Sexual harassment is a form of discrimination. It’s one thing to understand that managers and other employees in your business must not discriminate and to establish good business practices that prohibit discrimination. It’s a whole different challenge to train employees and see that they apply their training to situations.
Training Today addresses the employee training issue and provides specific guidelines for training employees about sexual harassment, such as:
Define sexual harassment
Review the laws that prohibit sexual harassment in the workplace
Give examples of sexual harassment
Give examples of actions that aren’t sexual harassment
Cover the specific types of sexual harassment
Explain the tangible employment action (a significant change in employment status through hiring, firing, promotion, demotion, undesirable reassignment, significant benefit changes, compensation decision and work assignment— EEOC)
Explain hostile work environment (work environment that violates an individual’s dignity or creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for that individual – EEOC )
- Cover who can commit sexual harassment
- Explain who can experience sexual harassment
- Explain conditions under which sexual harassment can occur
- If harassment occurs, inform employees what person handles the complaints
- Explain when employers are liable
- Outline objectives of a workplace sexual harassment policy
- Explain everyone’s role in achieving the policy objectives
- Explain employee’s responsibilities
- Train employees to use reasonable care in making a good faith effort to avoid sexual harassment and to use internal complaint procedures
- Outline manager’s and employer’s responsibilities to address harassment
Explain steps taken to ensure a thorough invetigation of a sexual harassment complaint
Explain what to do when an employee doesn’t cooperate with the investigation
Stephen Hans & Associates helps business owners with sexual harassment and other types of discrimination training. We can advise you about staff training and assist you when issues arise. Taking preventative actions can help you avoid costly lawsuits.