The companies do not appear to have regulations relating to sexual harassment. Ideally, companies should have a clear code of conduct that discourages sexual harassment or racism at the workplace. The regulations should be clear about the consequences, such as suspension and even losing a job, of violating them. Those rules are important to protect employees from harassment or the actions of unethical colleagues while protecting the organizations from lawsuits. Had the companies involved in the case had strong standards, the cases would not have ended up with EEOC (Kurtulus, 2012). The companies could have reprimanded, suspended, or fired those concerned long before the victims thought of filing cases with the commission.
The common damage awarded to complainants in cases similar to those mentioned in the EEOC article is compensation. Courts often award them damages due to the mental anguish associated with harassment, loss of opportunity for advancement at work, the cost of retaliation, among others. Harassment occurs due to power inequalities where the powerful party harasses the weaker one. In those circumstances, the weaker party may suffer from loss of job, promotion, and other opportunities within the organization (French & Strachan, 2009). Compensation is therefore the only logical type of damage courts often awarded to protect the rights or the harassed.
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As a human resource manager, it is important come up with guidelines relating to relations in the workplace. Those guidelines should disallows all forms of harassment and prescribe actions the organization would take against those accused of engaging in those actions in the case of a proven complaint. As a human resource manager, I would also provide for a mechanism for reporting cases of harassment and dealing with them. The objective is to make it easier for employees to report such cases so that they can be investigated promptly and action taken (Nicholson-Crotty & Nicholson-Crotty, 2009). If the victims feel that the issue is addressed satisfactorily within the organization, they are unlikely to file complaints with EEOC.
References
French, E., & Strachan, G. (2009). Evaluating equal employment opportunity and its impact on the increased participation of men and women in the transport industry. Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice , 43 (1), 78–89. doi: 10.1016/j.tra.2008.06.003
Kurtulus, F. A. (2012). Affirmative Action and the Occupational Advancement of Minorities and Women During 1973-2003. Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society , 51 (2), 213–246. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-232x.2012.00675.x
Nicholson-Crotty, S., & Nicholson-Crotty, J. (2009). Efficiency, Enforcement, and Political Control: The Case of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. President George W. Bush’s Influence over Bureaucracy and Policy , 187–201. doi: 10.1057/9780230620162_10
