Hostile Environment

Introduction:

Companies and organizations need to provide a healthy work environment in order to grow and keep its productivity on track. Customers, employees, vendors, and anyone who is related in any way to the company or the organization daily workflow must feel safe and not threatened to perform the required job effectively and efficiently. However; there are some different issues that consider being a block to productivity and make doing the job impossible. Some examples of such issues could be discrimination, sexual harassment, hostile work environment, unequal treatment, etc... This paper will take into details the sexual harassment issue only in the context of employment law.

In the legal sense, harassment in general is an intentional behavior that threats, disturbs, and upsets others and prevents them from doing their job normally. While sexual harassment is continuous and unwelcomed sexual advances in the workplace, where the consequences of refusing them by the victim are unfavorable and may be harmful. So it covers a wide range of behaviors that consider being offensive in its nature.

Most U.S. state law and federal law classify two types of sexual harassment in a work setting: 1) Hostile work environment harassment, and 2) quid pro quo harassment. Both are unlawful harassments and consider being a form of discrimination that violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and other federal authority (Kalmanson, 2012). The number of employees who are filing complaints against any of these two types of sexual harassment has been increasing dramatically in the last ten years (Franklin, 2008). Therefore, measures should be taken by business owner/ manager to prevent such harassment; moreover, measures should be undertaken when a claim of harassment is reported to the company.

Hostile Work Environment Harassment:

Hostile work environment harassment should be a conduct that is connected to a sexual harassment or based on any other discriminatory class to be considered legally actionable. Therefore, such type of harassment and according to The Federal Communications Commission occurs when unwelcome actions based on sex, race, religion or other legally protected specifications affects an employee's work productivity and performance or creates a hostile or abusive work environment. Thus, hostile work environment harassment could take place by sexual and non- sexual actions. Some examples of sexual actions that cause the work environment to be hostile or offensive are as below:

1- Sexually oriented jokes or sexual posters.

2- Sexual comments about specific parts of the human body.

3- Touching others in a way that makes them feel uncomfortable.

4- Making sexual gestures or staring in a sexually way.

5- Writing and forwarding emails that include sexual contents.

And some examples of non-sexual actions which are based on different discriminatory classes and cause an abusive or hostile work environment are as below:

1- Making comments about employees' color or race.

2- Mocking employees' religious beliefs.

3- Making posters or drawings that directly insult specific racial or ethnic group.

4- Any negative comments about the age of employees especially who are over 40.

5- Making negative comments about employees' gender.

6- Pointing negatively on an employee's mental or physical weakness.

Any person in the workplace might perform any of these actions- a supervisor, manager, an employee, supplier or guest. The victim is anyone who got offended by the conduct, not necessarily to be just the person at whom the harassment conduct is directed. On the other hand, it is important to mention that considering an act sexually harassing or not is not an easy case especially when the issue of gender-based differences is raised (Thacker, 1993). For example, women could find one told joke sexually oriented while men might find it non-sexual at all. Therefore, the standard used by civil rights agencies and courts in determining whether a hostile work environment exists is whether a reasonable person, in the same or similar circumstances, would find the conduct offensive (Franklin, 208). This help employers and courts to save time especially when the victim might file sexual harassment suits for frivolous reasons that might require the plaintiff to spend hours in collecting defensive evidences rather than using that time in performing the required job and keeping productivity on track.

Quid Pro Quo Harassment:

Quid pro quo harassment occurs when a manager or supervisor threatens employees to fire or promote them if they reject him/her sexual favors. This type of harassment is more easily recognized and understood by most than the hostile work environment harassment because it includes direct offer/threat and consequences. Some examples of such sexual act are as follow:

1- A boss offers an employee a promotion in exchange of a date.

2- A female employee offers to have sex with her manager if he gets her a salary increment.

3- A boss threatens an employee to fire him/her if he/she rejects having affair with him/her.

4- A boss threatens to pass over for compensation decision if an employee rejects sleeping with him/her.

In general, the sexual favors could be in exchange of anything that may cause an important change in someone's employments status (e.g., hiring, firing, demoting,