This came up in an IMHO thread where a guy was worried about sexual harassment allegations, and his solution was to never do one-on-one discussions with subordinates so there would always be a witness. I, and several other people pointed out that he’s defending against a nonexistent threat, that men essentially never get fired from an allegation made by one subordinate with no witnesses or collaborators. - there are always multiple allegations or witnesses when job loss happens, and ‘never be alone’ doesn’t help there. Other people disagreed, but were unable to come up with an actual example of it happening, though one guy tried (and all of his cases involved witnesses or multiple accusers, except for one which didn’t involve workplace harassment).
The thread kind of died off, but I think it leads to an interesting debate: is there a significant risk of a supervisor getting fired based on an accusation of sexual misconduct from one subordinate? My position is that there isn’t, and that it virtually never happens. It’s hard to post a direct negative cite, but if you look at the men in trouble from post-Weinstein allegations, all of them that have lost a job over allegations from subordinates involve multiple accusers or events that were witnessed by others, none of them involve a single uncorroborated accusation of wrongdoing. If people think there’s an epidemic of managers losing their job because of a single subordinate making allegations, it should be easy to show my claim wrong by showing some of the cases where a single subordinate made sexual harassment allegations on just their own testimony (no witnesses or recordings) and the manager was fired.
A couple of ground rules:
If someone goes on leave during the investigation, has to take a training course, or is told to avoid interacting with that particular person, that doesn’t count as fired. If the person has significant firing offenses in addition to the harassment allegation (like showing up to work drunk), then it doesn’t count as being fired just for the allegation. If the situation doesn’t involve a manager and subordinate (like a band member being kicked out of a band because of allegations from his non-band-involved girlfriend), then it doesn’t count because it’s not workplace-related. If someone resigns and it’s clearly about the issue that does count, same if the person is demoted to a non-management position.
Clarence Thomas didn’t lose his job, but there was only one uncorroborated subordinate who accused him. That was brought up at the time, that having only one accuser was fairly unusual - sexual harassers typically have several accusers.
You may want to look up the “Illinois Rape Myth Acceptance Scale (IRMA)”
The argument you are trying to fight against is directly related to that phenomenon.
But to answer your question, if you keep working conditions professional, the risk of false-accusations is insignificant. And even if you are accused, if you avoid being sexually creepy with coworkers, and stay professional people will probably believe you. If you have any doubt, keep you meetings public or simply ask your subordinates what they prefer.
As a tangential point of information, at an overnight school sponsored event without parents, the rule at the facility is that no child shall be on their own at any time with any of the camp personnel of any gender. They stated the reason for the rule is for the protection of the children and for the protection of the staff. Even if children need to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, they must be accompanied by another student and not simply the camp personnel by themselves even as that involves waking up other students to be the buddy in the buddy system.
For years (and still today), women were simply not believed if it was just her accusation against the man. And many women lost their jobs and their reputations over it. We are finally in an era where women are begining to feel empowered enough to speak up and tell their stories and be believed. If the occasional false accusation slips through the cracks, I, for one, am OK with it!
Hasn’t it long been standard practice in business circles that when a supervisor has to meet with an employee of the opposite gender, that they’ll bring in a 3rd person to sit in on the meeting? Especially if it’s for a negative/unpleasant meeting (i.e., you’re fired, or you’re being disciplined?) I thought this had been the standard protocol as far back as the 1980s.
There are a lot of open offices now, even if you have a door to shut the walls will be glass. You don’t need a 3rd person, just everything in view.
In general an isolated accusation is problematic, it comes down to one person’s word over another’s. The problem is that it may not be an isolated incident but previous incidents aren’t known. We see in the case of Roy Moore that the accusers revealed their claims to others contemporaneously and that boosts their credibility immediately once one of them came forward. It’s been SOP for a long time to record a journal of sexual harassment in the workplace, something that will protect an employee personally but also can be valuable to others in the same position.
That only helps partially. Even with all glass walls, a boss can still make lewd comments or suggestions to a subordinate within the office, for instance; the glass walls would just prevent overtly visible harassment or sexual conduct.
No, it’s not ‘standard practice’ anywhere I’ve been, and any company stupid enough to make it standard practice it would get sued for the blatant discrimination involved. Letting men meet one-on-one with their manager but forbidding women to do the same is just not going to fly. Preventing any one-on-one meetings doesn’t run into that problem, but hasn’t been a policy anywhere I’ve been, and that includes some large companies.
Bringing in a witness/backup if you’re firing someone is pretty common, but it’s not based on gender. Most places that I know have someone from HR to witness a firing as a CYA, and may have a security guard come in too.
Sure, but that can happen all over the place. Bring a 3rd person into every closed door one on one meeting is impractical. And even with the door open one party can still make lewd comments or suggestion unheard outside of the office. If you’re going to fire or demote someone in such a meeting then having a 3rd person there makes sense, but mainly as protection against false accusations.
The ghost of Emmett Till wants a few words with you.:rolleyes:
To the OP, sure absolutely an accusation from one person can result in a firing. It depends on circumstances. It may well be justified. And in proper circumstances (though rare), multiple independent claims might not be sufficient to fire someone.
This limits the ability of women in his organization to do their jobs and is defacto discrimination unless he makes it a point to never do one-on-one discussions with anyone regardless of gender.
Here’s the thing though- “showing cases” requires that the case have gotten into the news somehow. Maybe because the accused is a rich, famous , powerful person or maybe because there is something bizarre about the case. If some 19 year old gets fired from McDonald’s because he harassed a coworker, or some auto mechanic gets fired because he harassed a customer it’s not likely to make the news.
But I can tell you about a case I know about for a fact. There was someone at my agency who held a high level job and who was basically the person responsible for running the agency day to day. This guy was nominated by the governor to fill the position of Chair and CEO of the agency. And that’s when the accusation came out publicly. It was a single accuser and the events had happened 14 years previously. He had to withdraw his name from consideration for the promotion and was returned to his civil service title from his executive position. The state IG did a whole investigation, published a report and everything. They were unable to find any other accusers , but they did interview people that the victim reported the incident to , including two of her former supervisors that she informed at the time the events happened. By the end of the investigation the IG would have recommended criminal prosecution for the accused and disciplinary action for both him* and the managers the victim reported the events to, but the passage of time and the managers retirements made that impossible. While it’s public in the sense that you can find the IG report if you know about the case, or if you just regularly read reports on the IG website, you wouldn’t know about it otherwise. The accusation got into a few newspapers but the resolution never did.
At least in part because even by his own account he was guilty. Sure, he denied exposing himself but he admitted touching her without consent
Neither of those cases fit the scenario of a manager being accused by a subordinate, so I’m not really sure why you’re bringing them up (unless you’re thinking the 19-year-old is a supervisor?). But while not all cases would make the news, I would expect that some cases would make the news, if nothing else when a wrongfully accused person files a lawsuit against his former employer. And if not the news, surely there should be case studies into the topic, or something better than “I know it happens but I can’t provide any examples of it happening”.
Seriously? In your example THE DUDE CONFESSED TO THE HARASSMENT. I suppose I didn’t explicitly add ‘if the person confesses’ of to the list, but a person confessing is acting as a witness against himself. So the guy wasn’t fired (or denied a job) on the basis of one person’s accusation, it was done because he admitted to doing it. Having witnesses present at all of your meetings with subordinates isn’t going to do you any good if you touch people inappropriately and confess to it.
Thought experiment for you. Does it suck more to be the victim of a false accusation of a sexual harassment claim; or does it suck more to be the victim of sexual harassment and nobody will believe you or do anything about it?
I did actually mean to make the 19 year old an assistant manager.
I'm not saying "I know it happens but I can't provide any examples of it happening" . I'm saying that just because cites are not available doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Not the same thing.
There might be media coverage* if* a wrongfully accused ( or even rightfully accused) person files a lawsuit - but that’s a big if. There’s nothing illegal about firing an employee because the employer inaccurately believed he or she sexually harassed another employee just like it’s not illegal to fire someone the employer inaccurately believed was stealing. “Wrongful termination” doesn’t mean “they were wrong and shouldn’t have fired me” . It means the person was terminated for an illegal reason, for example in retaliation for filing a workers comp claim. So I wouldn’t expect to see many lawsuits. Looking around a bit, it seems the general advice is that since the accused really doesn’t have any rights unless he or she has some sort of contract ( and most people in the US don’t) the best use of a lawyer is to negotiate the details of the exit. And I certainly wouldn’t expect to see any lawsuit where the accused was fired because a single woman truthfully alleged he harassed her - because why would he open himself up to that when he can possibly negotiate a neutral reference and get another job rather than paying an attorney for a case he will most likely lose ? ( because remember, the company doesn’t have to be correct)
He “had to” withdraw his name from contention almost immediately , before he was even interviewed and certainly before he admitted to anything. ( “Had to” is in quotes, because he could have refused to withdraw his name and simply let the governor withdraw the nomination, but once the accusation became public, he wasn’t getting the job.) He was returned to his civil service title before he made any admissions. All of the consequences happened long before the investigation (which took nearly a year) was complete. In any event, he did not in fact “confess” to the harassment. That would mean he acknowledged that it was in fact harassment. He said he touched her without her actual consent but she was very receptive , that she neither invited nor rebuffed him and also that she was generally flirtatious. Having a third person in the room surely would have saved him,because he certainly wouldn’t have behaved that way in front of a third party. ( and I think that deep down that’s the reason some non-zero number of those people avoid one-on-ones with the opposite sex. Not because they fear false accusations but because they don’t trust their own behavior)
None of which is to say that people should be refusing to meet with their subordinates one on one. Because first of all, if we’re actually talking about sexual harassment (and not just assault) , most of it doesn’t happen behind closed doors. Secondly, if someone is going to outright lie and say that you (groped them, told them to sleep with you if they wanted a better shift, whatever) , what would keep them from lying and saying the two of you were in a room alone when you weren’t? “No, he didn’t (fill in the blank) at 10 am when Fred was in the office with us. He got me in his office alone at 2:45 and that’s when it happened.” Having Fred there at 10 doesn’t help when someone is willing to lie. Fred isn’t needed if nothing inappropriate happens. The only time Fred *might *help is if it’s a matter of different interpretations of something you said ( like the compliment that a person thinks is just fine but which offends the recipient) , and I doubt people ever get fired over a single instance of that.
I work in HR these days and part of my job is to assist with various investigations and that sometimes includes sexual harassment claims. In my rather limited experience your assessment is true. So long as you behave properly the risk of being accused of sexual harassment is negligible. I’ve seen employees claim retaliation, bullying, targeting, etc., etc. at times when their supervisors/managers were just making them do the job they were hired for but I’ve never had an employee a similar allegation about sexual harassment to deflect any blame for wrongdoings. I’m not saying it can’t happen but it doesn’t seem likely.
There’s no one size fits all to these things but an employee is unlikely to be fired for sexual harassment based on the statement of a single witness but a company should still take some action. Last year we had a supervisor who was accused of sexual harassment and we required them to take some classes though no formal warning was issued. This year we fired that employee the very same day multiple witnesses came forward and made complaints.
Men, as a general rule you don’t have to be worried about false allegations of sexual harassment.