Sexual Harassment (Employee)

Sexual harassment is still the most common form of harassment at work, and most of it is not the obvious kind. This course shows where the line actually falls — between a joke and a violation, between welcome and unwelcome, between one bad remark and a hostile work environment — using scenes of ordinary office behaviour rather than legal abstractions.

You will learn the two things people get wrong most often: that harassment is judged by whether the conduct was welcome to the person receiving it, not by what the speaker intended; and that harassment is not one thing but a range of severity. The course sorts conduct into three levels — from unfocused comments, images and terms of endearment at Level 1, through targeted and repeated conduct, to the most serious violations — and shows how Level 1 behaviour becomes Level 2 simply by being repeated after someone has asked it to stop.

It also covers who can be a harasser (not only a boss, and not only a man — co-workers, vendors, contractors, clients, customers and, in healthcare, patients), why the same remark can be acceptable in one workplace and a violation in another, and what to do if you are the person it is happening to or the person watching it happen.

Who it’s for: every employee, in any industry. Presented on camera by employment lawyers at Ogletree Deakins.