Sexual Harassment at Workplace

Sexual harassment continues to thrive in different corporate settings despite the existence of laws and regulations prohibiting such detrimental conduct. Generally, low reporting of cases for various reasons among victims and enforcement of non-disclosure agreement within corporates influences the perception of low incidences perceived. The study analyses sexual harassment as a cause of emotional distress, financial problems and low productivity at workplaces. The results findings indicate a negative impact on individual psychological well-being as cases of post-traumatic disorder, depression and eating disorder are shown to be elevated among the victims.

Financially, both companies and victims are affected. Organizations are losing money as compensation to lawsuits and settlements of sexual harassment allegations against their top-level manager or co-workers. On the other hand, victims are often forced to quit their jobs as a strategy for escaping abusive relationships thus resting to loss of income and uncertainty of careers. Additionally, affected persons are either reported to experience dissatisfaction with the job or fail to commit to the business activity with cases of assignment neglect or absenteeism common among them thus reduced productivity at the workplace.

Conclusively, there is a need for adoption, and strict implementation of sexual harassment policy to teach a business culture of respect and dignity among co-workers and management relationships.

Introduction

Sexual harassment as dictated within legal jurisdiction denotes a physical, visual, gestures or other unwelcome verbal and psychological conduct of sexual nature. Although women file most complaints, there is an increasing number of men reporting sexual harassment from their female supervisors.

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Moreover, the Equality Act, 2010, provides for such actions as a reason for the trial, reports from the public or firms remains relatively low. The government reports indicate low reporting rates noted among individuals and institutions.

Some of the reasons denoted for not reporting occurrence include fear of interrupting careers, or the issue being ignored whatsoever among women and fear of creating a negative impression about their masculinity among men. Organizations must initiate and implement policies against sexual harassment within the work environment. Consequences of this menace often shake the core of every organization it is unrooted. For example, victims are eluded to experience emotional problems, low productivity in the workplace, decrease in job satisfaction as well as less socialization. Today, sexual harassment is increasingly becoming a menace in corporate settings; thus, the paper aims to examine this distressful conduct as a cause of emotional issues, financial problems and decreased productivity in the work environment.

Emotional and Psychological Effects

Although numerous studies documented server emotional consequences because of offensive sexual-related behaviors, these reports focused on self-identified victims thus making the studies vulnerable to sample bias. However, the following documentation has confirmed significant emotional damage among persons who experienced sexual harassment. According to Swan, Schneider and Fitzgerald in a study aimed to examined impacts of workplace harassment on two women working for the different companies, the team validated their survey by introducing other factors to control cofounding psychological stress influences.

The research finding indicated symptoms of post-traumatic stress, low level of mental well-being. According to Fitzgerald, & Cortina, (2017), “this study presents evidence that sexual harassment, even at relatively low frequencies, exerts a significant negative impact on women’s psychological well-being” (p.13). Subsequently, different study findings have linked sexual harassment to the general decrement of mental health resulting in other psychological conditions such as anxiety disorder, depression eating disorder as well as increased incidences of alcohol abuse. Although sexual harassment may be a cause, an emotional attribute of the business workforce determines the level of success. Therefore, each organization ought to develop two strategies: sexual harassment policies and moving management plan.

Managing Emotions at The Workplace: Organizational activities such as merger, transfers or reorganizations within the business are increasing presenting diversity into definitions of sexual harassment mainly due to cultural diversity and integration of social norms. Success in the work environment requires an individual to understand their emotions, control their reactions, and recognize how their feelings are likely to affect their actions as well as their co-workers. According to Daniel Goleman, these attributes are essential in an organizational setting for team cooperation, conflict resolution among workers or customers, and adjusting to new colleagues (Schutte, & Loi, 2014). Therefore, early recognition of emotional disturbance is central to preventive measures before it spirals out of control. Continuous review of daily activities and the feelings that were evoked enables an individual to identify actions or events that resulted in the uncomfortable feeling.

Secondly, employees should find appropriate means of communicating or expressing their emotions (Schutte, & Loi, 2014). Several co-workers accused of sexual harassment have been reported to either retaliate or resigned from the job due to embarrassment on how the issue was handled. On the other hand, there is no need for the victim to express their feeling so that their interaction with colleagues is not affected instead of pretending about how they feel. According to Kerry Patterson: “crucial conversations”, the initial steps to solving negative feeling between co-workers, is the initiation of the agenda at a personal level (Schutte, & Loi, 2014). Thus, sensitive issues such as sexual harassment could be addressed by giving appropriate feedback to facilitate understanding. For example, the gestures, verbal or physical sexual conduct might have occurred within a meeting briefing, the victim should be obligated to set another discussion soon preferably in private within the work environment with the correspondent. The focus of the discussion should be what was said or done and how they made the complainant feel. This strategy is particularly essential in the corporate environment due to cultural interactions where individuals are unlikely to consider their actions sexually offensive.

Financial Distress

Lack of understanding of the economic consequences of sexual harassment in the workplace has contributed to widespread laxity in the development and implementation of policies against such behavior. Significant research into the economic impact of negative sexual behavior is not only lacking due to the growth of reporting by victims but also enforcement of non-disclose agreements by various organizations (Bucchianeri, Eisenberg, Wall, Piran, & Neumark-Sztainer, 2014). Beyond incurring the cost of protocols and sexual harassment training, businesses lose more money on lawsuits and legal settlements (Haruna, Joseph, Samson, & Aye Gabriel, 2016). The Society for Human Resource Managers claims that within two years, companies spent a total of $ 699 million to settle harassment allegations by employees based on race, sex, ethnicity or religion (Harvey, 2018). On the other hand, corporates incurred $356 million on court judgments and settlements. Additionally, the cost of settling sexual harassments concerning companies net worth can be quite expensive. For example, in a legal lawsuit by Gretchen Carlson a former broadcaster with Fox News Channel against Roger Ailes a former Fox News CEO, attracted $20million fine in settlement (Harvey, 2018).

Moreover, there are needs to consider indirect costs such as low productivity, brand damage and higher employee turnover resulting from sexual harassment allegations. As the problem becomes commonplace behavior, the cost incurred by companies will continue to increase. Product branding and company reputation are increasingly playing the significant role in marketing and sales as a consumer behavior issue (Hudson, 2017). Therefore, as the community becomes more cautious of companies and employees’ morals, sexual harassment allegation from the management affects the company sales. For example, Fox News recently experienced revenue decline as advertisers withdrew contracts after Bill O’Reilly was accused of sexual harassment by a woman colleague. Although most studies focus on company losses, there is a need to evaluate individual or economic impacts on victims.

A sociological survey of Heather McLaughlin and others denoted several considerations in women primarily affected by the problem. The researchers noted that over 80% of the women who experience sexual harassment choose to change or leave their jobs within two years (Alfares, Kelly, McDermott, Funke, Baxter, Babb, 2015). Additionally, these women were observed to prefer shifting their career to a different industry or reducing their working hours. These issues may require further study for a conclusive reported. Arguably, career shifts derail economic stability while reduced working hours results to reduced individual revenue. Subsequently, it is noted that victims often accept negative financial consequences associated with career uncertainty, unemployment and anxiety of starting new jobs than to endure sexual harassment.

Workplace Productivity

The productivity of an organizational workforce is key to the level of success. Most of the business has diversified their labor to different ethnics, gender and race with the aim of breeding a talented group for success. However, gender-based sexual relations and its effects such as emotions are increasingly becoming a challenge for the most human resource manager to handle (Hudson, 2017). Sexual harassment has been reported across every industry with individual encounter eluding to a reduction in job satisfaction. Psychological perspective according to the cognitivist school of thought, humans are motivated to perform at their activities if they can draw a sense of fulfilment from it. Therefore, if employees do not find pleasures in their job, they will not offer their best to accomplish the objectives. The results of reduced job satisfaction results to both financial loss to the company and professional to the victim as they are unlikely to continue developing in that career.

Majority of sexually harassed individuals often engages in organizational withdrawal (Haruna et al., 2016). Although these groups remain in their employment positions, they do not commit to the employment activities. Some of the behaviors associated with withdrawal include neglect of assignments, absenteeism, tardiness among other. Moreover, other victims have decided to pursue complete withdrawal-quitting their jobs. The decision to leave employment is often cited as a strategy to escape offensive coworkers or employer-employee relationships, its costly to both individuals and the company from financial, social and professional perspectives. These cases socially influence the company’s productivity negatively by losing talented employees as well as limiting their ability to hire new staff (Hudson, 2017). Although persons learn and adopt strategies to deal with situations such as sexual harassment in the future after its first occurrence, victims are often skeptical of seeking employment opportunities among companies highly publicized on any form of bullying.

Considerably, in a different study by Sims and associates, over a four-year plan correlating the administrative records and experiences of military servicewomen, they reported increased cases of exits out of the force among women who had reported cases of sexual harassment (Morral, Gore, & Schell, 2015). Besides, it is noted that increased instances of sexual harassment, decreased organizational commitment, results in increased cases of job-related stress. Lastly, sexual harassment in relation to gender perceived roles creates psychological trauma among women. This situation of lowered justice perception results in the mentality of the need to over-perform among women to gain recognition and acceptance among colleagues or management.

Managing Sexual Harassment

Organizations have the tools, and necessary power to protect their workers and themselves from cases and financial loses against sexual harassment by a change in culture. Lack of consideration and strict implementation of organizational culture can result in individuals coveting poor and influencing control thus inculcating a culture of silence to different forms of harassment. Therefore, each organization must be proactive in the adoption and implementation of strict anti-harassment policies aimed at creating a culture of respect and dignity to all employees regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, or religion (Malhotra, & Srivastava, 2016). The organization not only need to communicate these words but should also demonstrate in actions that sexual harassment is forbidden. Therefore, the communication ought to be initiated by the top-level management.

Therefore, businesses can adopt a culture of dignity and respect through consideration of various steps. First, the company needs to define sexual harassment to ensure that every persons’ cultural norms are factored into the policy formulation. The policy should provide for different ways of reporting allegations at the workplace such as offering alternatives of anonymous platforms for individuals who fear for discrimination or retaliation from the accused (Malhotra, & Srivastava, 2016). The organization through the Human Resource Management should develop and facilitate a professional training program on sexual harassment prevention and ways of ensuring dignity as well as healthy relationships at workplace.

Secondly, due to increasing cases of sexual harassment, organizations must prepare of the possibility of receiving alleged harassment claims either by a top-level manager or co-worker. Therefore, potential internal mechanics must be adopted to deal with such situations taking into the consideration both short and long-term responses as employees reporting will like to see their cases taken seriously (Malhotra, & Srivastava, 2016). Moreover, its crucial to include employment law experts in both council or board handling such cases to facilitate legal understanding.

Conclusion

The puzzle of sexual harassment at the workplace because of the majority of victims being fearful to express these incidents are quickly changing to due legal initiatives and employee awareness. Negative sexual behavior had become a menace in most institutions resulting in emotional distress, financial problems and decreased productivity within workplaces. Although prohibited by constitutional law and institutional regulations, sexual harassment still exists in various organizational settings. the occurrences of retaliation from the accused have forced most of the victims to either keep the incidences to themselves or resign from their jobs resulting to both emotional stress and financial loss. However, there have been legal cases and lawsuits against some perpetrators resulting in significant economic losses to the companies. Therefore, there is a need for developing and implementing anti-sexual harassment policies to promote decent and healthy relationships while protecting both the company and the workers.