News about harassment is everywhere these days. Why? Because harassment is everywhere. Although the problem has been recognized for decades, it seems like we’re living in a historic time for harassment awareness: a watershed moment in which millions of people are realizing how pervasive the problem is. From Silicon Valley boardrooms to Hollywood studios to Ford manufacturing plants, victims’ recent stories have made it clear that harassment can happen in every kind of workplace.
Sometimes, harassment is overt: think unwanted touching, physical intimidation, or verbal threats. Other times, it assumes subtler, but no less destructive forms: inappropriate questions during interviews, cyberstalking, exclusion, or policies and “unwritten” rules that allow those in power to dodge accountability and ignore alleged harassers’ behavior.
Whatever it looks like, wherever it occurs, harassment takes a massive toll—not only on those who experience it, but the organizations for which they work. In 2016, more than 6,700 charges of sexual harassment were filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. That year, the EEOC obtained more than $40.7 million dollars in monetary benefits on behalf of sexually harassed employees. Keep in mind that this statistic doesn’t include the millions of dollars obtained by harassed employees through litigation. And, for the victim, there are also less visible, indirect costs incurred by harassment, including reputational harm, missed opportunities, mental health issues, and physical health problems.
If you’ve been following the news or paying attention to your social media feeds, you probably know much of this already. But sexual harassment, the kind the #TimesUp and #MeToo campaigns seek to address, is only one type of harassment. Workplace harassment based on race, disability, age, religion, national origin, gender identity, or sexual orientation can occur just as frequently, and in the eyes of the law, it’s just as serious. Don’t forget: harassment is a form of discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.
These cases can carry massive costs for employers—and monetary benefits secured by the EEOC are increasing, year after year. Take a look at EEOC trends related to the total number of harassment charges and plaintiffs’ awards have since 2010.
With these staggering statistics in mind, I’d like to take this opportunity to (re)introduce you to the various kinds of harassment, so you’ll know what to look out for in your workplace. The following definitions and statistics come from the EEOC and the Select Task Force on the Study of Harassment in the Workplace June 2017 Report, the same report quoted above.
Sex-Based Harassment
[or]
color,” and that the “[t]he law’s prohibitions include harassment or any other employment action based on any of the following:
- Affiliation: Harassing or otherwise discriminating because an individual is affiliated with a particular religious or ethnic group.
- Physical or cultural traits and clothing: Harassing or otherwise discriminating because of physical, cultural, or linguistic characteristics, such as accent or dress associated with a particular religion, ethnicity, or country of origin.
- Perception: Harassing or otherwise discriminating because of the perception or belief that a person is a member of a particular racial, national origin, or religious group whether or not that perception is correct.
- Association: Harassing or otherwise discriminating because of an individual’s association with a person or organization of a particular religion or ethnicity.”
What it looks like: Verbal abuse, including the use of racial slurs and derogatory language; mockery of an individual’s accent or spoken language; pressure to “fit in” through cultural assimilation (e.g. goading a Muslim employee into eating pork); and so on.
How often it occurs: While the EEOC states that “race-based and ethnicity-based harassment are significantly understudied,” the Commission suggests that between 40% and 70% of survey respondents have experienced it. A further “69% of respondents reported witnessing at least one ethnically-harassing behavior in the last two years at work and 36% of respondents who reported that they had not experienced direct harassment indicated that they had knowledge about the harassment of other co-workers.” On the topic of religion-motivated harassment, however, the EEOC claims that it was “not able to identify empirical data based on probability or convenience samples on the prevalence of such harassment.”
It’s Up to All of Us to Stop Harassment
Creating a safe and productive workplace that’s free from harassment requires more than just sending your employees through training and displaying the harassment policy in the breakroom. A solid harassment prevention initiative educates, reinforces, and demonstrates your company’s commitment to maintaining a safe and productive workplace.
KPA’s Harassment Prevention Solution, developed with the EEOC’s best practices, does just that. Our harassment suite includes…
- program oversight and communication tools
- policies
- training
- incident reporting and management
- audit and reporting tools
and - investigation support, guides, and consultation