Stopping Harassment Starts with HR

Employee incivility that bleeds into workplace harassment has the potential to destroy a hospital's reputation and its finances. Leadership holds the potential for stopping it in its tracks.

Want to kill your employee retention numbers and productivity while damaging your hospital's reputation? Of course not. But neglecting to properly address employee concerns about harassment or stop it from happening can be an organization's downfall.

Take, for example, a recent case in Indiana in which a former resident alleged sexual harassment. She sued the hospital for $8 million when the associate director of her residency program gave her a negative performance review and later dismissed her after she called off a sexual relationship with him.

The case has been settled out of court, but it likely cost the hospital more than $1 million and hurt both employee morale and the hospital's reputation.

Understanding Harassment
It's not always easy to differentiate harassment from general rudeness in the workplace, but it's very important to understand what sets them apart.

"Minor rudeness is not illegal," says Ernie Haffner, senior attorney advisor at the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Being gruff, generally unfriendly, or a disagreeable person is not a crime. Also, a single incident (for example, an offhand sexist comment) is usually not enough to be called harassment, although management should make it clear that such behavior will not be tolerated.

When does rude or unprofessional behavior become harassment? Here are some indicators that bad behavior has crossed the line:

• Employees are repeatedly subjected to abusive or humiliating behavior that makes them feel uncomfortable
• This behavior targets what is considered to be a protected characteristic, which includes ethnicity, gender, religion, national origin, disability status, or age
• The discomfort of the employee is intentional—this was not a slip in judgment, an isolated incident or caused by awkwardness, but a situation where someone is deliberately trying to make an employee feel unwelcome, threatened, or offended

The best way to draw the line between genuine harassment and a social gaffe or gruff behavior is to look at the intention.

Haffner cites coworkers neglecting to use correct pronouns with transgender employees as an example. "Did their coworker simply forget and accidentally say 'he' when they should have said 'she,' or did they deliberately use the wrong gender?" The first is simply a mistake which can be excused; the second, if repeated, can constitute harassment.

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To invoke EEOC laws, the harassment must be based on a protected status, such as race, gender, pregnancy status or religion. "Some people, unfortunately, are more comfortable bullying minorities," says Haffner. "Minorities, women, and other members of protected groups are simply harassed more often than others," he says, explaining why it's necessary for some groups to be considered protected.

How to Handle Harassment
It is the responsibility of employers to research allegations of employee harassment and to attempt to rectify them and prevent them from happening in the future.

"If you know harassment is taking place, but don't do anything about it, well, that's an EEOC violation. As an employer, you have legal responsibilities to take action, and to make sure that it stops." You'll want to listen to what both sides have to say and try to understand what's actually going on in order to attempt to resolve the situation.

"Don't fire anyone off the bat," Haffner says. Instead, engage in an investigative and disciplinary process. Be aware that harassers and bullies rarely target only one person over the course of their careers, and that serial harassers have likely done this in the past.

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Make sure that the alleged harasser understands that retaliation is unlawful. Especially if the alleged harasser is the supervisor or manager of the employee who has reported the grievance, keep an eye on that department. It is to be expected that people will be uncomfortable if someone complains about them, but try to make sure there is no retaliation, deliberate or otherwise.

"Without realizing it, a manager could begin subconsciously downgrading an employee's performance. Things get complicated in these situations," says Haffner.

Preventing Harassment
The best way to prevent harassment is to foster a friendly, open workplace, says Haffner. While it might not be illegal to be a jerk at work, it's not good for morale, and can encourage the kind of environment where harassment is more likely to happen.

It's also vital to offer avenues outside of employees' direct supervisors where they can report harassment or unfair working conditions—and that employees trust those channels to help resolve issues if they are brought to them.

"It is important that people feel they can come forward… Make sure people know how to report harassment, and that they know what's illegal and what constitutes harassment," says Haffner.

And, once someone does come forward to report harassment, it's vital to act in a timely fashion—not only to be compliant with the law, but also to help employees see that they are valued and to foster trust between them and the hospital. "What you don't want is for employees to bring a situation to HR, and then nothing happens," says Haffner.

Ultimately, everyone deserves a workplace where they feel valued and comfortable coming to work, and where they feel safe—and it's HR's job to lay down the law when that doesn't happen.