There are few people who do not have a strong opinion about sexual harassment. Some people extend their managerial authority over subordinates to sexual control. Many other employees, however, argue that fear of sexual harassment claims significantly lowers their quality of life on the job and claim that fear of sexual harassment liability permeates the workplace. As a result, some employees are afraid of giving compliments to co-workers of the other gender, or afraid even to be in a room alone with the door closed with an employee of the other gender.
Sexual harassment is a difficult area of law for employers to deal with because it is still developing. Therefore, employers and managers cannot always be certain what conduct will or will not expose them to liability for sexual harassment nor what steps they can take to protect themselves. Additionally, common-sense determinations by persons as to what conduct is safe and what conduct is likely to be illegal appear to be difficult to make, because conduct that many males seem to be harmless may be perceived as genuinely threatening and harassing by many females.
Perhaps the best advice for employers who are responsible for avoiding sexual-harassment liability is to watch the developments in sexual harassment law. As the law continues to develop, employers should take a broader rather than a narrower view of what types of conducts constitute sexual harassment. As a practical matter, this means that in uncertain cases, employers are probably better off acting against alleged harassers than giving them the benefit of the doubt and doing nothing. Whether this is fair or not, the liability consequences for acting over zealously against an employee wrongly accused for sexual harassment are less severe than the consequences of not acting against the employee, should a court determine that the employee engaged in sexual harassment. Both males and females can be sexually harassed.