The PEERS initiative at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography facilitates intensive workshops to promote active bystander intervention with an emphasis on field settings. Bystander intervention is an evidence-based framework intended to shift the burden of addressing harassment from the target to the community.

Strategies and resources discussed in the workshops are meant to empower all field team members to promote prosocial environments by recognizing and safely addressing harmful behaviors and instituting preventative measures.

PEERS workshops are field-focused versions of the United States Geological Survey’s (USGS) Step-UP! Employee Empowerment Strategies (SEES) Bystander Intervention Training material developed by scientists to increase peer-to-peer anti-harassment efforts. As with USGS SEES, PEERS workshops aim to:

1. Identify and describe barriers to intervening in difficult situations,
2. Increase attendees motivation to help,
3. Introduce tools and approaches to help attendees safely respond to toxic behavior and situations, and
4. Develop skills among the attendees to safely respond to problematic situations.

All workshops include facilitated group discussions of how individuals may decide whether or not to intervene in a given situation and videos illustrating active and inactive bystanders. Participants are asked to take an anonymous survey; the results are shared in real time so participants can see what behaviors their peers have witnessed in work settings. PEERS workshops include discussion of problems specific to remote work settings, group discussion of real world fieldwork scenarios, and discussion of prevention strategies directed at fieldwork.

PEERS seeks to promote positive culture change in our field teams and other work environments by growing a community of facilitators and workshop attendees.