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“Any investigation needs to be reasonable and procedurally fair,
which also makes it more likely that the parties involved will accept
the results,” said Stehr.
CREATING A SAFE ENVIRONMENT
Policies and procedures are necessary, but they’re not always
enough to convince employees to come forward with a complaint.
Take the case of the CBC and the Ghomeshi allegations. The organization
had all the right processes in place for dealing with the
problem, but no one ever made a formal complaint during all the
years the alleged misconduct took place.
This can happen in any organization, where people might fear
reprisals or they may not be confident their complaint will be taken
seriously.
“Most companies want to get at these problems so they can
tackle them, but there’s a fairly sophisticated understanding that a
lot of this behaviour does remain underground,” said Thomlinson.
“Not everyone complains. The only meaningful thing an organization
can do to encourage people be more comfortable coming
forward is to help them feel supported and protected. If the company’s
not committed to doing anything, people get that.”
Given the real and perceived obstacles, HR professionals can’t
always wait for someone to come forward with a complaint.
“Information about sexual harassment doesn’t always come
gift-wrapped in a perfectly completed harassment form,” said
Thomlinson. “Often, someone else comes forward and makes a
complaint indirectly. It might come through the rumour mill, it
might come through an anonymous complaint. For many years,
organizations thought if they didn’t check all the boxes, if complaints
didn’t come in as the policy dictated, they wouldn’t have
to act.”
Consider, though, if the harassment case were to hit the media.
It’s pretty hard to justify not having investigated allegations of sexual
harassment because no one submitted the official form.
Instead, HR needs to find other ways to get at the information.
Conduct workplace assessments and employee surveys. Investigate
and consider every reasonable piece of information to understand
what’s going on at the organization.
“I think that’s a big learning for HR – not to ignore information
that comes through in a non-traditional way,” said Thomlinson.
HOW TO HANDLE A COMPLAINT
When a complaint does make its way to HR, the first step is to
make sure everyone concerned is protected, and the alleged harassment
can’t continue in the short term while it’s investigated. If
the allegations are quite serious or if there may be an incident of
assault, an organization needs to remove the alleged perpetrator
from the workplace in the short term. If it’s a situation involving
inappropriate commentary, there might be a way to isolate
the accused but still have them work without interacting with the
accuser.
“Make sure no further harassment happens in the short term,”
said Thomlinson, “but also recognize that removing someone or
suspending them can seem like prejudging, so you don’t want to
make that decision lightly.”
HRPATODAY.CA ❚ OCTOBER 2015 ❚ 23