Posted by denised in Over at The Commercial Mediation and Arbitration Center website, there’s a post up titled Seven Secrets for Keeping your Company out of Court. The post was written in 2008, but, as evident by the number of sexual harassment claims in the news every week, it’s a lesson many companies still haven’t learned.
Even though I’m not on the side of helping company’s avoid going to court to answer for their own management failures, I do want them to make their workplaces, safe, harassment free environments for their employees. So here are a couple of the article’s suggestions along with a sprinkling of my own good old fashion common sense.
- Have a written sexual harassment policy and communicate it to all employees. That would be ALL employees. Executives and HR don’t get a pass because of their position in the organization. There should be one policy for all employees. Period.
- Implement and enforce your policy. This would seem like a no brainer, but you’d be surprised how many companies write policies, have every employee sign an acknowledgment and then proceed to ignore it. I’ve been in a conference room with a VP, a sales team and a HR Manager where the order of the day seemed to be to see who could be the most offensive. HR said and did nothing, decreasing the already shockingly low amount of respect we already had for her.
- Take complaints seriously and investigate every one. Brushing complaints off as mere misunderstandings, or ignoring them entirely, is a lawsuit waiting to happen. The worst thing companies can do is take harassment accusations lightly. Not only does that send the wrong message to staff, but it can end up costing you dearly in the long run.
You can read the entire list of suggestions for avoiding court here.
