Your Business’ Harassment Policy Should Include These Things

Sure, your business has a sexual harassment policy—or at least, it should. But does it include everything that needs to be included in such a policy?

Completeness Matters

Many businesses slap together bare bones harassment or discrimination policies, and figure they are just fine. But they never give thought to the things that should be in that policy. Some businesses may even get policies and procedures online or through prewritten forms.

If your sexual harassment policy is not complete, detailed and comprehensive, you could have a problem. Making it easy for employees to tell you about harassment or a hostile work environment is your way of recognizing something is happening, and stopping it from happening before it blossoms into a full blown lawsuit.

Here are some things that are sometimes left out of less detailed sexual harassment reporting policies and which you should include in yours:

How to Report and to Whom – Simply saying “tell us about harassment” is not sufficient. Specific employees, or positions of employees, should be identified in your harassment policies.

Additionally, you should have a procedure as to how reports are made. Are they verbal only? Is there a specific email address you will set up, where complaints of harassment are made? Is there a specific form to be filled out?

There is no right or wrong, but as a general rule, you should err on making reporting as easy as possible to encourage employees to tell you when they feel harassment is happening in the workplace.

Anonymity – On one hand, anonymity encourages employees to come forward with sexual harassment complaints. On the other hand it may be very difficult to maintain anonymity. The process of your investigation may necessarily require disclosure of who is making the harassment complaint.

Whatever you choose, you should try to maintain anonymity as much as possible, and never disclose any medical information about an aggrieved employee. Make sure that your harassment policy is open and honest, about the efforts to maintain anonymity, but about the reality that it cannot always be guaranteed.

Retaliation – Although it’s illegal to retaliate against an employee who complains of harassment, it should be stated in your harassment policy anyway: your company will never retaliate against an employee who complains of discrimination or harassment.

Investigation Processes – while you do not have to give extreme details about how you will investigate sexual harassment complaints (at least, not in publicly disseminated policies), you should inform employees who have complaints, of what steps you will take to handle and investigate the validity of those complaints.

This can be a tough line to navigate—on the one hand, you may want to have uniform, strict investigation policies, while on the other hand, every complaint and employee is different, which means that you may not be able to investigate every complaint the exact same way.

Do you have a sexual harassment or discrimination policy at your company? If not, let us help you draft one that works for you. Contact our West Palm Beach business litigation attorneys at Pike & Lustig today for more information.

Source:

eeoc.gov/employers/small-business/harassment-policy-tips