“Sexual Harassment Should Not Be Tolerated at the Workplace”.

In the age of high powered lawsuits and increasing bankruptcies, companies cannot afford any misstep. Hence, firms are encouraged to portray their corporate profile and culture as transparently as possible to the public audience to ensure that all company’s communications and concerns are disclosed (Russel et al., 2007). However, internal issues such as sexual harassment and workplace romances are still shadowed and concealed. These two norms of the workplace may seem undisruptive to many but large, newsworthy events and setback had happened and it has long haunt the performances of a company. Sexual harassments and romances in workplace involve people, the article that matter most to a company because people are the one who plan, lead, organize and control a company’s performance. Thus, these issues have indirect measure in effecting the efficiency and effectiveness of a company as seen in Mitsubishi, Boeing and Ford (Kiser et al, 2006)

As defined under the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in 1980, any unwelcome sexual advances, verbal or physical conduct which affects individual’s employment or creating an intimidating and offensive work environment are classified as sexual harassment (Sexual Harassment Support, n.d.). Sexual harassment happens to both men and women, with a majority being the proclaimed “weaker-link” of the community – women. As proven, a statistic on sexual harassment underscores the seriousness with a percentage of 64 military females reported that they had endured harassment in service in the US Defense Department in the year 1990 (Eichelberger and Barton, 1994). However, the statement is highly debatable as harassment can happen anywhere and anytime, in regards their age or gender. With the increasingly high court cases on sexual harassment, the Supreme Court has drew it lines on harassment and noted that teasing, off-hand comments, isolated incidents and the sporadic use of abusive language are thus not harassment (Sexual Harassment Support,

References: Willert, SJ & Pedersen, ML (2006) ‘Williams Kastner & Gibbs – Labour and Employment Fall Update 2006’ [online] (cited 25 May 2008) Available at <URL: http://www.williamskastner.com/uploadedFiles/WillertPedersenCorpAffairsFall06.pdf>