Sexual Harassment and Vicarious Liability

HR Interview

The author of this report has been asked to conduct an interview with a human resources professional. As part of this interview, there will be a presentation of the scenario with Tim and his actions towards his coworkers. In this report will be a summary of what was learned from the interview, the recommendations that the interviewee made regarding the situation, how the information learned from the interview could and should be applied given the legal implications and whether the interviewer (the author of this report) now feels prepared to address Tom's behavior. There will also be a listing of the interview question that were used for this process and a reflection on how everything when down. While Tom may or may not mean to incendiary in his comments, he needs to be stopped and the company itself could be held liable if they do not do so quickly.

Analysis

The person interviewed for this report has been in the payroll and human resources realm for about a decade and the answers given for the scenario with Tom were very emphatic and specific. As for Tom's comments of a sexual nature, those comments are never acceptable and this goes double if any employees, male or female, have expressed discontent or lack of comfort with those statements being made. The HR professional says the same thing goes for comments about race, gender stereotypes and LGBT-related comments. Truly, Tom has no place saying those things around the workplace even if he thinks they are innocuous. However, what the interviewee had to say about the company and their potential exposure was even worse. Since the company has been put on notice about what Tom is doing, they have a duty to stop him from doing so right away, by whatever means necessary. This means that they need to stop him or even fire him before he does it any more. The reason is that is the company knows that it is going on and they do not do enough to stop it, they can be held legally liable on the basis of vicarious liability due to not reining in the employee and the behavior. Beyond that, a company really needs to have a stated and specific policy about sexual harassment and it needs to be followed all of the time and it must be followed the same way every time.

The above summarizes what was learned from the interview and the recommendations that were made. The author can apply and absorb these quite easily by making a few observations. Of course, Tom should not be making jokes or a crude or otherwise sexual nature even if the company is not telling him to stop. Even if the people he is saying the jokes to are not uncomfortable listening to them (and they are), it is not proper to be saying and doing those things in the first place. Second, it also makes complete sense that the company has a burden to stop those things from happening if Tom will not stop himself. Sure, the company should not be on the hook if they are unaware due to no one reporting it. However, as soon as company management is aware of the bad and crude jokes, they need to act swiftly and fully so that the behavior stops immediately. If they do not, they are absolutely complicit in what Tom is doing and this can make for a hostile work environment for the women that are offended. While intent does matter much to most of the time, there are certain realms of speech and behavior that are not permissible (or at least are not advised) and thus they need to be stopped. The proverbial "buck" does stop with the employer and they do have a right to regulate or outright stop such behavior. If Tom keeps his job and does not like those standards, he is free to leave. However, he will (and should) find similar or same standards elsewhere as sexual harassment is typically taken very seriously at many firms due to the legal and ethical implications of letting it run amok to the detriment of the people that are offended or impugned by the behavior.