Anti-Harassment Policy

Employers retain responsibility for preparing appropriate policies, monitoring their effectiveness, updating them as required, ensuring all employees are aware of the policy.

Harassment, whether sexual, racial, based on a personal characteristic, or through abuse of authority, is more prevalent in our workplaces than many of us would like to think. Does it matter? Yes. Not only is harassment against the law, but as we will see in the following pages, it has a negative impact on employees, and costs employers money and productivity. An effective anti-harassment policy, in which education and training play key roles, is one of the most important steps to a harassment-free work environment.

But writing an anti-harassment policy can be a daunting task.

No one policy can be applied to every workplace. Even within the same industry, and perhaps within the same organization, different workplaces will have different needs.

Employees may be afraid to complain

Often, employers, managers, and employees believe that harassment is not a problem in their particular workplace. They may especially believe this if there are no complaints. However, a complaint-free workplace is not a guarantee of a problem-free workplace. Employees may be afraid to speak up. They and their work may be suffering in all kinds of ways without employers, managers, or colleagues being aware of it. People who are being harassed may fear embarrassment, retaliation, job loss, or loss of acceptance by colleagues if they complain. They may also fear not being believed, especially where differences in level of authority, age, sex, race, religion and the like exist.

Harassment costs money

Harassment has a direct negative impact on employees and on a company's profitability. Employees who are being harassed can suffer from headaches, ulcers, tension, depression, insomnia, and other illnesses that either keep them away from work or reduce their well-being and productivity. An employee who is being harassed may resign, which penalizes that individual financially, and means that a new employee must be trained. If harassment is an ongoing problem, it may affect morale and lead to a decrease in productivity and high staff turnover.

Case Study: the costs of harassment A woman in a trade was paid more than $100,000 by her employer as compensation for harassment and discrimination at work. She constantly faced sexist remarks, such as "this is a man's job" and "women should be home doing dishes and washing," as well as questions about her bathroom habits. As a result of the ensuing stress, she was forced to take extensive sick leave. Her sick leave resulted in a poor performance appraisal, and she was eventually fired. Other female employees had also been subjected to sexist comments, and said their supervisors and male peers were rude or uncooperative. Some of them said their male colleagues had lied to them about job-related information. The company had no anti-harassment policy and no staff trained to deal with harassment. As a result of an investigation and the settlement of the complaint, the company agreed to financial compensation for the complainant. It also agreed to develop an anti-harassment policy.

Cheap Templates will not allow you to cover everything YOU want.

Cheap templates or free templates offer what some people think is good for you, only our policy procedure allows you to create what YOU want as a policy.

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