Legalities related to sexual harassment policies for the workplace Research Paper

Legalities related to sexual harassment policies for the workplace - Research Paper Example Before filing a case against the offender, a victim must remember the place, date, and time of the sexual harassment besides any witness if possible. The harasser needs to be blatantly made clear by the victim to behave and mend ways. If there is no sign of amending ways, a warning needs to be made of the repercussions in legal terms through filing a case at EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commotion), which can help the victim. An employer cannot be held responsible if no such policy is in practice at the workplace to tame the bad conduct but once a complaint has been made, taking action against the offender becomes mandatory for the employer to save the employer’s skin (Bhatnagar, 2007). Employees at state and federal level are also protected under the sexual harassment law. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 under the federal law provides remedy for workplace harassment. This law is applicable to firms with fifteen or more employees. Where employee strength is less than fifteen the state anti-discrimination law comes to the aid of discriminated employees. Regarding single-gender harassment, there is provision to file a case against the employer whereas there is no unanimity over single-gender harassment in state laws (Larson, 2003). Basically, there are two simple types of workplace sexual harassment, Quid Pro Quo Harassment and Hostile Work Environment Harassment. In Quid Pro Quo type, the employee has to bear the gender based discrimination to remain in the job, avail routine benefit, salary hike or promotion. A hostile work environment affects the job performance of the employee by making the environment abusive. For inquiring into the workplace environment, we need to analyze the factors responsible for the conduct of the offender. It is crucial to confirm whether the offender’s behavior is verbally or physically wrong, how random the occurrence of the offence is, whether the behavior is just unfriendly or undoubtedly objectionable , what is the rank of the offender, whether the offence is committed taking along others by the offender in the league of perpetuators’ aiming at the victim singularly or including others as targets (Larson, 2003). Sexual harassment of verbal type can be judged on the overall happenings, depending on factors such as: The type, frequency, context, and specific aim of the remarks; Whether the comments were unfriendly and mean; Whether the alleged harasser pointed towards the victim while making a hostile comment; Whether the victim reacted by participated through return comments; and The level of kinship between the victim and the alleged harasser. To initiate action for sexual harassment, the plaintiff must prove that: 1. The plaintiff found the behavior to be hostile, abusive or offensive; and 2. Any person of balanced attitude in the same situation would consider the behavior hostile, abusive or offensive. It is to be noted that the plaintiff need not be necessarily a victim of the ordeal to file a claim against workplace sexual harassment. As stated above the federal cases can be filed with the EEOC, but it first requires case filing against the behavior of an administrative agency; state and local bodies also listen to such complaints under the state law. There is possibility that a state