You’ve Got An Internal Sexual Harassment Complaint: Now What? 3-22-19

https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/you-ve-got-an-internal-sexual-42497/

Bruce’s Summary: Say you’re in a small or medium size company and suddenly, as a HR Professional, while busy doing your volume of tasks, a sexual harassment complaint has been alleged and you are tasked to drop everything and get this addressed. What do you do? Are you prepared? Where do you start? Are you the wrong or right person to investigate because of an alleged history with the complainant? Is it more prudent to hire an outside neutral third-party investigator? Is everyone internally to close to the alleged issue, after all everyone in the organization is family, right and at this moment what’s the big deal?
Hopefully, you have in place some outline, process and/or procedure for properly handling such complaints in a prompt, impartial and thorough manner or maybe not. For those who do have a process, the authors provide a good Best Practices overview to compare to your current policy. For those who fall under the maybe not category, the authors provide a great check off-list of best practices to consider. Other things can certainly be added and should be to fit your particular industry and/or organizational culture. The key is, as HR Professionals, we should always be prepared because unfortunately, it’s very evident when we aren’t. “None of the information contained herein should be construed as legal advice, nor are Calvin Associates consultants engaged to offer legal advice. If there is a need for legal advice, please contact and seek the advice of independent legal counsel.” www.calvin-associates.com