Company burned when manager didn’t react to complaint
June 18, 2008 by Sam NarisiPosted in: Harassment, In this week's e-newsletter, Latest News & Views
When it comes to harassment complaints, you know it’s important to take quick, effective action. But some managers have to learn that the hard way — at your company’s expense. Here’s an example:
An employee told one of her co-workers she was being sexually harassed. The victim didn’t report anything, but the co-worker told a manager about her claims.
The manager never took any action, and told the co-worker to talk to the company vice president (which she never did).
Two years later, the victim finally filed a formal complaint with HR. The company investigated and fired the alleged harassers.
But she sued the company, claiming the manager had a responsibility to do something after her co-worker mentioned the harassment. The court agreed and the company lost the case.
Any notice should trigger action
Most companies have an established procedure for employees to bring complaints of harassment. But that doesn’t mean managers can ignore complaints if they come about in a different way.
Managers should be trained and reminded that they have a responsibility to tell HR whenever they have a reason to believe harassment might be occurring.
Cite: Bombaci v. Journal Community Pub. Group, Inc.
Tags: co-worker, harassment complaint, informal complaint, vice president
June 19th, 2008 at 7:33 pm
In my 10 plus years as an employment law mediator, I have found that companies typically get themselves in legal hot water by not doing these things:
(1) Proper evaluation of who they promote to lower management or supervisory positions. These involve things such as psychological profiles, interpersonal skills testing, etc. I have found this to be particularly true when promotion occurs from within the organization. The “good ole buddy” system of a manager getting promoted and then with the help of HR gets a subordinate promoted to his/her former position. I have not done a statistical breakdown of percentages but far more often than not the individual promoted is not qualified to function in a management capacity.
(2) Specific training that involves all aspects of the employment experience. I have seen in my own employment experience and mediated cases where the manager was either ignorant, biased or incapable of discerning what their management decisions were setting in motion. Until it was too late of course!
The legal definition of sexual harassment by the EEOC is:
“Unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature constitute sexual harassment…
…when this conduct explicitly or implicitly affects an individual’s employment, unreasonably interferes with an individual’s work performance, or creates an intimidating, hostile, or offensive work environment”.
In this situation why did the manager feel comfortable “blowing off” what the co-worker reported?
The bottom line is the quality or lack thereof in the top management/ownership of the organization and its HR.
I have witnessed over the years many HR departments in collusion with supervisors and managers progressively work the company into a minefield of litigation.
September 24th, 2008 at 5:00 pm
I am wondering if the company had an employee manual. If so, did the manual state who complaints of this nature should be directed to ? In some companies, an employee would not go to a direct manager, but someone higher up in the company, because sometimes supervisors are the ones doing the harassing. If the manual had specific guidelines as to who to direct the complaint to, and the employee did not follow through, the company may have won this case. I am not saying the woman did not have a valid complaint, only saying a policy in the employee manual might have changed the outcome.
October 8th, 2008 at 9:34 am
Yancey is correct. HR allows people to move up to positions that if they were posting the position to the people the qualifications would need to be met. I recently had saw where a person worked in the project management department and none of the PMs had any respect for her as an employee or as a person. HR allowed this person to transefer into the security department to become the manager of security compliance even though them had no security experience, only a high school education, and endless internal compliants against them. It is a nightmare waiting to happen. This employee has run many people out of the company. HR is great in setting the company up for legal action.