Recent public events have caused a flurry of conversation around sexual and other forms of harassment plaguing the workplace.\u00a0 My firm performs internal investigations and we have seen countless cases both true and false.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been approached by various sources looking for professional opinion.<\/p>\n
News of multiple claims of sexual harassment against the current New York State Governor are in the forefront.\u00a0 Discussions and opinions have been hot and heavy, no pun intended.\u00a0 \u00a0Some are quick to condemn the accused.\u00a0 Many automatically believe the alleged victims while other believe the allegations are totally false.\u00a0 Many times, victims are quickly dismissed or criticized.<\/p>\n
These various reactions are also common in workplace claims. \u00a0The history of handling claims of sexual and all forms of harassment in our workplaces are still shamefully flawed.\u00a0 History will confirm how victims were ignored, paid off or fired.\u00a0 Reporting and processes may be in place yet they are rarely followed.<\/p>\n
The bad news is it seems no amount of training or policy impacts bad characters from behaving badly.\u00a0 Like the case involving a female director who found out her fellow male directors were rating her butt on their cell phones when she gave presentations.\u00a0 She complained to the President of the company, only to be told \u201cthey\u2019re kinda bad boys and I think it\u2019s funny.\u201d\u00a0 Wrong answer!<\/p>\n
An even more recent case involved a young Asian employee who was being called a slur that means \u201ctinker bell\u201d by the owner and COO.\u00a0 They claimed they had no idea the slang word was derogatory. Do you buy that?<\/p>\n
Or the case at a local construction company where the foreman suggested for the company Halloween party it would be a fun for him to where a white hood while a black laborer walk behind him with a noose around his neck.\u00a0 That case went to the Equal Opportunity Commission.<\/p>\n
The good news is that society as a whole is not supporting this behavior.\u00a0 It was a fellow male director who told the female director about the incident and told her he can\u2019t condone the behavior any longer.\u00a0 Having a witness validate a case is very powerful in support of the truth. \u00a0In training sessions, we always emphasize the fact that silence is complicit.\u00a0 Silence equals going along with harassment and discrimination.<\/p>\n
In my professional opinion, every case requires a fair, fact-finding, and no presumption of guilt investigation.\u00a0 Due process is needed every time even when initial facts look damning and no matter if the case is large or small. We need to maintain the validity of a fair process so truth be told.\u00a0 We have seen many young employees confuse discipline\/performance with harassment.\u00a0 No one benefits from an employee throwing out the race or gender card when it\u2019s actually a performance issue.<\/p>\n
The process includes what the organization does in the meantime.\u00a0 One manager suggested that all female interns should be protected by making sure they never visit the Governor alone.\u00a0 Wrong!\u00a0 With this suggestion, we move from presumed harassment to discrimination.\u00a0 Discrimination is all about treating a person or group differently based on their protected class. \u00a0This type of \u201cprotection\u201d cuts off the female\u2019s ability to acquire needed knowledge and learn how to work with supervisors.\u00a0 It is wrong to move or alter the victim\u2019s work status in any way.\u00a0 And who says it\u2019s only female interns being harassed.\u00a0 We had a young male intern being sexually harassed by his female boss.<\/p>\n
What we need is to beef up employees\u2019 ability to report plus give them the skills to respond to difficult situations.\u00a0 We need to improve the responses to claims\u00a0equally and fairly<\/u>.\u00a0 Strengthen the mechanisms in place that seek out the truth.\u00a0 Counsel and demonstrate to the most senior people that they are never exempt from behaving badly.\u00a0 Put in mechanisms where HR is as an independent reporter that can\u2019t be shut down when bringing forth a complaint.\u00a0 Make sure HR is really HR and not Finance or someone ill equipped to handle claims.<\/p>\n
Due process should answer important questions regarding even the most high-profile cases.\u00a0 What did the people around the Governor do with a claim?\u00a0 If the answer is a learned behavior of being afraid to come forward, isn\u2019t that an indication the problem is systemic? \u00a0With society as a whole moving in the right direction, we need to examine systems in place that may contradict moving the needle towards a workplace free of harassment and discrimination.\u00a0 Is anyone tackling how the system was complicit?\u00a0 Isn\u2019t that the real problem?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Recent public events have caused a flurry of conversation around sexual and other forms of harassment plaguing the workplace.\u00a0 My firm performs internal investigations and we have seen countless cases both true and false.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been approached by various sources looking for professional opinion. News of multiple claims of sexual harassment against the current New […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":10844,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[266],"tags":[],"post_folder":[268],"class_list":["post-11158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-consulting-services"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gtm.com\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gtm.com\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gtm.com\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtm.com\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtm.com\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11158"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gtm.com\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11158\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11159,"href":"https:\/\/gtm.com\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11158\/revisions\/11159"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtm.com\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gtm.com\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtm.com\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtm.com\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11158"},{"taxonomy":"post_folder","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtm.com\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_folder?post=11158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}