms in their workplace conduct practices, you can usually find me riding my bike up, over, and around mountains, through forests, and across deserts.
-Member of Oregon State Bar (OSB) since 2007
-Member of OSB Labor and Employment section
-Member of Association of Workplace Investigators (AWI) and AWI Certificate Holder
-Trained in Equity-Informed Mediation by Resolution Northwest
-Training in Restorative Conferencing by International Institute for Restorative Practices