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This HR Manager candidly discusses the real sexual harassment cases she has seen, and tells us what we can learn from them.
The topic of sexual harassment in the workplace is in focus once again after TVF founder Arunabh Kumar and ScoopWhoop Co-Founder Suparn Pandey, were recently accused of the same.
In the recent past, other high profile cases such as those of Tarun Tejpal, former editor of Tehelka and Rajendra Pachauri, ex-TERI chief were also out in the media.
With people spending more time at work than at home, it is natural that social interaction will take place. However, inappropriate and deviant workplace behaviour in the guise of ‘being social’ often leads to cases of sexual harassment.
Why do such cases happen, despite most employees being at least partially aware that it would invite punishment and possible loss of reputation? While the aggrieved can be a male too, in our social set-up most often it is the female who is the complainant.
The following could be some of the reasons for sexual harassment at work, and for why women don’t report it more often:
Most cases are quite complex with several factors at play at the same time. Below are two real cases (with names changed to protect their identity).
Anita was facing issues with her non-performance at work. She was put on a performance improvement plan and was being mentored by the Head. A senior manager, Arun joined the organization. He was considered a high potential hire who was extremely polite, respectful and articulate. The Head delegated the responsibility of mentoring Anita to Arun.
During their discussions, Anita shared some personal information with Arun. Arun invited Anita for dinner one day to discuss her work progress. During dinner, he started drinking excessively and insisted that she stay late and he would drop her home. His behavior was flirtatious and he also held her hand trying to stop her from leaving.
Anita was alarmed and felt uncomfortable. She managed to leave and reported this matter at work. During the investigation, it was found that Arun was guilty. He had also lied about not consuming liquor while the evidence proved otherwise. Arun was asked to resign and leave. It was a stressful and time consuming case for the Sexual Harassment Committee. During the investigation, we realized that he had made another woman manager uncomfortable by asking her very personal questions.
In another case, during an international business travel, an employee was sexually harassed at a company event by the Head of the department, a fairly senior person in the organization. She left the event in tears and there were several witnesses to this. The Head of the department was fired after a lengthy investigation. As they were in the same team, he was asked to be on leave for some time and attend office only when asked.
There are several lessons learnt from such cases. It is responsibility of the management to ensure well-being of employees and to provide a safe and conducive work environment for everyone. There should be regular sessions conducted on acceptable behaviour at work and on the provisions of the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013. Case studies should be shared to increase awareness.
There is a compelling need to prevent such behavior from an organization viewpoint. There is immense mental agony for the aggrieved employee, huge loss of productivity, hiring and training costs of replacing fired staff and possible loss of reputation on account of lawsuits.
Investing in prevention of harassment is not merely a good corporate or ethical practice but there is strong business sense in it too.
Top image via Pixabay
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I huffed, puffed and panted up the hill, taking many rest breaks along the way. My calf muscles pained, my heart protested, and my breathing became heavy at one stage.
“Let’s turn back,” my husband remarked. We stood at the foot of Shravanbelagola – one of the most revered Jain pilgrimage centres. “We will not climb the hill,” he continued.
My husband and I were vacationing in Karnataka. It was the month of May, and even at the early hour of 8 am in the morning, the sun scorched our backs. After visiting Bangalore and Mysore, we had made a planned stop at this holy site in the Southern part of the state en route to Hosur. Even while planning our vacation, my husband was very excited at the prospect of visiting this place and the 18 m high statue of Lord Gometeshwara, considered one of the world’s tallest free-standing monolithic statues.
What we hadn’t bargained for was there would be 1001 granite steps that needed to be climbed to have a close-up view of this colossal magic three thousand feet above sea level on a hilltop. It would be an understatement to term it as an arduous climb.
Why is the Social Media trend of young mothers of boys captioning their parenting video “Dear future Daughter-in-Law, you are welcome” deeply problematic and disturbing to me as a young mother of a girl?
I have recently come across a trend on social media started by young mothers of boys who share videos where they teach their sons to be sensitive and understanding and also make them actively participate in household chores.
However, the problematic part of this trend is that such reels or videos are almost always captioned, “To my future daughter-in-law, you are welcome.” I know your intentions are positive, but I would like to point out how you are failing the very purpose you wanted to accomplish by captioning the videos like this.
I know you are hurt—perhaps by a domestic household that lacks empathy, by a partner who either is emotionally unavailable, is a man-child adding to your burden of parenting instead of sharing it, or who is simply backed by overprotective and abusive in-laws who do not understand the tiring journey of a working woman left without any rest as doing the household chores timely is her responsibility only.
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