Sexual Harassment
No one thinks the workplace should be a free-for-all zone where people's conduct is totally unregulated. Yet, for many years, and in male-dominated industries, the views, opinions and beliefs of women were undervalued and underappreciated. This is just historical fact. If you wanted to be a woman in the workforce in the 1960s and early 1970s, you had to put up with a lot.
Today, most businesses have policies and procedures governing work place conduct that require people to behave in a calm, professional, and business-like manner at all times. The polices are written with gender neutrality. There are not different rules - written or unwritten - for women any more than there would be for members of racial, ethic, or age-based groups. But as long as there are more than two people on the planet, there will be disagreements about things that are based on the differences in perception. So, in any organization there must be a careful, measured application of rules and regulations to ensure that everyone stays within the confines of the sexual harassment policy, because what is harassment to one person might be the funniest joke ever told to someone else.
As a person who generally loves humor, I operate from the state of mind that no one really wants to offend anyone when they tell a joke, or make an off-hand comment. If someone wants to offend, there are better ways to do it. A direct, pointed comment usually suffices. But, because people view different things in different ways, it is almost impossible to tell a joke in a business environment today and not run afoul of someone.
Part of a supervisor's job is to keep the workplace free from comments, suggestions, jokes, intimations, or other communications that demean, harass, vex, annoy, chide, or otherwise offend members of specific classes. Jokes based on religion, age, sex (gender) or race are not going to be funny to members in the lampooned group. No matter how much a person might laugh at such an attempt at humor, it doesn't mean they appreciate it. And when a person laughs at a joke to avoid being ostracized by the group, that doesn't serve as a defense to sexual harassment (or any other form of discrimination).
All of this suggests that the workplace needs to be some dour place where no one ever laughs or has fun. That's clearly not the intent of the sexual harassment law. It is instead to protect the reasonable expectations of reasonable people. And, for that reason, when a person claims sexual harassment or a hostile work environment based on comments or statements that a reasonable person would not find offensive, courts do not impose liability.
The job of the supervisor is to walk the fine line between allowing people to be people, and have personalities, and keeping conduct that crosses the line from going unchecked.
In my next blog I'll talk a little bit about the things supervisors should be alert for in monitoring the workplace for sexual harassment.