Sexual harassment in the workplace and the law

As your company’s director of human relations, you have to deal with Susan’s complaint about her supervisor. Soon after she was hired, Susan received text messages from her supervisor that said “You are the prettiest girl in the office” and “3 Dates=1 Raise.” The text messages made Susan uncomfortable, and she did not respond to them hoping that her supervisor would “just take the hint” and leave her alone. However, today this supervisor hugged Susan, patted her rear end, and said: “The way you look in that outfit, it’s clear that you’re my best hire yet.” Susan immediately pushed him away and has now reported the incident to you.

At what point do comments rise to the level of sexual harassment?

When does a hostile work environment exist?

How much should the law tolerate before holding the employer responsible for the actions of employees that are sexually harassing other employees?

Be sure to draft your answers in paragraph form, discussing each question thoroughly. You will also need to reply substantively to a classmates’ posting. Remember that the questions may be asking you for your opinion, and not necessarily a specific answer from the text. Use your new knowledge to work it out!

ANSWER

Sexual Harassment in the Workplace

At what point do comments rise to the level of sexual harassment?

Comments are considered sexual harassment when a person sends text messages commenting on another individual’s unwelcome physical features. Unwelcome means that an individual agrees to particular conduct even though it’s objectionable or offensive. Sexual harassment is considered a request for sexual favours, undesirable sexual progresses and other physical and verbal behavior of sexual nature (Siuta and Bergman, 2019). When comments extend to sexual favours, requests for a date, sexual-oriented comments, or a joke that creates an offensive, intimidating and hostile working environment, they extend to the level of sexual harassment.

When does a hostile work environment exist?

A work environment becomes hostile when an endured behaviour becomes pervasive, severe or enough to build a situation that would seem abusive, intimidating or hostile to reasonable people. A hostile work environment exists when workplace behaviour creates an uncomfortable or challenging environment for another person to work in due to discrimination (Gupta and Garg, 2020). Relatively, a hostile work environment exists when the employees feel that they are intimidated and harassed by their colleagues or their employers. Ideally, the victim feels that they have been oppressed or humiliated by the working conditions that tend to be contentious.

Some of the conducts may include physical threats and assaults, use of sexual language, sexually suggesting pictures or objects, offensive jokes, insults, mockery, intimidation and ridicule. A hostile work environment can also be developed through unwelcome sexual behaviour or behaviours pointed to an employee due to their sex, thus intimidating, hostile and offensive, which adversely affects the employee satisfaction and ability to perform their daily tasks. For instance, pervasive sexual jokes or comments continue even though the victim has indicated that the behaviours are unwelcome.

How much should the law tolerate before holding the employer responsible for employees’ actions that are sexually harassing other employees?

Employers are in the best position to prevent harassment, offer avenues of redress, educate employees, and hold harassing individuals accountable. Before holding an employer responsible for the actions of the workforce that are sexually harassing, the law should consider whether the employer has put in place a code of conduct on sexual harassment within the workplace. The law should consider whether the employer has put channels and guidelines that enable reporting and prevention of sexual harassment in the workplace.

References

Gupta, D., & Garg, J. (2020). Sexual Harassment at Workplace. International Journal of Legal Science and Innovation.

Siuta, R. L., & Bergman, M. E. (2019). Sexual harassment in the workplace. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Business and Management.