Should Your Business Provide Anti-harassment Training?
While work related sexual harassment is certainly not a recent problem
, legal liability for it has only recently gained legislative attention. The first sexual harassment case under Title VII was decided in 1976. In 1991, Title VII was amended to allow victims of sexual harassment to recover damages under federal law. In 1993, a Supreme Court determination made it easier to prove damage under this law. The federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission states that all covered employers should provide sexual harassment training and several states have taken those guidelines to more specific extremes. California's AB 1825 of 2004 is among the strictest and most demanding of these requirements. For companies in these states, providing training is not just good prevention, it ismandatory. Furthermore, recent decisions have upheld complaints against companies that did not communicate or follow through policy, even though policy was in place.But compliance and legal liability are not the only reasons a responsible business should provide anti-harassment training to its employees. In 2009, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission received 12,696 charges filed under Title VII alleging sexual harassment discrimination. Even though nearly half (47.7%) were closed with "No Reasonable Cause", the reported cost of those claims was $51.5 Million dollars, NOT including monetary benefits obtained through litigation. In addition, costs resulting from employee morale can not be unheeded. The article, "Sexual Harassment in the Fortune 500," (Working Woman, Dec. 19, 1988) claims that "ignoring problems of sexual harassment can cost the average company up to $6.7 million a year in low productivity, low morale, and employee turnover and absenteeism."
Some businesses have feared that implementing training programs would increase lawsuits, but according to Caren Goldberg of American University's Kogod School of Business, "If an employer is sued, proof that sexual harassment training was offered may be one of the best defenses." A study in the journal, Psychology of Women Quarterly, shows that subjects were no less likely to seek legal counsel after receiving sexual harassment training than the control group that did not receive training. Considering the high number of "No Reasonable Cause" claims, training could also possibly reduce weak claims by training employees to interpret what does NOT constitute a violation and by demonstrating non-litigous ways to address concerns.
Another barrier to providing training is the cost of doing so itself. With the passage of California's AB 1825 training mandates, there quickly followed an explosion in the training industry. Many sexual harassment prevention courses and price points are available to choose from. Employers can select from on-site, in-person guest trainers, online webinar courses, and web-based training courses where employees work at their own pace and receive personalized instruction through email and IM.
A business that adopts quality sexual harassment policy and then provides quality training to its employees, can create a positive and productive corporate culture that will impact the bottom line and have employees lining up at the door to apply.
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