Sexual Harassment In The Workplace
by Takara Alexis

You have a responsibility as an employer to maintain a workplace that is free of sexual harassment. This makes good business sense but it also your legal obligation. You will have to pay a high price in terms of poor employee morale, lawsuits, and low productivity if you allow sexual harassment to flourish in the workplace.

Sexual harassment can be any sexual advance or conduct that isn't welcome on the job that can create an intimidating, hostile, or aggressive work environment. If there's conduct of a sexual nature that makes an employee uncomfortable it could have the potential to lead to sexual harassment.

It is obvious that sexual harassment can come in various forms. Here are some examples of sexual harassment: when a supervisor implies that an employee has to sleep with them to keep a job, when a sales clerk makes harsh remarks about a female customer to his coworkers, an office manager is made uncomfortable by co-workers that regularly tell sexually explicit jokes, a receptionist's coworkers belittle her and refer to her by sexist or demeaning terms, an employee sends emails to coworkers that have sexual jokes and language.

The harasser could be the victim's supervisor, manager, or even coworker. An employer might even be liable for harassment by a non-employee, such as a vendor or customer, depending on the situation. Sexual harassment is a gender-neutral offense, at least in theory: Men could sexually harass women, and women can sexually harass men. However, statistics let us see that the majority of sexual harassment claims and charges are made by women who say they were sexually harassed by men.

Even people of the same sex can also be sexually harassed by each other, as long as the harassment is of a heterosexual nature. For example, if a man has co-workers that constantly ambush him with sexually explicit pictures of women and sexually explicit jokes, and it makes him uncomfortable because he is married, this type of behavior can constitute sexual harassment.

Keep the lines of communication open with your managers and supervisors. There are plenty of steps that you can take to lower the risk of sexual harassment occurring in your workplace. Adopt a clear sexual harassment policy. In your employee handbook, you should have a policy solely devoted to sexual harassment. That policy should define sexual harassment as well as state in no uncertain terms that you will not tolerate sexual harassment. It should also state that you will discipline or fire any wrongdoers. Also you should set out a clear procedure for filing sexual harassment complaints.

Take all complaints seriously. If there is a complaint filed about sexual harassment, act immediately to investigate the complaint. If the complaint turns out to be true, you should respond should swiftly and effectively.