While it seems inconceivable that organizations still employ people who engage in sexual harassment, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission settled lawsuits that expose the grim reality that many businesses haven’t gotten the memo that sexual harassment must be prevented and not tolerated in the workplace. Too many companies and industries wrongly believe they are exempt from the rules.

Some believe they are too small to establish policies. Others will say, “you don’t understand the culture of this industry,” causing the misconduct to be generally accepted by management. Still, others simply fail to make the basic effort to train managers or investigate employee complaints or take them seriously.

For instance, two cases settled by the EEOC in December highlight the issues. In one case, a now-closed Harley-Davidson dealership in Illinois agreed to pay a former employee nearly $200,000 rather than face trial for sexual harassment and retaliatory termination.

According to the EEOC, managers and co-workers subjected a female employee to “constant sex harassment” and retaliated against her after she filed a complaint. The harassment included “repeated propositions for sex, constant commentary on her body, including requests to wear more revealing work apparel, and sharing numerous, unwanted and graphic sexual images and videos,” the EEOC said.

The employee claimed that after she complained, the store moved her work hours to conflict with her child care schedule, and then terminated her for what she said were fabricated reasons.

The EEOC also announced last month a $175,000 settlement with Nature’s Medicines, a retail distributor of medical cannabis products, and AMMA Investment Group LLC, which performed business operations for Nature’s Medicines.

According to the EEOC, patient service providers who stocked shelves and provided customer service were subjected to a sexually hostile work environment by the general manager of Nature’s Medicines facility in Maryland.

The harassment included “unwelcome touching, highly offensive sexual comments to and about staff and customers and showing an employee a nude picture on his phone,” the EEOC alleged.

The patient service providers claimed that the harassment continued after they complained.

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To avoid these types of claims, as we begin 2021, every organization should take these five steps:

• Establish and communicate a robust anti-harassment policy covering not just sexual harassment but all protected characteristics. The policy explains the prohibited behavior, provides for a variety of complaint avenues, and guarantees no retaliation for coming forward.
• Provide regular and frequent training on prohibited conduct in the workplace, including harassment, discrimination, bullying and relationships between managers and subordinates. Managers also should be trained on the employer’s obligations to provide reasonable accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act for religion.

One-and-done training is not good enough. The instruction should be more than compliance training and should focus on a culture of respect and civility.

• Establish a mechanism for fair, thorough, and objective investigations for all complaints. One of the most frequent missteps I see in harassment cases involves inadequate investigations or failure to conduct one altogether.

Workplace investigations are complicated and require a skilled investigator to get to the truth. Those conducting investigations need to be fully trained and cannot be in a position to be manipulated or influenced to render a conclusion in favor of one party or the other.

Company executives and managers need enough confidence in the investigation to follow the recommendations. Third-party external investigations are admittedly an expensive alternative to internal ones, but much cheaper than lawsuits and jury trials.

• Develop a full understanding and commitment to not retaliate against those who complain. Too often, employees who file a complaint end up worse off than if they said nothing. This is unacceptable.

An organization with a poor performing employee should not wait until that person files a harassment complaint to begin performance management.

• Civility and respect need to be embedded in the culture. Organizations should conduct regular workplace audits of the culture to determine morale, job satisfaction, impressions of leadership and whether any employee has experienced harassment, discrimination or bullying or if the employees are aware of this happening.

The most reliable results come from conducting confidential interviews with employees.

Organizations should focus not only on the concern of lawsuits, but on the impact that these behaviors have on those targeted, and the organizational culture as a whole.