I’ve been involved in workplace sexual harassment - I was harassed a long time ago and since then have worked with other women who have been harassed.
The burden of proof is not on you. I’ve seen plenty of recent cases where no one believes the woman in question. Generally, it takes something pretty egregious with proof of something, or multiple women coming forward before HR and management take it seriously. It is far more likely if a woman gets creeped out by your behavior and complains, that HR will determine it is a misunderstanding and she is being overly sensitive. Now, in order to know if you are creeping out lots of women, they will note it to see if its a pattern.
Treat all employees with professional respect. Don’t touch coworkers. Don’t comment on their appearance. Don’t make sexist/racist jokes or comments. If you behave well, then when crazy bitch makes things up about you, she won’t be believable. Keep their personal life out of your comments. If you are always behaving in a creepy manner - making off color comments, putting your hand on someone’s shoulder when you stand behind them to look at their computer screen, saying ‘nice sweater’ - (which from a man women translate as “nice breasts”) - then when crazy bitch makes accusations the other women will say “yeah, that’s believable - he can’t look over my shoulder without touching me and it gives me the creeps.” And you’ll get a reputation as the office creeper even if you never cross the line to harassment.
Are there any cases where someone was accused of sexual harassment, and fired/sued because of it, but there was only one person claiming the harassment happened? You’re talking about this as though having a woman alone in the office with you means she can easily make an accusation against you and have you fired or file a lawsuit against you, but this doesn’t match anything I’ve heard or read on the topic. Most people I know who have dealt with repeated, blatant sexual harassment have seen that nothing happens until there are a LOT of complaints from multiple sources and/or the person gets caught doing something over-the-top on video/audio. If the situation you fear is real, there should be examples. If it’s not real, then you’re massively changing the way you work in a way that may well be illegal (for example, if you apply your ‘never alone rule’ only to women, then you’re likely engaging in discrimination on the basis of sex).
Only where there is evidence - emails, witnesses. I’m sure women have sued for sexual harassment without evidence (anyone can sue anyone) but you can countersue for defamation, so you’d be sort of stupid. (Its hard to get an attorney to take a case without evidence).
Its one of the reasons women don’t come forward - its a he said she said thing until you can find corroboration. You are far more likely to get away with sexually harassing a woman than to get falsely accused of it.
The men who don’t get this, and who don’t get why “compliments” about appearance might be offensive, are the very men who can’t understand why they get accused of offensive behavior, and think it is just random.
They are also the men who appear to just blow off multiple write-ups and sit-downs about their behavior, because they just can’t believe it’s that big of a deal. This isn’t isolated to sexual behavior: I’ve seen the same thing with hygiene issues and other unprofessional behavior.
Then, when he finally gets fired, he very convincingly explains that out of nowhere one woman made a single exaggerated claim and it was a he-said/she-said and then he was let go without a chance to even defend himself. And he literally doesn’t think of the other 10 times because they aren’t relevant: he minimized and dismissed every single one.
So much this.
It is so hard for me to read these 100% male discussions about something that happens very very rarely to completely innocent men, when actual harrassment by men, with little to no recourse, happens constantly and everywhere to innocent women.
Just act like a straight up human being to everyone and you’ll be fine, honey.
If there are witnesses, then there’s more than one person claiming it happened so it doesn’t fit what I asked for (and, obviously, making sure there are witnesses won’t protect you from their being witnesses). I often forget how pedantic people get in these discussions, please replace ‘sued’ with ‘successfully sued,’ with ‘successfully’ meaning ‘won a significant settlement and didn’t get countersued for more than the suit’. It sounds like you agree with me but are muddying the waters for some reason, so to be clear: I was asking for the OP to provide examples of situations that he’s heard of where his practices would help. I doubt the OP is going to be able to come up with any examples where a person was fired or SUCCESSFULLY sued for sexual harassment where practices like ‘never hold a legitimate closed-door meeting with a subordinate’ would have protected them. I don’t think such cases exist, or if they do exist are such absurdly rare exceptions to the rule that they’re about as worth protecting against as a meteorite strike.
Maybe I am over-reacting. I don’t know. But this rule wouldn’t just be ‘me and young women’, it would apply to all managers/employees - regardless of age, gender or sexuality. As others have pointed out, women aren’t the only recipients of sexually abusive/coercive behaviour, and men aren’t the only perpetrators of it (although, okay, older male boss + younger female subordinate is the most iikely demographic profile - hence those being the ingredients of my examples in the OP). I wouldn’t be alone in my office with the door closed with anyone, although truth be told I would be more concerned about it happening with a 19-year old woman than a 50-year old man.
I’ve never personally known anyone lose their job - at this workplace or elsewhere - because of sexual harrassment/assault. But I’ve certainly witnessed professional reputations be tarnished because of gossip and allegation. And, perhaps more to the point, I am sensing a change in the tide here - people across all industries are becoming a lot more sensitive and reactive to sexual assault/harrassment/bullying. This is no bad thing, but it should lead people in my position to re-examine our conduct with subordinates - which is what I am doing.
You guys have offices and doors? Every place I’ve worked has been mostly open floor plans or crammed into conference rooms converted to team “war rooms”.
Yeah, I think people here are over reacting. The best way to not get accused of sexual harassment at work is to not go around raping your coworkers. I know it can be hard. You’re in a meeting. The new analyst starts presenting the Q3 numbers. Next thing you know, you pull off your pants and start raping. How could you have handled this differently? Possibly wore a different tie? Show up a few minutes earlier? Don’t rape as much? These are all great suggestions.
I think its tougher when their is personal attraction. Lets face it, people fall for each other. Often we spend more time with people at work than we do with our spouses. We often travel with them or work long hours with people in close confines.
If things become personal and don’t work out, then come claims of harassment.
THIS is a problem. And one of the big reasons to consider very carefully any fishing you do in the office pond. I’ve seen these cases blow up big. ESPECIALLY a manager and subordinate situation. You have to trust the person you are going to start seeing a hell of a lot to put your career in their hands if things go South. And that is true for both men and women.
And you can’t control the reactions of other people as your involvement becomes common knowledge. “Of course Pam got that plum assignment, she’s banging the boss” or “John is dating Gretchen? Didn’t he break up with Megan in Marketing just a few months ago” can ruin your career - and not because your ex gets nasty. But because people are judgy.
(I’ve told this story here before, but its such great gossip - its 20 years old or older now. I worked with a woman - Shannon or something (I can’t really remember) and she started dating John. John was kind of the office slut, he fished in the company pool all the time - and threw them back all the time too. But he and Shannon dated for a few months, which was longer than most of John’s office romances lasted. John dumped Shannon, and within three months he was engaged to another woman (one who didn’t work for the company). Shannon quit a few months later, and went out for her last day lunch, and got trashed, and came back into the office and rather loudly told John (and everyone on the floor) exactly what she thought of him. No one accused anyone of sexual harassment, but it didn’t do John’s career any favors, and he was sent off to work in a satellite office shortly thereafter.)
Its those Q3 numbers. Just like a short skirt will make a man’s penis jump out of his pants and act all on its own, Q3 numbers are statistically proven to have the same effect. You can’t blame the guy.
You know what would fuel gossip and allegation anywhere I’ve worked? A manager refusing to do basic managerial tasks, like meeting with subordinates one-on-one, or turning private conversations into group meetings. I think people would see someone acting that weird and paranoid as someone who MUST be covering up something that would make for very juicy gossip.
There you go. Maybe - in a deepy, sadly ironic way, my attempts to avoid accusations of creepiness will come across as weird and untrustworthy: ‘Sorry, but I am so dangerous that you can’t be in a closed room with me even for a moment. You’d better open that door before I pounce on you…5…4…3…’
Maybe, for time immemorial, young people - women especially - have felt intensely awkward and unsettled being behind closed doors with middle-aged managers like me. Maybe they haven’t. Maybe they only have when said managers have been weird about it . Maybe they aren’t freaked out by default, but they are unnerved by a) creepy behaviour, or b) managers being paranoid about being accused of creepy behaviour. Maybe some *like *being alone with their superior behind closed doors because it feels [professionally] intimate and like they are getting one-on-one customised attention. Fuck, I don’t know. It’s not exactly like you can ask.
Foregrounding this cloud of uncertainty is a managerial necessity to have a concrete policy and be certain about enacting it. For now, mine is ‘Never be alone with an employee in an enclosed space; but don’t make a song and dance about it’.
What percentage of harassment cases do you suppose come from relationships gone bad rather than one way attempts at relationships. Claims that she consented (which I think most of these scum made in some cases at least) don’t count.
In Dangerosa’s example there were no harassment charges, but there were other consequences.
In my old company, the rule was that if you really wanted to go out with a subordinate, one of the two of you needed to change jobs so that there was no longer a reporting relationship. Which seemed reasonable.
No, I disagree…The OP is thinking about this properly.
He says that he hires young women who live there over the summer, and work with children. It’s apparently a summer camp, and I’m guessing that it’s run by an organization like YMCA or a charity.So appearances and public reputation are probably critical. If he ever gets accused of sexual harrassment, the organization will fire him—even if he is later proven in court to be totally innocent, because they can’t take the risk of losing their reputation.
Imagine just a single story on the local news “Sex at the YMCA summer camp?–is your child safe?” --and that’s the end of Mr. Lee’s career.
This may not seem like a new problem, but as the title of the thread says,we are now in a new era—“post-Weinstein”. The Weinstein scandal is becoming a historical turning point–almost like Rosa Parks on her bus. (Well, that’s a little exagerated, but not much).
A better analogy might be to the “milk carton children” of the 1990’s. Awareness and sensitivity to the issue of abducted kids soared due to a few highly publicized cases.
And it went too far.There were many cases where a vague mention of possible child abuse was immediately taken as proven fact, no trial necessary.
We are now, in the post-Weinstein era, seeing something similar with the issue of sexual harrassment. Any vague mention of harrassment is now being taken by the general public as proof of guilt. Right now, most of the publicity is about Hollywood (“Dustin Hoffman groped me 30 years ago”). But it is becoming accepted (and rightfully so) that sexual harrassment happens everywhere, and too often.
But right now there is a growing atmosphere of overkill , like the milk-carton kids.
The OP is right to recognize that he must be very, very careful.
Certainly he must never let himself be alone with a 19 year old employee.
And the ideas mentioned about quietly recording certain conversations are not unreasonable (if legal in his state).
Suppose he has to fire that woman whom he took in his car to buy insulin. If she retailiates by accusing him of harrassment,in this post-Weinstein era–she will be believed, and he get fired.