We live in a world in which sexual harassment is something that happens daily, especially in workplaces. You probably know that Harvey Weinstein was the first person who was found guilty due to sex crimes.
That brought to attention an awareness about sexual harassment. Even though the Civil Rights Act of 1964 states that it is illegal to discriminate against anyone based on sex, only in 1980 Supreme Court has included sexual harassment in the workplace.
Based on EEOC or US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (check here to visit their official website), sexual harassment can happen in numerous ways, including:
- The harasser can be an agent of an employer, a victim’s supervisor, or a supervisor in another area. He/she can be a non-employee or coworker, including a customer or vendor.
- Both harasser and victim can be either men or women, and the harassment can happen from both genders, not just the opposite one.
- The victim can be indirectly affected by offense conduct, which means that it does not have to be a harassed person.
- Sexual harassment can happen without discharge of the victim or economic injury.
- The conduct is the unwelcome moment that can affect a victim.
As you can see from everything we have mentioned above, Federal Law applies to companies that have more than fifteen employees. On the other hand, small businesses are subjected to lawsuits in case something happens in the workplace.
Since sexual harassment can mean joke about sexual orientation, acts, unwanted physical contact, or demanding sexual favors, some states require businesses to implement sexual harassment training to both high-brass and employees.
Things HR Should Know About Sexual Harassment Training
1. Create Employee Handbook
The best way to prevent potential issues, protect your employees and the financial health of your organization. You need to create a proper guideline that will help everyone with this problem.
Therefore, you should create an employee handbook and update it according to the latest developments and regulations. It is vital to explicitly add in a manual that every employee should understand the agreement rules and try to avoid them based on a deal.
It is an agreement everyone should sign as they start with employment, which is a way to protect your business and raise awareness of potential problems.
In case of a lawsuit, your employee handbook will become the primary protection to your business, which means that defense lawyers will try to find holes within the information you presented at the very start.
You should know that sexual harassment training in NewYork is an essential way of protecting your business from potential issues and court problems.
As soon as they identify a particular loophole, they will take advantage of eating, which will affect your financial status. Therefore, you should continually update a handbook and state everything that constitutes sexual harassment within a workplace.
Besides, you should add unacceptable behaviors and a step-by-step guide to help an employee report a behavior. The content should feature every single aspect of the process, which depends on the industry niche you work in.
However, it is better to implement examples of destructive behaviors, which will help you meet requirements and codes.
2. Present a Proof
Some states require or you to prove that every employee has undergone sexual harassment training. The best way to achieve this goal is to do it as soon as possible, doan interactive activity that will include your employees answering questions.
It would be best to create a scenario that will explain things they should avoid preventing potential scenarios. Afterward, you should create a list of every single person who completed training.
In case you wish to avoid using online modules, we recommend you protect each record.
Most states will recommend you keep and maintain proper records that will feature trainers, attendees, date, and type of training, signs of staff in attendance sheets, copies of recorded materials, and written materials.
Besides, you should have recorded materials of webinars, videos, copies of certificates, questions, and other steps to help you out with the process.
Even though no state will require you to turn in these records to a government agency, most of them will require you to keep them on file for a particular period. Therefore, New York requires keeping a record for three years, but we recommend you keep it for at least five.
That way, you can prevent potential legal issues in the future.
As soon as you visit this guide: https://www.forbes.com/sites/hbsworkingknowledge/2018/04/11/sexual-harassment-what-employers-should-do-about-metoo/ you will learn the things employers should know about sexual harassment.
3. Create Relevant Budget
Everything depends on the size of your business, but you should know that adding a module to your training can be expensive but essential. The main idea is that you will have to create content, which is time-consuming for your staff.
Still, you should check out with your legal team to determine whether every single aspect follows requirements so that you can prevent potential issues if a single case goes to court.