Sexual harassment and workplace bullying: organizational responses and legal consequences

Sexual harassment and bullying has become a common workplace problem. While organizations have developed ways to address sexual harassment and bullying it still exists as pervasive problems that manage to decrease morale and subsequently, productivity in an organization or company. Internal relationships inside an organization/company are an integral part of an organization\'s success. In order to create the kind of positive environment an organization needs to maintain or increase productivity, such negative issues must be tackled in ways that promote communication and responsiveness to reporting of any possible company violation. If that does not happen, it can lead to lawsuits like the one experienced by Hufcor Inc. or Microsoft Inc. These two companies faced million dollar or one hundred thousand dollar lawsuits for failure to stop bullying or sexual harassment from happening in the workplace.

Sexual harassment is a common problem in the workplace. It is a type of sex discrimination and violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Einarsen, 2011). In essence, the term sexual harassment describes any kind of request for sexual favors, unwelcome sexual advances, or other physical/verbal behavior of a sexual nature. While it is illegal to fire someone for failure to perform a sexual favor or accept a sexual advance, many cases have surfaced showing exactly that, job dismissal for failure to accept the sexual harassment.

Ethics-based decision that may help create an environment where sexual harassment is non-existent, involves providing the same opportunities and respect to women as men. Although men receive their fair share of sexual advances, women are the most likely target of sexual harassment. This could be due to the gender inequalities experienced in the workplace that could lead to a feeling of superiority over women and thus lending to these scenarios where men are taking advantage of women. By providing a level playing field for both men and women, companies like Buzzfeed have seen higher rates of productivity and morale.

If actions are not done to allow cultivation of a more positive environment, it can result in lawsuits as shown by the Hufcor Inc., $120,000 sexual harassment lawsuit (EEOC, 2016). In this case, Katy Degenhardt was denied career advancement, breaks, and experienced reduced wages for complaining about the sexual advances made by her supervisor at the factory. Her case made it to court and she won, making the company face a large payout and shame for the companies now public incidents.

Bullying is also an important issue to tackle. The person bullying inflicts pain whether verbal or physical to the person being bullied any time he or she chooses to. This can lead to severe mental health problems for the person being abused and stress related illness (Einarsen, 2011). Sometimes bullying involves other people. Bullying can also potentially lead to hostile reactions from the person being bullied and is not conducive to a positive work environment.

In order to prevent bullying from happening, companies must adopt a communicative environment where employees feel safe reporting such behavior. There must be mechanisms in place such as anonymous reporting, brochures with numbers, emails, and information about bullying in order to keep people aware of what they can do and the consequences of bullying. Bullying must be handled for companies to avoid much larger problems in the long run. Such was the case for Microsoft when they had to pay out $2 million to Mercieca who was denied advancement opportunities and was accused of sexual harassment in a bid to make him suffer (Craig, 2016).