Sexual Harassment Training and Prevention

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Avoiding Sexual Harassment Lawsuits

How does the Construction Business Owner avoid sexual harassment lawsuits? Sadly, there isn’t any way to avoid a lawsuit if a person is intent upon suing you, whether their reasons are legitimate or not.

What you can do however is to shield yourself and minimize the damage that you might experience should you find yourself on the nasty end of a legal suit.

According to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, recently Checkers Drive-In Restaurants Inc. agreed to pay $206,000 to two female managers who claimed that a male company manager had sexually harassed them.

Along with the money, the settlement included an agreement by the restaurant chain to implement new training and monitoring procedures to prevent other such incidents.

The lawsuit, filed in March 2003, alleged that Checkers corporate management knew about the sexual harassment but did nothing to stop it.

Checkers stated that the company had reviewed the allegations but did not find evidence of sexual harassment. Checkers said they entered into the settlement agreement because it would be less costly than the cost of going to court.

The fact that the settlement includes the agreement, on the part of Checkers, to implement new training and monitoring suggests that maybe if Checkers had had other training and monitoring procedures in place, just maybe the corporate management that originally reviewed the allegations would have recognized that indeed the two employees had been sexually harassed and then acted accordingly, thereby possibly eliminating the entire legal tussle to begin with.

Next: Businesses must comply with State Requirements