Employee Harassment - An Overview

Harassment of any kind in the workplace is an illegal act. Employee harassment is prohibited by the federal laws of the US and the respective state laws. Any person subjected to harassment prohibited by law can file a charge against the offender to defend his/her rights.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 states that no employee can be harassed by fellow employees or by the employer, based on his/her color, religion, sex, ethnicity, physical ability, or national origin. The Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) of 1967 protects employees, who are forty years old or more, from discrimination. According to this act, no employee, whose age is 40 years or more, shall be subjected to any kind of harassment based on his ability to perform faster. For disabled people there is the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. The act protects the rights of disabled personnel in a workplace.

Harassment of employees can be of different types. In quid pro quo harassment, employees are denied their rights to promotion or opportunities that others get with equal standards of work. This kind of harassment may be the result of one's denial to give sexual pleasure to seniors. Employees may also be discriminated by providing hostile working environment harassment based on the employeeÂ's color or race. A person is humiliated and harassed if he/she is passed derogatory remarks by colleagues or by superiors. The federal laws prohibit all such harassment of employees in workplaces.

The employer can do a lot to prevent harassment in his/her office. That's why in some acts, employers have been made liable for such harassment, if they don't maintain discipline and guidelines for employees who commit discrimination. It is the duty of an employer or persons in high and dignified posts such as presidents, managers, and supervisors to look into such matters and take action against those who engage themselves in such shameless acts of discrimination or harassment.

If the persons appointed to look after such matters of harassment, themselves perform misconduct with employees, the employer will be liable for such conduct. At the same time, if a person is harassed due to a hostile working environment, the employer is deemed the offender for not providing a good working environment to employees. Employers have obligations to protect the human resource from any sort of harassment.

If you are an employer and want to protect your organization from discrimination, you can adopt an anti-harassment policy in your office. The policy will clearly include the norms on harassment and the laws that prohibit such misconduct.

The employee harassment policy must contain in detail various elements. These are as follows.

The first element consists of clearcut instructions that prohibit harassment within the workplace or outside by any employee to the fellow employee. The second element consists of an explanation of the state or federal laws that hold harassment to be a crime or that it is illegal.

The third element is an internal and impartial complaint cell to handle an employee's complaints about any discrimination. There must be an assurance that the complaints by the employee will be confidential and only communicated to the accused in private. The fourth element consists of an explanation of remedies through legal conduct. The fifth and final element consists of how appropriate steps would be taken by an employer in case of harassment.

An employee who feels that he or she may be a victim of any kind of harassment in the workplace must know and read the laws of harassment, so that he/she can take the right action to prevent further humiliation. There are employee harassment cases on which the federal and other courts have given verdicts. These verdicts can encourage employees not to be timid and accept whatever harassment they may have to face in workplaces.