In recent years, the media has been bombarded with several women, from celebrities to average office workers, who have been blowing the media up with hundreds (maybe thousands) of sexual harassment cases they have suffered from their co-workers or employers.

Certain harassment may escalate further towards sexual assault, rape, and possibly attempted suicides incidents. This puts a lot of pressure on your employee’s physical and mental health, leading to more employees leaving the company, and deter potential employees from ever joining.

This has caused quite damage to certain companies’ reputations, along with millions of dollars in lawsuits that companies are currently facing.

Unless you have that kind of pocket money to burn, then I suggest it’s time to take your employees’ environment more seriously by making these few changes.

Take ALL complaints seriously

Knowing that your employees are not afraid to convey their troubles with your company is a big step when it comes to building trust and promoting mental health.

This will give them peace of mind as their complaints are taken seriously immediately as soon as you receive them.

You don’t want to ruin your company reputation and start taking action on complaints and you will see your employee turnover rate decrease and your employees will thank you by staying longer, refer your company to future gifted employees, and more!

Acceptable Behaviour vs Unacceptable Behaviour

Draw the line with your employees on what types of interaction are not allowed in the workplace.

Try to remind your employees, at least 3 – 4 times per year, of the importance of what behaviours are acceptable and not acceptable.

Strengthen your reminder with certain punishments that will be done to them if any employees decide to step out of boundaries, but also, try to reward ALL your employees during these reminders if your company has received zero complaints by gifting them something special that will keep both your employees and your company happy.

Work Remotely

Remote work is one of the best methods of avoiding physical interactions that can potentially cause certain unwanted sexual harassment between employees – saving your company a lot of headaches.

As technology continues to advance and online communication becomes more reliable, your employees don’t have to continue to work inside a workplace. This helps your company save rental costs, increase employees mental health, plug themselves into work immediately and save cost and time from their commute to the company.

Whilst this solves physical harassment concerns, this may give birth to cyber-harassment in your virtual workplace.

Reach out to your employees

Routinely check your employees several times during the day to detect any unacceptable behaviours your employees face that are too afraid to speak out on.

This will prevent future harassment as employees are now being monitored and put in place as examples for other employees to know that harassment will not be tolerated.

However, not all forms of harassment can be caught in action, as digital communications are hidden, this at least avoids physical harassment that can seriously harm the victim’s life & mental health.

Encourage Employees To Speak Up

Train employees to learn about all forms of harassment in the workplace and how to report these harassments to the human resource department.

Knowing that not all employees are willing to report these harassments, the company should create a culture that encourages employees to speak up if they’re personally harassed – allowing employees to speak up against their employers.

If other employees see that the employees don’t receive backlash, they will start to trust the company to handle these complaints in future.

Verify workplace harassment accusation

As you’ve implemented these methods mentioned above, certain movements have popped up in recent years, such as the #MeToo movement, which has raised past sexual harassment incidents that went public on social media. 

This put’s your employees and your company at risk!

Address this with your employees on how concerned you are about sexual harassment and provide investigation methods your company goes through to solve their reports. Also, mention a zero-tolerance policy on any forms of sexual harassment to ensure that you receive authentic reports of sexual harassment in your company.

Transparency

Display complaint reports for everyone in your company to see to ensure that you take every complaint seriously.

Places the report at the noticeboard, once per month, to let every employee see the following data:

• The number of harassment cases received
• The number of harassment cases resolved 
• Duration of complete investigation
• Taken care internally or externally?
• Result of investigation

Once your employees see these figures, it’ll act as a deterrent for future harassment cases and helps victims voice their current issues with other employees in your workplace.

You’re All Set!

I have listed some of the tips you can do to make your employees much safer and possibly delay your company’s lifespan.

Implementing these tips can help save you and other well-behaved employees’ livelihood. 

Save millions of dollars today, which you can use to cheer your employees up with a nice bonus that would make them more productive throughout their work and invest in your company’s success.