Harassment, new trend: myth or realm?

We all know that harassment is a new fleece for companies, from startup to corporate. but what is it exactly and what to do when you are facing this kind of situation?

Let's start by the beginning. There is not only one kind of harassment but 11. Two most common types of harassment are welknown by the population: harassment claims fall into one of two categories: “quid pro quo” or "hostile work environment.

To complete the list, below, there are more categories:

1. Discriminatory Harassment is verbal or physical conduct that denigrates or shows hostility toward an individual because of his or her race, color, gender, national origin, religion, age (40 or over), physical or mental disability, sexual orientation, or because of his or her opposition to discrimination or his or her ...

2. Personal Harassment is a form of workplace harassment that's not based on one of the protected classes (such as race, gender or religion).

3. Physical Harassment includes intimidation, ridicule, insult, comments, or physical conduct, that is based on an individual's protected status.

4. Power Harassment is a form of harassment and workplace bullying in which someone in a position of greater power uses that power to harass or bully a lower-ranking person.

5. Psychological Harassment is vexatious behaviour that manifests itself in the form of conduct, verbal comments, actions or gestures characterized by the following four criteria: They are repetitive*; They are hostile or unwanted; They affect the person's dignity or psychological integrity

6. Cyberbullying or cyberharassment is a form of bullying or harassment using electronic means, it is the use of electronic communication to bully a person, typically by sending messages of an intimidating or threatening nature. Workplace bullying is persistent, aggressive, and unreasonable behavior directed at one or more employees that has the effect of demeaning, humiliating, oppressing, causing emotional distress, or physically harming the target.

7. Retaliation occurs when an employer punishes an employee for engaging in legally protected activity. Retaliation can include any negative job action, such as demotion, discipline, firing, salary reduction, or job or shift reassignment.

8. Sexual Harassment is a type of harassment involving the use of explicit or implicit sexual overtones, including the unwelcome or inappropriate promise of rewards in exchange for sexual favors.

9. Quid Pro Quo Sexual Harassment occurs when employment, pay, benefits, title, position or other opportunities for advancement or training are conditioned on the submission to unwelcome sexual advances. Whether the harassment is explicit or implicit, it is illegal.

10. Third Party Harassment: made employers liable for the harassment of their employees by third parties, such as customers or clients, where unwanted conduct had taken place on two previous occasions and the employer had failed to take reasonably practicable steps to prevent it.

11. Verbal Harassment can be an ongoing battle of destruction that threatens your health and career. It consists of demeaning remarks, offensive gestures and unreasonable criticism. It can involve insults, slurs, unwanted "jokes'' and hurtful comments.

number 9 is very popular and used by a certain category of people: Sales people, HRM and Headhunters.

What does it mean in term of employer liability?

An employer is automatically liable for harassment committed by employees in supervisory positions that leads to another employee’s termination, denial of promotion, demotion or lost wages.

Companies need to have clear policies that sexual harassment won't be tolerated and that perpetrators will be punished, but the process needs to be fair to all parties.

In both the military and civilian worlds, sexual harassment complaints are sometimes dismissed as a "he said, she said" situation, says Quick, who co-wrote a forthcoming book on campus sexual assault.

The Nutshell:

1. Average cost to defend harassment lawsuit: $250,000 in USA
2. Average jury award: $600,000+
3. Average annual hidden cost of harassment: $300 to $1,000 per employee.*
4. underperformance by approximately 19.9 per cent.

In Europe, American countries (especially Canada and USA), harassment is well recognized, even if it is still here/praticed by some. Companies starts to be more and more aware of their responsibilities and the needs to protect their employees to ensure a certain atmosphere and security. Strangely #metoo didnt increase the level of lawsuits globally. It made it instead more clear. In Asian countries, harassment concept is starting to be understandable. However the impact on the business is not yet clear for many companies.

What are the hidden costs behind any kind of harassment?

Harassment-related litigation imposes the following types of costs on organizations:

1. Legal fees
2. Litigation-related expenses (document reproduction, deposition transcripts, exhibits, travel, meals, and lodging, printing costs, etc.)
3. Diversion of employee time in meetings with lawyers, depositions, and attending trials
4. Emotional turmoil within the organization
5. Jury awards
6. Damage to brand and reputation

The average out-of-pocket expense of the defense of an harassment-related lawsuit exceeds $250,000, whether or not the organization prevails. With the current situation, how many harassment-related lawsuit are you ready or can you pay? Be careful as the bank might not support you to pay this kind of expense...

More details and numbers of the cost:

In the 2015 fiscal year, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) received approximately 28,000 charges alleging harassment or discrimination from employees working for private employers or state or local governments.

In France, UNICEF considers that 700,000 students are suffering from harassment. 1 woman on 5 declared having a situation of harassment during her professional experience. 20% of employees recognized knowing harassment situation but it didn't impact directly their lives.

JAPAN, an Asian country, around 65 % of woman who lived harassment didnt complain and sued their companies. Japan ranks 110th out of 149 countries in terms of parity, despite the promises of the government of? a society where women can shine?

An average damage of US$22,500 per employee in lost productivity and employee turnover due to sexual harassment. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission recovered almost $70 million through sexual harassment litigation in 2018.

Companies with the highest incidences of sexual harassment underperform the U.S. stock market by approximately 19.9 per cent the subsequent year.

The current federal cap on sexual harassment damages in the United States is US$300,000, minuscule relative to the $2.1 billion in annual losses

With an analysis on job reviews from Glassdoor and Indeed, gathering more than 1.65 million reviews of over 1,100 firms to identify reported instances of sexual harassment. This represents an average loss in market capitalization of US$2.1 billion per firm. The market capitalization of the 101 firms we identified as the worst sexual harassers had a combined market capitalization of approximately US$1.1 trillion in 2017 dollars). This translates to a total loss of US$212.2 billion per year (US$1.1 trillion multiplied by 19.9 per cent), or an average annual dollar loss of US$2.1 billion per firm.

Why do you need an employment survey?

For those firms that tolerate sexual harassment, they will lose talent to rivals that do not, and the market will punish them. The costs of decency are trivial; the rewards to the bottom line are large. "A hostile environment affects the whole organization, not just the people who are harassed."

"Be awared, be informed, preventing is better than curing" CorpoRank.