Harassment At Work, Challenge For HR Personnel (September 2011)

  5 min 30 sec to read

Harassment at work includes different types of unwanted action towards an employee that leads to complexity in doing assigned tasks or makes the employee feel that he or she is working in an unfriendly environment. Harassment may be based on different factors such as gender, race, class, culture, age, sexual orientation, or religious preference.

Different ways of harassment within and outside workplace are reported like intentional, situational, emotional, sexual and even harassment through use of technologies such as phone, SMS and email.

In many countries of the world, there are laws that protect employees from conducting various job abuses, if the reality of the harassment can be proven. However, in case of our country we do not have such specific laws. During orientation, employees have to ensure they will follow the bylaws of the organisation. Most of the organisations have mentioned in their bylaws harassment issues and actions to be taken if it is violated.

In order to recognise harassment at work, at first the conduct must be unwanted and offensive to the employee. Secondly, the employee must voice his or her objection to the behavior, allowing the offending individual or individuals to correct their behavior at work. Last, the conduct must be of a nature that makes an adverse impact on the ability of the employee to carry out his or her duties in an efficient and responsible manner and should be reported to the concerned authority. But in case of our country, most of the harassment victims remain silent due to which the tendency to harass continues.

If actions could be taken based on the complaints filed, judging the type and the nature of harassment then such activities can be controlled to some extent. However, it is difficult to control harassment totally as it is more an ethical issue than a legal issue. In Nepal, complaints can be filed at labor court and through the decision of the court based on written complaints one can file the case at district court and then to the supreme court.

Many organisations in our country do not carry out any investigation and just fires the harasser, which leads to employees taking advantage of the system and reporting misleading complaints. Understanding employees and observing, finding out the authenticity of the complaints received and analyzing the issue are major challenges for HR.

In order to control and reduce harassment in the organisation, addressing such issues secretly and confidentially is a must. Besides, CCTV monitoring, understanding employee’s behaviour and proper recruitment also play an important role in controlling intra organisational harassment. In case of organisation to individual and inter-organisational harassment, one needs to deal it tactfully.

Unwanted sexual advances by peers or supervisors are the most common form of workplace harassment. Both male and female employees may be approached by someone in the workplace who either hint or directly state that compliance will benefit the employee in some manner, or at least help to make sure that employment will continue. Today, many countries have laws that protect employees of all genders from this type of harassment.

Sometimes in case of multinational companies or NGOs/INGOs employees have to deal with foreign clients where comes the problem of intercultural practices like hugging, kissing or even shaking hands. In these cases, many people may feel they are harassed. So, in order to avoid this, HR should inform the visiting person about the cultural slopes and limitations and let them know how to make their stay comfortable.

Hence, in order to avoid harassment, office politics must be completely avoided. Besides, every individual should speak up if they feel harassed and only then we can minimise not only workplace harassment but also harassment as a whole. Minimising workplace harassment remains a challenge for HR personnel, however, neutralizing it is almost next to impossible. 

(The write-up is based on an ‘HR Kurakani’ discussion on “Harassment at Work- Challenge for HR Personnel” on July 27, 2011 conducted by Real Solutions Pvt Ltd. The participants at the discussion included representatives from NGOs & INGOs, Hotel Industry, Research Organisations, IT and Communication, Automobile Companies, Trading and Service Industries. Shailendra Raj Giri, Managing Director of Real Solutions, acted as the moderator for the discussion and Nibha Shakya, HR Executive of the company, was the coordinator of the event.)

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