Harassment Has Changed. Has Your Organisation?
For decades, workplace harassment training has focused on behaviours that occur face-to-face: inappropriate comments, microaggressions, unwanted touching, bullying, discrimination, and sexual harassment. Although those risks still exist and should not be ignored, the workplace has changed dramatically, and so has harassment.
Artificial intelligence, social media, and digital communication platforms have created opportunities for innovation and collaboration which we never envisaged ten years ago. But they have also created entirely new ways to intimidate, humiliate, threaten, and abuse people, particularly women, which we had never even considered either.
Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence (TFGBV) is happening right now, and many organisations are unprepared to recognise it, investigate it, or support those affected and is not something that might happen in the future.
A Growing Workplace Risk
Technology-facilitated abuse includes behaviours such as AI-generated sexual harassment, non-consensual deepfake images and videos, voice cloning, cyberstalking, non-consensual recording, image-based abuse, online impersonation, doxxing, digital coercive control, and the malicious use of workplace technologies.
The rapid growth of generative AI has accelerated these risks and creating convincing fake images, videos, or audio recordings no longer requires specialist technical knowledge but can be picked up quite easily by anyone with a smart phone or a lap top. An abusive tactic that once took hours or even days to implement, can now be carried out in minutes using freely available tools.
The overwhelming majority of victims are women.
Research from Sensity AI found that around 96% of deepfake videos online are non-consensual pornography, with women making up almost all identified victims. Meanwhile, research from UN Women and UNESCO warns that online gender-based violence is increasing globally as digital technologies become more sophisticated and more accessible.
The impact is not confined to someone’s personal life. Increasingly, these incidents spill directly into the workplace, damaging careers, mental health, and organisational culture.
The Human Cost
Technology-facilitated abuse rarely ends when someone leaves the office. Targets can receive threatening messages throughout the day, have fake images circulated online, be impersonated on social media, or find private information published publicly. Some experience relentless cyberstalking that follows them across multiple platforms.
The impact can be profound:
- Psychological harm. Targets frequently suffer severe anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a result of the violation of their bodily autonomy.
- Social and economic damage. Manipulated images are weaponised to harass, blackmail, or humiliate women, sometimes leading to job loss or fractured personal relationships when sent to employers or family members. Many begin avoiding meetings, declining promotions, changing jobs, or leaving the workforce entirely.
- Loss of digital safety. The ease of creating realistic fake imagery breeds a climate of fear, forcing many women to restrict their public presence and self-expression online. We are already seeing this on LinkedIn where bullying and sexual harassment is rife and AI moderation ineffective and harassment goes unchecked.
Paula (not her real name) had a digitally altered business photo circulated on social media by a colleague as “a bit of fun.” The outfit she had been wearing had been adjusted to give a “sexy librarian vibe. ” The target, a lady nearing retirement was traumatised and went on sick leave never to return and is taking legal action. Deep fakes are hitting the workplace.
. The CHRO had to ask if this was sexual harassment. Yes it most certainly is.
These outcomes are not simply wellbeing issues they are psychosocial hazards that directly affect organisational performance, productivity, employee retention, and trust.
Digital Harassment vs In Person Harassment
There is a growing body of research that suggests digital abuse and harassment has a more profound effect on targets thzn in person abuse at the lower end of the scale:
- Lack of escape: Digital targets report higher mental strain because digital harassment lacks a physical safe haven, allowing abuse to follow victims into their personal time and homes. If the online abuse happens in their personal space then there it is much easier for it to permeate the target’s business life with a direct impact on their ability to work safely because the abuser can’t be intercepted at reception. That gap creates significant organisational risk.
- Permanence and scale: Digital messages, emails, and posts provide a permanent record that victims can repeatedly re-read, re-activating their stress response and intensifying psychological trauma compared to transient verbal insults. The abuse can also be scaled at speed and much more widely circulated than any in-person office incident.
- Severity ratings: Empirical studies from the University of Sheffield comparing mediums indicate that digital workplace aggression is frequently perceived as more severe and more damaging to overall job satisfaction
Why HR and Leaders Need New Skills
Many HR professionals are highly experienced at investigating traditional workplace complaints but far fewer have received training on:
- AI-generated sexual harassment
- Deepfakes, creep shots and synthetic media
- Doxxing
- Voice cloning and digital impersonation
- Preserving digital evidence
- Online stalking linked to workplace relationships
- Smart eyewear and covert recording. Cool tech is not so cool for the target.
- Trauma-informed interviewing following digital abuse
Without this knowledge, organisations risk mishandling disclosures, unintentionally retraumatising victims, or overlooking important evidence.
The Legal Landscape Is Changing
Around the world, legislators are beginning to recognise technology-facilitated abuse as a serious legal issue.
The EU AI Act, expanding online safety legislation in several jurisdictions, stronger protections against image-based abuse, and increasing employer duties around psychosocial safety all point in the same direction: organisations are expected to understand emerging digital risks and respond appropriately.
In addition, standards such as ISO 45003 remind employers that psychological health and safety includes identifying and managing psychosocial hazards, regardless of whether those risks arise from traditional workplace interactions or evolving technologies. Waiting until an incident occurs is no longer a sustainable strategy.
Prevention Is Better Than Investigation
Many organisations already provide harassment awareness training but few have updated that training to reflect the realities of AI-enabled workplaces. Effective prevention means helping managers and employees understand:
- how technology-facilitated abuse occurs
- early warning signs
- safe reporting procedures
- trauma-informed responses
- digital evidence preservation
- appropriate investigation practices
- policy updates covering AI misuse, smart eyewear, and digital harassment
It also means building psychologically safe cultures where employees feel confident reporting incidents without fear of blame or retaliation.
Looking Ahead
Technology will keep evolving, and unfortunately, so will the ways it can be misused. Organisations that treat Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence as just another cyber-risk line item, rather than as the new frontier of gender-based violence, risk missing its very real human consequences.
This is more than compliance. It’s about protecting people’s dignity, safeguarding psychological safety, maintaining trust, and ensuring that innovation doesn’t come at the expense of employee wellbeing. Workplace safety in 2026 no longer means just what happens in the office, but what happens on a screen, too.
Does your harassment policy cover deepfakes, nudification and AI-enabled abuse? Explore our AI Harassment & Digital Safety at Work workshop
Schedule a no obligation strategy to find out what ourworkshops cover, how they can be delivered and tailored to your organisation’s risk profile.
