Thursday, October 07, 2010
Discriminatory Harassment
by Missy Leflar Edited Thursday, December 02, 2010
Originally Published in Biz to Biz NW Arkansas
The easiest way to avoid harassment in the workplace would be for everyone to treat everybody else with respect. However, simple respect doesn’t always occur in the workplace and so there are laws. Under the federal laws, a court may find an individual employee or an organizational employer legally liable for harassment based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin/ethnic group, age (40+) or disability. A court may likewise find an employer legally liable for retaliating against an employee for complaining of harassment (or other forms of illegal discrimination). No manager should ever attempt to “take revenge” on an employee for complaining of harassment.
Actionable harassment can occur in a variety of circumstances. The harasser can be the harassed employee’s supervisor, a supervisor in another area, an agent of the employer, a co-worker, or a non-employee. The harasser can be someone else’s employee with whom your organization’s employee comes into contact by virtue of performing his/her job duties (a delivery person, a person making repairs, a person with whom the employee comes into contact when running a work related errand, etc.).
While employers, of course, want to avoid frivolous or false harassment claims that could result in harm to innocent individuals, employees should be encouraged to report genuine workplace harassment at the first sign of it, before it escalates into worse behavior. Employees should NEVER be sent the message that they are expected to tolerate harassment (“don’t rock the boat”) in order to keep their jobs. Employers should train all employees regarding to whom they should go to in order to report harassment. Employers should provide more than one individual to go to so that the employee has options, including at least one option that does not include going through the supervisory chain of command (in case someone in the chain of command IS the problem).
Sometimes employees are so concerned about retaliation that when reporting harassment they will try to extract a promise on the front end “that this will not go any further, I just wanted you to know but don’t tell anyone what I’m about to tell you”. Such a request is usually based on fear of retaliation. The manager should be honest that it might be necessary to take action but should be as reassuring to the employee as possible that the organization appreciates the matter being reported and that the employee will be protected from being retaliated against for having reported the problem. The manager should pro-actively communicate to appropriate individuals that the employee is not to be retaliated against for having complained.
Employees should be treated with respect for having the courage to come forward to report harassment, and the matter should be treated with the utmost confidentiality. The harassment investigator should only inform others who need to know about the matter as part of performing their job duties. Any witnesses who know about the matter 2 should be interviewed but admonished to keep the matter confidential. The investigation file should be kept locked up.
Harassed employees are typically already embarrassed and upset. It is very important to avoid gossip, which only makes things worse. Managers should behave professionally and not discuss confidential harassment investigation matters with anyone unless the manager needs to do so in order to perform his/her job duties, and the person the manager is communicating with needs to likewise know the information in order to perform his/her own job. Further, managers involved in a harassment investigation should do what is humanly possible to prevent others from gossiping, particularly on work time and work premises.
There are many benefits to an organization when it properly handles harassment complaints. Employees will be more likely to perceive that “management cares”, and may well encourage others to report issues to management so that management can take care of employee problems. This can help foster a culture of trust between members of management and non-management. It is also obviously better for the individuals involved, as well as the organization, for the matter to be handled properly and swiftly so that it doesn’t unnecessarily drag out as a long standing unresolved issue. Longstanding unresolved employee issues can foster workforce morale problems. In addition, if the organization responds swiftly and appropriately to a harassment complaint, then any subsequent legal action concerning the matter it will likely be defensible.
