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SH: How Severe, How Pervasive?

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SH: How Severe, How Pervasive?

My employer’s sexual harassment training essentially tells us to go to the EEOC, without telling us what their own risk-tolerance / threshold for corrective action is. They hold those cards close. I don’t have a sense of when they’ll act *before* they’re being sued.

Going directly to the EEOC seems illogical to me, since those will only take on the “severe and pervasive” essentially gross negligence cases. I’ve heard maybe a *dozen* documented, reported incidents with failure to act by the employer. And every judge interprets “severe and pervasive” differently; less severe, more pervasive.

So for those of you with management or HR experience especially in the public sector: any sense of what is likely to result in summary termination? What is likely to result in “coaching and mentorship?” How many?

FWIW, I’m at about 9 incidents of SH over a 20 month time frame, and plenty of lower level bullying. I know I have 2 years to report and must report within 180 days from the last incident for ongoing harassment. Some of it has witnesses and all of it has my personal-email-to-self summaries.

I’d love to get back to focusing on my actual job without the bandwidth that this takes up and the hypervigilance and reactivity. And I’m not forfeiting my pension because we hired a jerk.

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  1. Anonymous

    Good luck.

  2. Anonymous

    Keeping things close to the vest allows them to ignore 99.9% of the crazy nonesense complaints that usually arise but they don't have to come clean about that. They simply don't take it seriously but appear to. Their fall back excuse if they ever needed one is.....we take these complaints serious enough to defer to the ultimate decision maker ....the EEOC which is impartial, fair and knowledgeable.

    It's so much cheaper too.

  3. Anonymous

    In my opinion, they will only take complaints that reach the EEOC seriously and expect to treat anything less than what hits the EEOC threshold as "frivolous." Are there coaches or therapists you can refer these to in your EAP? Can you strongly recommend that they take advantage of it before it escalates to a lawsuit? My experience with these people is that they will drain all of your energy because they believe they have done nothing wrong. Society is turning back to normalizing this behavior. This course is risky for your company because litigating an EEOC lawsuit can be extremely costly. You may want to research the cost/benefit of sensitivity training to the ranks versus one or two EEOC lawsuits and see if they bite. My guess is they won't want to appear "woke." I'm glad you are covering yourself and your pension, but in the end, things tend to run downhill (especially in right-to-work states). Are the higher-ups more loyal to you or the company/executives they work for?

  4. Anonymous

    My higher-ups are supportive and would love a reason to get the harasser removed. The person harasses me bc I “make them look bad” by comparison. That said, my sups also wildly overextended and tend to only deal with the hottest firefight of the day.

    I think my employer as a whole has a very mixed and unpredictable response to SH and as it’s the public sector, it’s certainly not “zero tolerance”. On other issues such as the harassers alcohol use on the job, we’ve been flabbergasted to learn that it’s a 3 strikes policy.

    I also worry that our country is moving in regressive direction on this issue. I have a union though.

  5. Anonymous

    If there is a union, is there someone within the union (steward, for example) with whom you could collaborate for preemptive intervention instead of waiting until it hits the fan? Three strikes for substance abuse are not uncommon, even in the non-union world. This allows for rehab and a relapse (with repeat rehab). They can terminate the employee after a second relapse. They may have specific rules on harassment within the collective bargaining agreement, and the company would rather deal with the EEOC than the union. That fight strategy is not uncommon, either.

  6. Anonymous

    Report it to the legal team and ethics department,NOT HR. HR hired this jerk and ultimately works for the C-suite so want to look good to them. Get a lawyer right away. This is not worth your mental and physical health decline. I’ve been there - get out.

  7. M Elizabeth Ingram

    Your state may also have a Human Rights Commission or something similar that you can report harassment to.

  8. Anonymous

    Either your company does not have internal controls around this type of behavior or they choose to not enforce it. Do you have an employee handbook that you signed and everyone else did? If so look for the language in there with SH information. Use that to consult with an attorney who can help you to draft a letter to the CEO or legal dept of your company with all of your documentation to remediate or there will be a lawsuit. Good luck.

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