May 18, 2017

The Real Costs (and Causes) of Sexual Harassment at Work

Toby Graham Employment Law, Harassment, webinar

Last week, we wrote about why organizations of all kinds should take note of Bill O’Reilly’s recent termination following an investigation into the anchor’s alleged history of sexual harassment. But among the trends and takeaways we focused on, we left out an important number: $45 million.

$45 million. So far, that’s how much the O’Reilly case has cost Fox News in terms of settlements, legal fees, and administrative overhead. And these expenses don’t take into consideration the “soft costs” associated with a high-profile harassment scandal: losses to productivity, turnover, and reputational damage.

Last week, our friends Tim Scott (Partner, Fisher Phillips) and Patrick Sanders (General Counsel, Mungenast Automotive Family) teamed up with Compli’s Legal Content Product Manager Kynzie Sims for a webinar about employment law trends in the automotive industry. Tim, Patrick, and Kynzie spoke to our audience about how sexual harassment—and discrimination of all kinds—can cause a “huge drag on performance and your bottom line.”

Here are some of the highlights from the presentation:

Developing an Anti-Harassment Culture Is an Ongoing Commitment

“As the Bill O’Reilly case has unfolded,” Kynzie said, one lesson “is that harassment isn’t just a one-off claim: It’s really indicative of the compliance culture within your organization and can be kind of a barometer for how that compliance is functioning in your culture.”

Kynzie told us that organizational culture often suffers during the onboarding process, as employers “throw a ton of compliance training at their new employees on day one” without following up at a later date. She advised dealerships to conduct training and send out policy updates on a regularly occurring basis—bimonthly, monthly, or every couple weeks—even if it’s simply an email to employees reinforcing the company’s commitment to a positive culture where “everyone feels heard.”

“A one-size-fits-all approach may not always work,” she added. “It’s important that your policies reflect what your actual practices are going to be, and that you’re consistent in communicating and enforcing those policies, so that employees are incredibly clear about what’s expected of them, and what steps you’re going to take to remediate any issues that they bring to your attention.”

Harassment Can Be Traced to the Tone at the Top

Whenever his firm develops training programs, Tim recommends the client “make sure that you get the support all the way from the top”:

“It’s really effective to have the dealer or the GM introduce the program, and to sit in on one of the programs. It sends the message to everybody that … we’re not just talking the talk—we are walking the walk here.”

Patrick took Tim’s recommendation further and told us that, at Mungenast, everyone joined for anti-harassment training—including the company’s owners:

“Not only [were] the GMs, the director of ops, and everybody else required to sit in, but the owners sat in every year at annual training that we would put on,on this and many and other subjects. “ Once that is set up and you have owners involved and asking questions, the rest of it filters down.”

Kynzie agreed about the pervasive influence of culture on attitudes and behaviors up and down the hierarchy of a dealership. She noted that the Bill O’Reilly case highlights the ways in which mid-level managers sometimes let their top performers get away with unacceptable remarks and actions:

“Just because they’re a huge producer or a big name, that’s just more important that they’re held to those same standards, and that they can become role models within the organization for the other employees as well. It’s not a free pass on getting by on an offhand comment here or a complaint that just gets swept under the rug there. It’s making sure that it’s consistently enforced and demonstrated across the company to mitigate those types of those risks.”

It Doesn’t Take a Genius to Stop Harassment

Our panelists didn’t mince words: harassment hurts far too many people, and too many organizations fail to practice common decency and respect for others.

“One of the things we’ve always stressed at Mungenast is the Golden Rule,” said Patrick. “Treat everybody the way you want to be treated. And we use the Compli platform extensively to make sure that people understood that we weren’t just talking the talk.”

What can others learn about Mungenast’s use of Complí?

“You need to think about the manner in which you employ a digital platform like Compli to make sure that your message is getting through. And how do you get that message through from the top? We use recurring videos [as well as our] employee meetings at Mungenast, and we’ve talked about these issues—about ‘How do you treat people?’ … [T]hat, I think, creates the culture of compliance, and that’s the big thing you see from Fox—did they really have a climate of compliance?”

Learn More in the On-Demand Webinar

This is just a brief overview of the harassment topics our panel talked about last week. Stay tuned for Part 2 of our recap, wherein we’ll explore the FLSA, marijuana legalization, and more with Tim, Patrick, and Kynzie.

In the meantime, you can catch up with the recording of last week’s information-packed webinar, available for free, on-demand, in our Resources Library.