Watch Out for Secondary Sexual Harassment

Can there be sexual harassment at your business or workplace, if the victim of the harassment, wasn’t even aware that he or she was being harassed–or else, she found out about it after it happened, and there was never any direct contact with the employee? The answer is yes, and it’s called secondhand sexual harassment.

How it Happens

The most common scenario for secondhand sexual harassment is when an employee finds out that others at work have been saying things about the employee which, had they been told directly to the employee, would undoubtedly have constituted sexual harassment.

Imagine, for example, an employee who hears or finds out that employees had exchanged pictures of the employee without her having been aware. Or, imagine the employee finds out that a group of employees have been saying things about her behind her back, which are sexually harassing.

While you, as an employer, may say that there cannot be harassment because the employee didn’t know about it or wasn’t told about it firsthand, these kinds of situations can and do result in sexual harassment claims.

Employees (or worse, upper management or supervisors) who did the harassing may also believe that they didn’t do anything wrong–they may say that they purposefully hid the behavior or actions or comments in an effort to shield the victim employees from having to hear them.

Did You Know?

Worse, as the employer, you may not have even known that it was going on–if the victim didn’t know, he or she couldn’t have reported it, and thus, you may have had no opportunity to identify the behavior and stop it. Obviously, if any supervisor or upper management did know about it or was party to the behaviors, the opportunity to say that you did not know isn’t there.

Hostile Work Environment

This kind of sexual harassment can have even more pervasive consequences because even employees totally unrelated to the comments or harassing behavior may have a claim for hostile work environment sexual harassment.

Imagine Employee 1 and Employee 2 talking about the body parts of Employee 3, who knows nothing about what is going on or what is being said about him or her.

If Employee 4 hears the comments being made by Employees 1 and 2, Employee 4 may have a claim for hostile work environment sexual harassment, as may any other employee who overheard or was subjected to the harassing and demeaning behavior.

Train Your Employees

To avoid legal problems, make sure that you not only have a comprehensive sexual harassment policy, but that your policy specifically trains all employees and management, to identify and report any harassing behavior–even if it isn’t about him or her, and even if the victim is not being exposed to the behavior directly.

Questions about sexual harassment at your workplace? Call our West Palm Beach business litigation attorneys at Pike & Lustig to help you.

Source:

learningbox.online/en/column/blog-second-harassment-3-measures/