What is a hostile work environment and how to prevent it?

What is a hostile work environment and how to prevent it?

Many people have a misconception about what a hostile work environment really is. They feel that if they have a boss or co-worker who yells, teases or causes a high stress work day that it is a hostile workplace. That is a true statement in a literal sense but it is not illegal, this becomes illegal is when there are comments about race, gender, disability or age. When the workplace becomes intimidating to one of these classes is when there is more likely to be problems or even a lawsuit. There are different state and federal laws that will apply for each case of hostile work environment. The hostile workplace laws fall under the following federal laws: * The Civil Rights act of 1964 Title VII * Equal Pay Act of 1963, Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 * Rehabilitation Act of 1973 * Civil Rights Act of 1991. * The Michigan law is The Elliot-Larsen Civil Rights act of 1976 (ELCRA)
A hostile work environment can be anything from sexually oriented jokes, posters, age comments, race comments, discrimination because of a disability. That being said in Michigan there are five requirements that have to be met for a hostile work environment claim to be filed: * The employee belonged to a protected group; * The employee was subjected to communication or conduct on the basis of sex; * The employee was subjected to unwelcome sexual conduct or communication; * The unwelcome sexual conduct or communication was intended to or in fact did substantially interfere with the employee's employment or created an intimidating, hostile, or offensive work environment; * Respondeat superior.

63% of hostile workplace lawsuits are settled with no reasonable cause provided. This would be because of lack of evidence. Only 3.8% of harassment cases are listed as having reasonable cause. These are staggering numbers as according to the EEOC statistics of 33,956 resolutions for FY2011 only 1,279 were listed as having reasonable cause. As a plaintiff you must be able to provide explicit proof that the harassment happened. You must be able to prove that the employer knew about the harassment and that they did nothing to remedy the situation. The plaintiff needs to be sure that they have followed all protocol for reporting the harassment. Even following protocol will not always win your case. In Michigan if the harassment is sexual “the employee must make a complaint on the company harassment hotline, HR or the owner of the company” so that action can be taken for the situation.
There are some easy ways to prevent a hostile work environment, such as stating your company policies on harassment, educating the employees what constitutes harassment, what an employee should do should they feel that they have been harassed at work.
The Civil Rights act of 1964 Title VII as a form of employment discrimination, this would be “unwelcome verbal or physical conduct based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, sexual orientation, or retaliation.” Federal laws cover employers with 15 or more employees; ELCRA covers all employers no matter how many employees they have.
The EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) will carry out investigations on the Federal Level about harassment and discrimination cases of companies with 15 or more employees. The EEOC is to be a neutral party who will investigate with no bias in the situations to find out what happened in each case that is brought to them. The EEOC enforces the federal civil rights laws and harassment laws mentioned above.
In a hostile workplace lawsuit there are many different ways that someone can be the victim or harasser. A victim can be someone who happened to overhear a conversation or another employee being harassed and they felt uncomfortable or threatened by what was being said at that time. The victim of a hostile workplace could be a woman working in a predominately male environment and walking by a computer with a scantily clad woman on the screen or naked pictures of women in the lunch room or locker room. The victim is essentially anyone who has felt threatened or uncomfortable by a situation that was out of their control that was caused by another person or persons. A harasser could also be an outside person who is at your workplace doing contract work as a supplier or vendor; the copy repair man could provide a hostile work environment in making sexually oriented comments about an employee.
It is an employer’s responsibility to make sure that employees are not being harassed in the workplace. In 1998 in two separate cases Burlington Industries, Inc. v. Ellerth, 118 S. Ct. 2257 (1998) and Faragher v. City of Boca Raton, 118 S. Ct. 2275 (1998) a federal ruling was put into effect that “employers are subject to vicarious liability for unlawful harassment by supervisors.” It states the employers are responsible for the actions of supervisors and that the “employers should be encouraged to prevent harassment and employees should be encouraged to avoid or limit the harm from harassment.” While I think this is a great ruling because employers should know what their supervisors and upper management are doing and how they treat the employees because unhappy employees make for a very bad work environment I believe that this could be a difficult ruling for employers to be able to fully uphold. That being said I believe that with employers being liable they will make greater effort to be sure that their supervisors are not treating employees unfairly or condoning harassment amongst their employees. Employers can make a habit of randomly checking on supervisors or managers to be sure that they are doing everything in their power to prevent a hostile work environment.
Once the complaint has been filed the employer needs to have all parties interviewed for their side of the complaint, you should also talk to third parties in these situations to find out if they may have seen or heard anything and may not be aware of what was going on. Employers need to provide confidentiality in these cases so that the complaint can’t be skewed in any way by a possible “friend” of either the harasser or victim.
What makes a workplace hostile?
Here are some examples of non-sexual harassment: * Using disparaging words, phrases and epithets in regards to race * Demonstrations poking fun at a certain race or ethnicity * Commenting on someone’s skin color or other inherent traits * Teasing an employee about their religious beliefs or lack thereof * Making prejudicial statements about an employee’s birthplace or family heritage * Negatively commenting on the age of an employee who is at least 40 years old * Belittling allusions to an employee’s mental or physical disability

A hostile workplace because of religion and culture, which is a large factor in today’s business world with the diversity of our nation I believe, will be more common. People are quick to judge an individual today regardless of knowing what their beliefs may be, just because you have a co-worker you believe to be of middle eastern descent does not mean that they will have the extremist beliefs that others do and wish harm on others, these rash judgments will definitely lead to workplace hostility and will bring many lawsuits. Because someone has different religious beliefs is not an ok reason to repeatedly say things about their belief while at work. While most people will have varying religious beliefs it would be best to really be aware of any statements you make to protect yourself and your employer.
Racism is still very much a part of our lives today, which is a very sad statement in my opinion. Racism does not have to be a black/white issue; many people have different feelings for all nationalities in that they feel whatever nationality they are is the best one around. Racial slurs against any nationality are not an ok practice today, yet it happens all the time. When these slurs happen repeatedly and they make coming to work an uncomfortable experience is when an employee should look into what laws may help them. Employees need to be diligent in reporting issues to their supervisor and any other required staff for any kind of harassment that is now affecting you performing your job.
Sexual harassment seems to be the most common hostile workplace lawsuit that I came across in my research. Sexual harassment can be, grabbing, inappropriate touching, rude comments about an individual, propositions for sexual favors, jokes of a sexual nature, sending suggestive emails. Most of these cases involved women filing the complaint either against a co-worker or superior.
What is not considered a hostile work environment is having a boss or co-worker who yells at you, or makes off handed jokes and teasing, petty differences of opinion or slights, even making employees cry. Most employees will consider those things as hostile because they are unaware of what is considered a hostile workplace. If these turn into a regular occurrence and persist then you are running into the likely hood of a hostile workplace and you will need to look into the process of filing a complaint. To file a complaint you will need to consult your employee handbook to find out what the appropriate steps are in your company to do this. Most follow a basic set of guidelines, collect evidence, tell the person you do not like what they are saying or doing, if that does not stop it then go to your supervisor, if it is sexual harassment in Michigan you will need to file a complaint on your companies sexual harassment hotline, HR or the owner of the company. If you feel that it has reached the point of not knowing what to do, now might be a good time to contact an attorney to find out your rights and if you have a possible lawsuit. Employees should never wait to file a complaint you only have 180 from the most recent harassment to file a complaint according to the EEOC, if a state or local agency enforces the a law that prohibits discrimination then that time period is extended to 300 days. ELCRA limits will only go back three years for evidence in a lawsuit from the most recent act. This helps employers out in that if the employee waited to file a lawsuit they may not have enough evidence to be able to pursue the harassment case.
How to prevent workplace hostility
Every company should have clearly stated policies on what is work place hostility and harassment; these are generally in an employee handbook which should be provided on the employees’ day of new hire orientation. These policies could also be posted in a public area of the company that is easily accessible by all employees.
Training to prevent workplace hostility is usually directed towards owners and managers as they are the one who should set the example of how employees should behave and what is an acceptable behavior at work. The EEOC will come out to your place of business and will give a limited demonstration on what constitutes a hostile workplace and how to go about preventing it. Some simple guidelines for preventing workplace hostility are: * Avoid yelling at employees * Don’t send inappropriate emails, this is concrete proof of a hostile or harassment type of workplace * Provide a time when employees can speak about anything that is bothering them about someone’s actions * Welcome new employees, make them feel like they are part of the team right away

The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services has a free online training class on what constitutes workplace harassment and how to prevent it. http://www.ncdhhs.gov/humanresources/harassment/index.html. This training seminar is very detailed and gives many examples of the different types of harassment there are in the workplace, how to go about reporting it, and how to prevent it.
There should always be support provided for anyone who has been harassed whether it is provided by co-workers or a hotline for the victim to call and seek additional help. Support from co-workers can just be a simple hey I’m here if you need me, or a co-worker verifying that they heard or saw the harassment in any form. If necessary the employer should be able to provide or help the victim find counseling if necessary.
Conclusion:
While I believe that all of the workplace discrimination/hostility laws are a good thing I wonder if they are too difficult to prove that discrimination or a hostile work environment happened, but in the same sense I would not want them so lenient that anyone could be sued on a whim. There are enough lawsuits for reasons that I feel are unjustified. When there are over 30,000 hostile workplace lawsuits filed in 2011 and only 1,200 were considered as justifiable I just wonder if the laws require so much detail that it makes it almost impossible to have a case that is considered justifiable. Are the victims supposed to secretly tape the harassment? What must they really do to be able to prove they were harassed? Again I believe that strict guidelines are a good thing but is there a point when they are too strict and people who have legitimately been harassed are left with no kind of closure on their case because the proof they could provide was not detailed enough.

References
The elliott-larsen civil rights act. (n.d.). Retrieved March 31, 2012, from State of Michigan website: http://www.michigan.gov/‌mdcr/‌0,4613,7-138-42240_43561-153172--,00.html
For the people.com. (n.d.). Hostile work environment. Retrieved March 12, 2012, from http://www.forthepeople.com/‌hostile-work-environment--1-1699.html
Harassment [Definition of Harassment]. (n.d.). Retrieved March 12, 2012, from http://www.eeoc.gov/‌laws/‌practices/‌harassment.cfm hostile work environment guide. (n.d.). Hostile work environment guide. Retrieved March 7, 2012, from http://www.hostileworkenvironmentguide.com/
Hoyle v. Freightliner, LLC, No. 09-2024, 2011 U.S. App. LEXIS 6628 (4th Cir. Jan. 26, 2011).
Nacht law. (n.d.). Michigan law and the hostile work environment. Retrieved March 12, 2012, from http://www.nachtlaw.com/‌CM/‌Articles/‌Michigan-Law-and-The-Hostile-Work-Environment.asp
Pamela Perez v. Ford motor company and daniel p. bennett, No. 01134649-CL, slip op. at 3 (Feb. 23, 2007) (Michigan.gov).
Reshard v. Lahood, No. 87-2794, 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 34426 (D.C. Cir. Oct. 31, 2011) (LexisNexis).
The hr specialist. (n.d.). Elcra lets employees go back only 3 years to show hostile work environment. Retrieved March 29, 2012, from http://www.businessmanagementdaily.com/‌3855/‌elcra-lets-employees-go-back-only-3-years-to-show-hostile-work-environment
Understanding workplace harassment (FCC staff). (n.d.). Retrieved March 12, 2012, from http://www.fcc.gov/‌encyclopedia/‌understanding-workplace-harassment-fcc-staff
Workplace harassment training. (n.d.). Retrieved March 31, 2012, from http://www.ncdhhs.gov/‌humanresources/‌harassment/‌index.html