Sexual Harrassement vs. Public Relations

common viewings vs. familiar Harass handst Eric Reidenbach CGD 318 Professor LaKisha Bryant August 12, 2010 universe Relations vs. Sexual Harass handst Sexual anguish fecal matter be a huge distr accomplish and could destroy a businesses bet environment. The effects atomic number 18 damaging to an organization and do non only when mend the man-to-man being harassed al 1 also dandy employees, the harrier, and the organization. Sexual torment is when somebody uses intimate behavior to control a soul, whether it is behavioral or physiological in nature, which makes you obtain uncomfortable.This paper on this get laid pass on include what exactly have intercourseledgeable torment is, the effects on the intimate anguish has on the person, employees, and operate onplace, and the different procedures and processes to prevent such fountains. According to the stir interlocking Opportunity Commission familiar torture is define as Unwelcome internal advances, r equests for knowledgeable favors, and some some other verbal or physical organise of a sexual nature constitute sexual bedevilment when (1) submission to such conduct is made either emplicitly or implicitly a term or condition of an individuals engagement (2) submission to, or rule byion of, uch conduct by an individual is used as the basis for employment decisions affecting such individual or (3) such conduct has the inclination or effect of substanti everyy interfering with an individuals gain performance or creating an intimidating, hostile, or offensive working(a) environment (Paludi, Michele A. , Barickman, Richard B. , rogue 3). Some of the to a greater extent or less common forms of sexual badgering charges come because a person feels they argon being harassed or singled out when they recede their argumentation, benefits or privileges or more commonly when they ar fired because they reject a sexual advance from a superior.This form of sexual torment is the m ost common in that a superior often propagation pull up s adjourns promise a person project security if they do sexual favors for them. However, if that person refuses the advances the boss or supervisor exits often generation fire that person figuring that they do not want that person telling others what happened and by firing them they have control of the situation. Most measure sexual badgering is a sense of power for the accused and they feel that with the power they have that they good deal sway the judgments of others, and often quantify do so until someone stands up to them.The second type of sexual curse is when the harassment interferes with an employees ability to perform his/her job duties and it creates an intimidating work atmosphere. Often times this is caused by fellow employees, supervisors, or outside vendors or business people. This type of harassment usu all in ally involves flirting, physical contact, whistling, sexual pictures or jokes, and so on. As st ated previously, there ar two types of sexual harassment that may occur in the workplace. Sexual harassment throne occur in any number of circumstances. For example, the victim as surface as the harrier may be a woman or a man.The victim does not necessarily have to be of the set hindquarters sex either. In addition, the victim does not necessarily have to be the one being harassed, but could be anyone that is offended by a persons conduct, and the harassers conduct must be unwelcome. While the conduct of the harasser must be unwelcome, it must also be undesirable. The harassers intent and behavior atomic number 18 based on the apprehension of the victim. Many times the one being accused of harassment may not even crawl in he did anything wrong if he was except telling a joke to a friend and a fellow co-worker was near by and overheard the joke and took offense to it.In addition the harassers intent or joke may not be sexual in nature at all, but their actions may be take n as sexually suggestive or uncomfortable by others. on that pointfore, we turn to how sexual harassment affects the person being harassed. In general, most people would assume that women are the ones in this economy to be sexually harassed because that of men, and you would be right. However, More then 200 men archive sexual harassment charges each year with the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission, thats roughly one-tenth of the number of cases filed by women.But more men volition experience sexual harassment over the coming age as women assume more positions of power in corporate America. In addition to this stat The American Psychological Association estimates that 71 percent of working women will be subjected to sexual harassment during their careers. These stats alone show how sexual harassment is typically known as practiced being a problem for females, but as times change and women become more valuable and highly regarded in the workplace, that sexual harassment is now graceful more of a problem for men as hearty.The effect on an individual who is being harassed is crippling and can affect them in legion(predicate) ways. When being sexually harassed the victims job performance, life, and family and social relationships could be negatively affected. A persons job performance will almost definitely be affected as they may be afraid to say anything to anyone there as they may feel that no one will ever believe them and that they are just trying to damage their supervisors re contriveation. Not only will they be hesitant about(predicate) saying anything, but they will also be weary of all that they do as not to lead on the person dealing the harassment.The effects of sexual harassment will not end there as when the victim goes station they may feel as if they are cheating on their teammate by not saying anything or taking action against the harasser and it may make them irritable and ruin their relationship at home. unconstipated in the case were the person does field the harasser they may politic deal with issues outside the workplace in the case that the supervisor is well backinged among the community and no one may believe the victim and think they are just making up stories to get up in life.It is because of these perceptions of sexual harassment that many people sustainment sexual advances and harassment to themselves and do not say anything. In many cases as well, the victim may choose not to say anything as they will be afraid of how the workplace will take the accusations and how the news would affect the company. For this reason it shows how the person is not the only person impacted by a sexual harassment accusation but how the workplace is affected as a whole as well.When a case of sexual harassment arises everyone is affected including fellow employees, supervisors, and managers as they will all be questioned and asked if they have ever noticed anything going on before. This is what you call a h ostile work environment and no one ever wants to work in that type of a workplace. When this happens the productivity almost always diminishes, ace and trust is tarnished as a whole, it becomes difficult to manage, and the customarys cipher of the company is at risk.For these reasons this is why many companies when faced with sexual harassment charges choose to deal with the case outside of court and make a settlement that way. If the company chooses to fight the charges then they risk them losing the case and in the end losing valuable respect within the publics image in the situation that they doze off the case. I guess you could call this way of remittal a fail- impregnable as the company does not want to give up but they also do not want to lose the case and in return lose customers and business and go bankrupt or close.By settling behind closed doors and out of court the company ends up rescue possibly millions of dollars and being able to move on without having the whole populace knowing about what happened. Once this is dealt with it is then up to that company to deal with the problem inside its doors and getting the companies employees moral back up and back to working. So, in the case that you are being sexually harassed you should exclusively start by asking the person that you feel is harassing you to stop what they are doing and if they do not that you will be forced to take action and file a complaint.Many times this simple act can just a down of trouble for both parties and the work force. However, if the problem does not end there then you will be forced to field of study the issue to higher authorities and have them investigate the situation and take care of it. This is why it is very important that every job addresses their employees on how to deal with harassment in the workplace, because harassment charges adversely affects all components of the organization. Everyone in the organization should understand what harassment is, the d anger, and how it can be prevented.Prevention is the best peter to eliminate sexual harassment in the workplace, and the employers should take all the infallible steps in order to prevent sexual harassment from occurring. There are a few steps that can be instituted by organizations to prevent sexual harassment from occurring. The first step is to develop a written sexual harassment policy prohibiting harassing conduct, action, and behavior. The policy should be distributed to all the employees and state how they have the right to work in an environment palliate from harassment.It should also inform them how when they report harassment that they are also safe from retribution from reporting a person and that any type of retaliation is a violation of state and federal law. The second step is to choke these policies to all the employees in the workplace. This can be done in many ways and the most common form is by providing training seminars per annum to keep these policies fres h in everyones spirits so that they know what can happen to them if they choose not to listen.Other ways to communicate these policies to the employees is by having it in the employees hand passwords, and by having the policies posted and many different places throughout the companies buildings and workplace. The third and quarter steps are to have a procedure that all the employees know on how to file a complaint. In addition to that step then the employer then should take appropriate remedial actions to investigate an employees complaint or allegation.By the human resource department and employer taking action they show the other employees that they do care about their employees and decrease the bidlihood that something like this will happen again in the future. In conclusion I tangle that a case study would best describe a lot of what I have just talked about and in this case the book from the ebrary called Internal Affairs The Abuse of Power, Sexual Harassment and Hypocrisy in the Workplace. In this book they talked about a case in which a 28 year old woman filed a sexual harassment case against her manager and stated My in-person relationships suffered so more that I cant really talk about it. I know that I am having trouble trusting people, certainly men. I wish I will be able to go to work for someone again, someday, but I just dont know. Ive missed my passion for work, I guess. Within a year, I have been sexually harassed, lost my job, my health insurance, and my credit rating, and was faced with great debt and a yearn climb back to where I was, careerwise. I won $113,000, in the end. How much did it all cost me? In my heart, it cost me everything I was, everything I had, and everything I hoped to be someday.You tell me how you can convert that into money. You Cant. No one can (p. 197). Maggies situation is one many women and men are faced with after a sexual harassment case in which even if they win they are stuck with many bills and many ot her difficulties in wondering if they are less superior then others. Many times when someone is faced with the question on whether or not to file a case they will look at a case like this and figure that it may be best to just keep quite and ride it out. No one ever wants to lose their personal relationships, job, or respect for just being honest and open about someone else victimizing them.Unfortunately, our world is cruel sometimes and we have people that are just in it to protect themselves no matter how much it hurts others. To every case however, there is another side of the story so I found it very interesting to see how Maggies work superiors responded to her case. The possessor of the business responded and said My legal fees are averaging five figures a month. Our public relations agency has added to our needs a crisis plan with a $200,000 figure attached to it. Im in for a million dollars, at the very least, and Shawnas t her desk, figuring out on her computing device h ow much she can keep after after taxes. The other employees are split on how they feel about her, Frank cant manager her anymore, so shes free to do whatever she wants. other employees resent that shes not doing her share of the work. We havent had befitting numbers come out of that office since the acquire was filed (p. 198). The companies response to the claim being filed against their manager, Frank, shocked me as it seemed as though they were only concentrate on the money they were losing and the work not happening because of the case.It seemed as though they were forgetting the issue at hand and just looking for ways to make there name and keep the business alive. I understand as a growing company you need to do all you can to keep the respect of your business to protect your name for your publics, but at some point I think you need to address the issue and the harasser as well. In the end, Maggie won less then a third of what she was looking for and lost her sense of who she was and many of her friendships, she was no yearlong comfortable working.On the other side the company lost its credibleness and many of the employees resented their job and did not feel like they were being inured fairly with Maggie just sitting around not doing much of anything. In addition to the millions of dollars for attorneys and human resource people, the company also had to budget $200,000 for a crisis management with public relations. This is why many times you see companies just settle outside of court so that they save all that senseless money and are not forced to budget in all those additional legal fees.It does not say how the company made out after this case but I would assume that they lost the respect of their other employees and the respect of many of their clients in knowing that there was a sexual harassment case going on inside the workplace. Overall, sexual harassment is a crippling subject for workplaces and no penny should be left unspent in educatin g the employees on the varying forms of sexual harassment and what could happen if you do not take heed to the warnings.There is ultimately no end to sexual harassment ever coming in my mind and the only way to ever tackle this problem is to just keep on telling the employees about the problems with it and what may come of it if they choose to not listen to the warnings. Maybe more articles about the harassers in sexual harassment cases and how it affected them and how no place would hire them because of their past, maybe that will put a scare into people and keep them from sexually harassing others.Books talking about cases such as Maggies and telling us how her life is no good anymore is not helping people want to report sexual harassment cases and are only helping the harassers feel like they can get away with it. Bibliography Barickman, Richard B. , and Michele A. Paludi. Academic and Workplace Sexual Harassment A Resource Manual. Albany, New York State University of New York Pr ess, 1991. Cameron, G. T. , Wilcox, D. L. , Reber, B. H. , & Shin, J. Public Relations Today Managing Competition and Conflict. Boston, MA Pearson Edu. Inc, 2008. Hearn, Jeff R. , and Pauline Wendy Parkin. Gender, Sexuality and rage in Organizations The Unspoken Forces of Organizational Violations. 1 ed. Thousand Oaks, CA discerning Publications ltd, 2002. Neville, Kathleen. Internal Affairs The Abuse of Power Sexual Harassment and Hypocricy in the Workplace. New York McGraw-Hill, 1999. Saguy, Abigail C. What is Sexual Harassment? From Capitol Hill to the Sorbonne. California University of California Press, 2003. Taylor, Joan. Sexual Harassment A Non-Adversarial Approach. NYU Press, 2001.