Investigating Sexual Harassment Charges
1/15/2004
Sexual harassment is a serious matter in today’s work environment. Knowing how to intervene with the parties involved minimizes negative reactions and provides an effective way to bring the incident to a positive conclusion.
When approaching sexual harassment charges:
- Review your organization’s policy related to sexual harassment and contact your human resource department or legal counsel for further support and guidance before taking any action.
- When someone complains of sexual harassment, take the complaint seriously. Arrange an impartial committee review or conduct an unbiased hearing along with your own manager or human resource representative.
- Allow the complaining person to voice his or her concerns fully. Before acting on the allegations, put everything in perspective by hearing both sides of the story. Collect the facts confidentially by meeting with each individual in private.
- Always remain calm and professional. Avoid overreacting or personalizing the situation. Don’t render a hasty or biased judgment.
- Allow the person who has been charged to retain his or her dignity by separating the individual from the behavior. Be positive about the individual even though the meeting is to address the troublesome behavior.
- Recommend specific steps to prevent recurrence of the sexual harassment. Indicate a strong belief that the individual will avoid the troublesome behavior in the future and benefit from the intervention process.
- Document all investigative processes and conversations pertaining to the situation. Let both the complainer and the person charged know your decision.
- Don’t try to solve the problem by transferring the person making the complaint or the one charged with the harassment to a different department, unless determined to be warranted based on findings of an objective professional investigation.
- Follow up any action you take by making sure that the harassment has stopped. Assure that there are no reprisals and that both parties are getting along and treating each other in a fair-minded and professional manner.
