In the United States, there have been a number of different laws that have explicitly forbid different types of harassment and discrimination. For example, the Americans With Disabilities Act protects disabled workers from discrimination in employment and other parts of public life. Meanwhile, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination based on race, color, religion, and other protected factors.
One of the best ways to ensure your company is in compliance with these laws is through a strong anti-harassment training program. When you train workers on harassment prevention, you can improve your compliance, enhance your work environment, and prevent harassment lawsuits.
How Anti-Harassment Laws Work
There are many different anti-harassment laws. These laws are designed to encourage positive, safe work environments by preventing cases of harassment. The following are a few of the most important laws that prohibit harassment.
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964: This act prohibits discrimination based on someone’s race, national origin, color, religion, and sex.
The Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA): Under the ADEA, employers are prohibited from discriminating in employment against individuals who are 40 years old or older.
The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA): The ADA protects people who have disabilities from discrimination in public life. Specifically, it prohibits employers who have 15 or more employees from discriminating against qualified workers because of a disability.
State and Municipal Harassment Laws Can Vary
Besides the federal anti-harassment laws, there are a variety of different state and municipal laws. For example, New York requires employers to provide anti-harassment training to all employees. In California, the California Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) prohibits harassment and discrimination in the workplace. As a part of this law, employers are required to prevent and address all instances of discrimination.
Other than state laws, there are also municipal laws you need to learn about. For instance, Chicago requires employers to include bystander intervention training as a part of their anti-harassment training.
Your Responsibilities as an Employer
As an employer, it is your duty to prevent and respond to harassment in the workplace. While some states don’t legally require anti-harassment training, it’s still a good idea to create an anti-harassment policy and require anti-harassment compliance training from your workers. By implementing these policies, you can create a better work environment and protect your company from harassment lawsuits.
7 Best Practices for Building Your Anti-Harassment Training Program
To build an anti-harassment training program, there are a few important steps you should take.
1. Create a Policy
First, you need to design your anti-harassment policy. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has a convenient checklist that you can use as you create it. Most likely, you will want to include the following components:
- A description of what constitutes harassment
- An affirmation that harassment isn’t tolerated
- Examples of harassment
- Methods of reporting harassment to managers and HR
- Description of consequences for harassment
- Information about bystander intervention training
- Training programs and requirements
- A method of recording receipt of the policy
- A record of each employee’s completion of the training program
- Rules about never retaliating against reports of harassment
- Separate training for managers and employees
2. Do the Training
Once you’ve built your organization’s policy, the next step is designing and offering your training program. In the states that mandate anti-harassment training, like California and New York, you will generally need to train employees on anti-harassment policies each year.
The best compliance training will provide a separate session for managers. Because managers are responsible for implementing these policies, they need to have additional training. For instance, managers must be trained on who receives reports, how to process reports, and ways to intervene when the manager sees an employee being harassed.
As Mary Simmons, Asure’s vice president of HR compliance, said during a recent Mission to Grow podcast, “Your managers are on your frontlines, so maybe your HR professionals understand these laws, but your managers may not. And they’re dealing with your employees day in and day out, so they need to know the basics of the law.”
3. Record Your Training
To give your company added legal protection, you should create a record of each training that you complete. While this record could be a paper copy, you can also store it digitally.
When recording the training, you need to write down the training topic and the date it was completed. Then, the individual’s name and signature should be added to the document. Once the record is stored, you’ll have proof that you can use if you’re ever the subject of a lawsuit.
4. Set Up Harassment Reporting Options
Next, you need to determine the best way to help your employees report harassment. Some companies use our outsourced HR services so that employees don’t have to report to their manager or have their co-workers see them talking to HR.
No matter what type of policy your company uses, it’s important to designate multiple people in charge of receiving reports. Often, the harasser is the employee’s manager. To help employees report harassment cases, you must ensure that there are multiple managers or HR professionals who can receive and investigate the report.
5. Review the Policy and Training Program Periodically
As you put your policy and training program into action, you’ll likely discover components that need to be changed or improved. Even if your compliance training is perfect in the beginning, new laws and changes to the structure of your workforce can happen. Because of this, you should periodically review your policy and training program to see if any adjustments need to be made.
6. Investigate Claims
Even if you don’t think a claim has merit, you should investigate it. In addition to the fact that you could be mistaken, your investigation matters because it demonstrates fairness and your company’s commitment to taking every claim seriously.
Typically, you’ll designate someone in your HR department in charge of the investigation. To ensure fairness, you should create standardized procedures for investigating each claim. Additionally, you should make sure to document your investigative process, what you uncovered, and how you dealt with the situation.
7. Consider Outsourcing Your Anti-Harassment Program
Outsourced HR teams, like Asure, can handle all of your compliance-related tasks so that you don’t have to. We can create anti-harassment and discrimination policies for your employee handbook and provide you with anti-harassment training programs. By turning to an outsourced HR team, you can ensure better compliance, easier harassment reporting for employees, and less hassle for your HR department.
What Are Some Examples of Harassment in the Workplace?
Sometimes, harassment occurs because the individual legitimately didn’t know that they were committing unacceptable behavior. Because of this, you should provide examples of harassment. You may even want to role-play responses to demonstrate what harassment looks like and appropriate ways to deal with it.
The following are just a few of the most common examples of workplace harassment.
- A manager keeps asking an employee for a date.
- Someone makes unwanted sexual comments about a coworker.
- An attractive worker is repeatedly subjected to inappropriate touching.
- A manager keeps sending emails with racial slurs and derogatory jokes.
- An older employee may be teased or left out of social activities because of their age.
Learn More About Your Anti-Harassment Compliance Expectations
To attract top talent, you need to create the type of work environment that people want to be a part of. Harassment isn’t just a legal liability. It can prevent you from attracting and retaining the best quality workers.
To ensure your company’s legal compliance, you need the best anti-harassment compliance methods possible. For assistance with building your anti-harassment training, reach out to our team of small business HR and payroll experts today.