What to Do When Customers Harass Your Employees

You try hard to avoid sexual harassment in your workplace. You train people, take complaints seriously and investigate complaints. But there is one aspect of sexual harassment that, seemingly, you cannot control: harassment by customers, outsiders or third parties.

Yes, You are Liable for Customer Harassment

The law forbids sexual harassment in the workplace, but that isn’t limited to just in-office harassment, by fellow employees. Employers are also liable for harassment that may be caused by or brought on by outsiders, such as customers.

The law does recognize that unlike when harassment is happening between employees, when the harassment comes from customers, businesses can’t do anything about it, unless they know about it, because often this kind of harassment happens outside of earshot of management.

That does put the burden on reporting harassment, on harassed employees. But that means that employers must make it as easy as possible for employees to report this kind of harassment, and that includes publicizing to employees, who they make these kinds of reports to, and steps that the company will take to investigate or remedy this kind of harassment.

Have a Policy for Reporting

In most cases, employers get in trouble not for the harassment itself, which they had nothing to do with, but rather, employers get sued for the aftermath; that is, something related to how employee complaints are made or handled, or what action the employer takes after learning of the harassment.

That’s the first stop in protecting yourself from these kinds of claims: Have a policy for employees to follow, making it as easy as possible for sexual harassment reports to be made.

In some cases, the harassing customer may be a one time customer–for example, a random patron who shows up at your restaurant and who you will never see again. In other cases, it may be outsiders or customers and you know who they are, or you have some ongoing relationship with them. It may even be an outside contractor, like a cleaning or IT company that does work for your business on premises.

Doing the Investigation

Where possible, and while investigating, you will want to keep the allegedly harassing customer from having contact with the harassed employee (or really, any of your employees).

As a rule of thumb, try to be your harassed employee’s best friend, and cooperate. Help the employee call authorities, and if necessary file proper restraining orders against a harassing customer.

In more serious cases, remember that any evidence that you get or have–for example, surveillance tapes or witness statements–are potential evidence in any criminal case, so don’t erase or overwrite them. You may also need this evidence to support whatever decision you ultimately make–for example, to ban a customer from your property, or conversely, to find that there is no credible evidence to warrant taking any action at all.

Call our West Palm Beach commercial litigation attorneys at Pike & Lustig to help you with your employee legal issues.

Source:

hourly.io/post/customer-harassesing-an-employee