Harassment and discrimination of any kind have no place in the workplace. However, workplace harassment and discrimination are significant concerns that have been present in many industries and organizations. Despite recent increases in attention to these issues, they continue to persist. As an employer, you are legally obligated to provide a work environment free from intimidation, insult, or ridicule based on race, color, religion, gender, or national origin.
What is Workplace Harassment?
Harassment is defined as verbal or physical conduct that denigrates or shows hostility or aversion toward an individual because of that person’s race, skin, color, religion, gender, national origin, age, or disability. It further serves the purpose or effect of unreasonably interfering with the individual’s work performance.
Conduct itself can take many forms, such as epithets, slurs, stereotyping, jokes, and pranks that are hostile or demeaning or written or graphic material that denigrates or shows hostility towards a particular individual or group.
What if it was just a joke?
Employees who engage in harassing conduct often will use the defense that “it was just a joke.” In situations where you are trying to determine if some conduct that has taken place is harassing conduct, the way to decide it is to use the “reasonable person” standard. In layperson’s terms, it refers to a hypothetically reasonable person with a reasonable way of interpreting and reacting to a situation of harassment. The reasonable person standard aims to avoid the potential for parties to claim they suffered harassment when most people would not find such instances offensive if they themselves were the subject of such acts. This standard includes considerations of the perspective of persons of the same race, color, religion, gender, national origin, age, or disability as the harassment victim.
Prevention and Risk Mitigation
If your company has not taken the steps to mitigate the potential for workplace harassment, this becomes an immediate priority. From a legal standpoint, the best way to reduce your liability should harassment ever occur is to have policies and procedures in place that show that you did everything you could to prevent harassment from occurring. Here are some steps that your team can use for preventing and dealing with harassment:
1. Establish a zero-tolerance, anti-harassment policy
Have a written policy stating that harassment will not be tolerated. This policy should include a clear-cut, easy-to-understand definition of harassment, a harassment prohibition statement, a
description of your complaint procedure, a description of disciplinary measures, and a statement of protection against retaliation.
2. Take immediate action
Should an incident happen, make sure that leadership immediately takes corrective action. This will help build trust and let potential harassers know that that behavior will not be tolerated.
3. Make it easy to bring harassment and discrimination to light
Set up a complaint process that is both easy to use and doesn’t embarrass or burden the victim. Often, employees will remain silent for fear of retaliation or further harassment. By establishing an easy, anonymous process, employees are more likely to come forward and seek help from their employer.
Take every complaint seriously and investigate every complaint.
4. Institute training and awareness programs for your employees
Establish a training program in which all employees must participate and schedule it regularly. This training should include what constitutes acceptable and unacceptable behavior, how to recognize when harassing conduct is taking place, and steps to take to report inappropriate behavior. This also includes management. Management must be skilled in recognizing when harassment occurs and making clear such behavior cannot be tolerated under any circumstance.