Sexual harassment isn't about being chased
around the desk anymore. It's about flirtation, subtle power
plays, retaliation and, of course, text messages.
"I was astounded," says McFeely,
who was in New York with several colleagues for a work conference.
"He asked me what I was doing in bed, why wasn't I down
there partying with them." McFeely told the man she needed to
get some sleep and hung up the phone. But the call continued to
weigh on her. "When you're not the one in power, and
someone does something like that, you just feel unsafe."
In Pictures: Avoid Sexual Harassment On The
Job
Welcome to the new sexual harassment. It's (usually) not about
the stuff you see on Mad Men, and it's not
chasing the secretary around the desk. "It's rare now that
somebody in the office says, 'Sleep with me or you're
fired,'" says David Bowman, a labor and employment partner
at the Philadelphia office of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius.
"Now it's about managers being very flirtatious at the
holiday party. It's about getting drunk together at happy hour
and something inappropriate being said or done. People are now
aware that certain things are not acceptable, but they still
stumble over the subtle areas."
Those subtle areas can include everything from flirtation at
a company party to a complimentary text message or an
unwelcome invitation to discuss the latest project over dinner or
drinks. "There's been a new generation of confusion in
this area," says Jay Zweig, an employment lawyer with Bryan
Cave in Phoenix. "Twenty years ago, it was, 'Sleep with me
if you want the promotion.' Now most sexual harassment claims
have to do with a hostile work environment, someone saying,
'This person is bothering me. I can't do my work. I'm
distracted and uncomfortable.'"
Much of the problem is that newer technology--e-mail, IM, texting or posting on social-networking sites--makes it much easier for comments to be misconstrued on many levels. Says Bowman: "When you talk in person, 80% of what you say is in your tone and body language. With technology, all of that is gone." If you admire an employee's new haircut while she is in your office, she can read your tone and body language; and you can read hers. However, a late-night text message admiring your employee's new haircut can take on a lascivious tone, even if that is not the intention.
A 27-year-old professional woman tells the story of how one of her superiors, a flirty married man with children, who, after overhearing a previous comment she'd made to a female co-worker about buying a new dress, sent her a late- night e-mail from his personal account, telling her he couldn't wait to see her in the dress.
"I'm sure you will look amazing in it," he wrote. The woman responded that she didn't appreciate him sending an e-mail like that to her work account, and he claimed it was a mistake and "half-apologized." Later, he sent her an IM that she feels was "completely inappropriate." She remembers telling her co-workers she would have to block him.
The woman says she never reported the incidents to her direct superior or human resources. "With a staff that small, I knew that any complaint would be public knowledge within seconds," she says, "and I didn't have someone I could go to and feel safe talking about a sexual harassment policy."
Says Zweig: "Sometimes employees don't understand that if you are at home, and send something from a private e-mail account to a co-worker, that it can still be used against you."
Rick Brenner, a management consultant and workplace politics expert in Cambridge, Mass., says that while a one-time unwelcome electronic message may just be an aberration, a pattern of them, with you or with other employees, could spell problems. Rather than running to human resources, Brenner suggests tactfully trying to find out if this person has a history of this kind of thing.
But he acknowledges that if there is a long-standing history of this issue, management may already know about it and have chosen not to act. In this case, he says, you might want to consider finding another job. "The legal path is not for the faint of heart," he says. "You need emotional and financial resources. It depends how you want to spend your life."
Social-networking sites like Facebook and MySpace can be another potential source of trouble. "Sites like this can become fertile ground for someone's fantasy life," says Brenner. "If you're trying to maintain a professional stance at work and don't want any entanglements, be careful about what you put up." Innocent vacation photos of you in your bikini may unwittingly draw unwanted attention at work. Brenner recommends having separate profiles for professional and personal contacts, or just sticking to a professional site like LinkedIn for your work colleagues.
When a female doctor, Dr. Petra Rietschel, with whom he was reported to have had a two-year affair, was fired two months after their relationship ended, she filed sexual harassment charges in Brooklyn Supreme Court. Though she and Borgen worked in separate departments, and he was not her supervisor, experts say the burden of proving that she was fired for legitimate work reasons will still be with the hospital, given the suspect timing of her termination. Says Zweig: "I advise companies to consider non-fraternization policies. Workplace relationships can be volatile whether they are clandestine or open. Invariably, when they end, it's hard to go back to just being friend and co-worker."
In Pictures: Avoid Sexual Harassment On The Job
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