The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.
Sexual harassment at work
DBReed
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
At my job, I'm a member of a committee that represents the employees to management. We deal with contract disputes, employee complaints, things like that. Recently we were asked by one employee to speak to management regarding a dispute they are having with another employee.
Something came up in one of our meetings with a member of management (who I'll call the supervisor from here on out) that left me feeling uneasy. The supervisor was listing off a number of complaints he had received about the employee in question, and among those complaints was sexual harassment. Everyone else on the committee seemed to know what was being talked about, but I had never heard about this until that moment and felt a little out of the loop. The meeting was about to end at this point, so I decided that I would ask one of the more senior members of the committee about it afterwards.
I emailed one of the members that night, and their response was that no formal sexual harassment complaint had been made and that it was all based on hearsay. They also said that our responsibility as a committee did not include advocating for any kind of action, and that we were only supposed to relay facts. They said they hoped that this didn't become a big mess and would serve as a wake-up call for the employee in question, and they would fill me in on the details of the supposed harassment complaint the next day at work.
That last part never happened, so I asked another member of the committee to fill me in. According to them, someone did approach the supervisor with a complaint about something they overheard the employee in question say to another employee that they considered inappropriate for the workplace. No further action was taken by the supervisor, according the committee member I asked.
This has really been eating at me for a few days now. In my opinion, the supervisor has not done enough to deal with previous non-sexual harassment complaints about the employee in question. The most that has happened is a conversation between the supervisor and the employee, which results in improved behavior for a few months before it beings to deteriorate. The supervisor seems to be taking the same relaxed approach to this complaint about sexual harassment, and to me that is a very bad idea. This kind of thing seems like it could be very damaging, and the supervisor's approach could be viewed as just ignoring the complaint. At the very least, it seems to me that there could have been an email sent out reminding everyone of the sexual harassment policy. No need to name names, just give everyone a general reminder.
This situation also leads me to a larger concern about the culture of the workplace. I've heard stories from female co-workers about things that have been said to them in the workplace that are totally unprofessional and inappropriate. As far as I know, none of them have ever submitted a formal complaint. When I've spoken to them about this, they seem resigned to this kind of behavior. I get the sense that they feel it would be pointless to complain.
I don't feel like this situation is being handled well, but I'm unsure how to proceed. Can anyone offer advice on a similar situation they've dealt with, or the possible legal consequences of what I've described?
Something came up in one of our meetings with a member of management (who I'll call the supervisor from here on out) that left me feeling uneasy. The supervisor was listing off a number of complaints he had received about the employee in question, and among those complaints was sexual harassment. Everyone else on the committee seemed to know what was being talked about, but I had never heard about this until that moment and felt a little out of the loop. The meeting was about to end at this point, so I decided that I would ask one of the more senior members of the committee about it afterwards.
I emailed one of the members that night, and their response was that no formal sexual harassment complaint had been made and that it was all based on hearsay. They also said that our responsibility as a committee did not include advocating for any kind of action, and that we were only supposed to relay facts. They said they hoped that this didn't become a big mess and would serve as a wake-up call for the employee in question, and they would fill me in on the details of the supposed harassment complaint the next day at work.
That last part never happened, so I asked another member of the committee to fill me in. According to them, someone did approach the supervisor with a complaint about something they overheard the employee in question say to another employee that they considered inappropriate for the workplace. No further action was taken by the supervisor, according the committee member I asked.
This has really been eating at me for a few days now. In my opinion, the supervisor has not done enough to deal with previous non-sexual harassment complaints about the employee in question. The most that has happened is a conversation between the supervisor and the employee, which results in improved behavior for a few months before it beings to deteriorate. The supervisor seems to be taking the same relaxed approach to this complaint about sexual harassment, and to me that is a very bad idea. This kind of thing seems like it could be very damaging, and the supervisor's approach could be viewed as just ignoring the complaint. At the very least, it seems to me that there could have been an email sent out reminding everyone of the sexual harassment policy. No need to name names, just give everyone a general reminder.
This situation also leads me to a larger concern about the culture of the workplace. I've heard stories from female co-workers about things that have been said to them in the workplace that are totally unprofessional and inappropriate. As far as I know, none of them have ever submitted a formal complaint. When I've spoken to them about this, they seem resigned to this kind of behavior. I get the sense that they feel it would be pointless to complain.
I don't feel like this situation is being handled well, but I'm unsure how to proceed. Can anyone offer advice on a similar situation they've dealt with, or the possible legal consequences of what I've described?
DBReed on
0
Posts
If those first two don't exist, or if you don't feel comfortable confronting folk (either in general, or because you don't have anything besides hearsay and rumors) then I don't know of any way you, personally, can do anything here.
Errr...I really can't agree with any of this.
1) Reporting something you didn't witness or were directly (by a participant) told about isn't a great idea.
2) Short circuiting the management by trying to act like one yourself, again over something that hasn't been directly witnessed/reported to you, is not going to end well or do any good.
I'm making some assumptions here, that DBReed isn't directly management but it appears to be implied.
As for positive things you can do...well the next meeting of that committee sounds like your best outlet for making the suggestion about Sexual Harassment training and what not. Rather relevant is that companies do not get in trouble because Bob from Accounting makes an inappropriate remark. They get in trouble when Bob makes that comment and somebody complains and then they do nothing. To that end it seems like your company is setting themselves up for trouble.
I have a tenured position in a union workplace, so I can't just be fired at the drop of a hat.
I don't know about an anonymous complaint line, I'll have to look into that.
Even being union, you probably don't want to make enemies.
I agree with this. I can't really suggest any direct action in good conscience for a lot of reasons, but there's things you can do at the level of the corporate culture that can prevent things like this from escalating. Another possibility is raising the point that most liability in situations like that comes from the company never looking into a report. Everywhere I've worked, any kind of complaint that involves liability (not just sexual harassment but employee theft, fraud, safety violations, etc) can't be made informally. This can go the other way, where a casual comment can let out a genie that won't go back in the bottle until somebody gets fired, so if you have a strict zero tolerance policy the people administering it have to have their heads cleanly out of their assholes at all times.
A big concern I see, you're reporting on hearsay of hearsay of so forth - not only was this not said to or in front of you, it was not reported to you by anyone who it was said to or in front of. And the person who told you was also not told by somebody who it was said to or in front of, but by somebody who was told by somebody who overheard it but made no formal record of the matter (and for that matter, since they overheard it to begin with, may not even have cause to start with, depending on what was said). Four degrees of "A told B told C" is too far separated from this to make any statement of fact, there's a lot of room for things to have been left out or added in that chain of telephone.
The email exchange I had with the one committee member really set off an alarm for me. That person seemed more concerned about keeping it quiet, rather than it turning into a "big mess".
I have spoken with the person who overheard the remark made by the employee and who made the complaint to the supervisor. I wasn't specifically asking them about it, but it came up in a conversation we were having about this employee. The employee in question also came up in another conversation I had with the employee to whom he directed the comment. They didn't confirm anything about this specific incident, but they did express a general distaste for the way this employee interacted with them.
To be clear, I'm not conducting my own investigation. The employee in question has rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, and this person tends to come up in conversation quite a bit with my co-workers. Most of the complaints are limited to grumbling between co-workers instead of being formally lodged with management.
It should be noted that the person who filed the complaint is not necessarily told exactly what is going to be done even after an investigation shows some sort of corrective action is needed. This can sometimes make the person who complained feel out of the loop if a sit down is not done with them to say something was done and the behavior should stop.
The big red flag here is that the behavior is continuing, they need to keep reporting it. And depending on the company policy, report it to another manager or his superior if it really is continuing. You should probably not get involved further directly, unless the employee brings up something else that sounds like harassment (or retaliation) to you in which case you should ask them to report it to their superior AND you should then report it to someone as well.
If you are going to press the issue of reviewing harassment policy, you can also bring up employee morale in addition to liability. A work environment where harassment is allowed to continue will see talented people leave, those who stay will be less motivated to work and in the end even more time will be spent by management and employees dealing with the issue.
I know that as a manager I had to deal with an issue with horseplay, possible bullying and inappropriate comments. We got a single complaint, was walked through with HR how to handle talking to people about the incident and investigate it, and in the end wrote the employee up on a corrective action plan that spelled out in no uncertain terms what was done wrong and what the consequences would be for further violating company policy (They did not feel the behavior was intentionally malicious or damaging to warrant dismissal or a transfer).
Got another complaint and had HR come down and interview half the workplace themselves and ended up writing up a couple more people and firing the original employee. After that the behavior stopped, people seemed happier and there were a few people who honestly did not realize it was such a big deal and expressed embarrassment that they had been doing something that was bothering other people and were glad they were told.
It probably can not always work out that well, but hiding these issues does not really help.