Sexual Harrassment at work - LONG
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Anonymous
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Employment lawyer here.
You have an affirmative obligation to act on this information regardless of what the victim says or does on her own behalf. Now that your company management has this information, your company must take steps to ensure that there is an investigation of the alleged harasser's conduct and possible victimization of any and all other victims. You must tell this person in no uncertain terms that his conduct is unacceptable and it must stop. You must discipline him appropriately. You must act on the information you possess. Your company's liability begins NOW. |
Anonymous
+1. You must act. If this results in repurcussions for her career, too bad for her and your company sucks, but you need to be wearing your company hat and quick. In my company, you'd be dismissed before the harasser would. |
Anonymous
| By telling you (her supervisor), she put you in the position of being responsible for dealing with this issue. If you do nothing and this comes up again or someone else is harassed, you could be seen as to blame for ignoring the problem. |
Anonymous
If it's the policy then I could maybe see OP being dismissed along with the harasser but before? Really? |
Anonymous
OP's dithering about what to do puts her company at more risk of liability than the harasser's behavior. |
Anonymous
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Your failure to report this to HR will land you in deeeeepp doo-doo when this hits the fan.
Protect yourself, HR will not. You will get thrown under the bus when a lawsuit pops off and they say a manager knew about it and did not report it. |
Anonymous
Yup. I'm this PP and we'd fire both, but OP would be first, because we'd have to at least investigate the alleged harassment. OP's dicking around would be crystal clear from the get go. |
Anonymous
| Yep, you have to report it. Didn't you get any training on this? |
Anonymous
Seriously. Imagine the deposition where you admit to knowing about it in April, not acting on it, and then it comes out six months later that the guy is sexually harassing or even assaulting this woman and others. Your company will be negligent and will have to settle for a large sum. And you will almost certainly be fired. Not a good outcome for anyone. |
Anonymous
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Your company has a terrible lawyer, if they think that distinction between Manager and supervisor that you outlined above is a meaningful difference. Title VII law has its own definition of what a supervisor is, and it does not track the distinction you drew. (Managers are a different term within the law -- generally managers are folks that make policy -- although the terms "managers" and "supervisors" are often used interchangeably, that's not really correct. At any rate, the key point for sexual harassment law is whether a supervisor knows about it, not a "manager.").
Also, it doesn't really matter if the company is HQ-ed in America if the affected employees are based here in America. |
Anonymous
| OP, you need to call HR and (ideally) the general counsel or company lawyer, and your own supervisor, and tell them you need a meeting RIGHT NOW. As in ASAP without waiting. Stop dithering about what your role is. That's not for you to decide. |
Anonymous
+1 we would be required to tell HR, otherwise we would be viewed as complicit. |
Anonymous
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1. You could ask HR to give a mandatory EEOC compliance training refresher to all employees.
2. You should have informed this employee before she told you, that you would be obligated to report it. 3. Let the employee know you will be reporting it to HR yourself, and invite her to attend the HR meeting with you. Let her report it to HR herself. 4. Ask HR what their official policy is in regard to you obligated to either report the harassment, or keep the employee's confidence. |
Anonymous
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This could also be a case of someone else in the office witnessing the harassment and reporting "favoritism." It could appear that the employee was okay with the harassment, since she doesn't officially report to the man, and she did volunteerily add him to her What's APP. How many younger women want the attention of the older men in the office, to get a promotion or better job opportunity? Maybe she is sneaky and is playing you both for a fool.
Do you think these young women in Washington, D.C. are really so young and naive? Puhleeese! |
Anonymous
OP here. Thanks. I would not say I was dithering. I was hoping to hear from DCUM but I was also making calls on this end as well. As noted I made an appointment our ombudsman the same day, unfortunately we were told they would not see us until 5/4. Yesterday I met with a colleague in HR who was able to get us an appointment that afternoon. I will report it to the office of ethics today but I may not be required to share the names. I wanted to share the names upfront but was told to listen to what the ethics office has to say before I mention names. Also they tell me that if the woman chooses not to participate it will likely not result in an investigation. As mentioned this is not an American company so our policies are different than what you would find in many American companies. |