Don’t Let Sexual Harassment Be the Downfall of Your Club

A GM wakes from a terrible dream; a nightmare that his Club had just been levied a whopping $15 million lawsuit for sexual harassment.

It was no dream for the Old Ranch Country Club in Seal Beach, California, where a female beverage cart attendant is suing the club for “failing to protect her from harassment and assault by its affluent members.” She asserts that “members repeatedly touched and propositioned her.”

Now, here comes the legal sword of Damocles hanging over the club; the attendant states that she was “encouraged by the club to give out her personal phone number and some members used that information to send her explicit messages.” She claims the Club’s management told her “members pay enough to do as they wish.”

As hard as it may be to read this, picture your club on the receiving end of such allegations. It’s important to remember that sexual harassment is perceived differently. In many cases, people don’t have the intent to harass but unknowingly do it in the workplace without even realizing the impact their having towards others. What’s funny to one person might be highly offensive to others.

Harassment can be categorized starting with something very minor all the way to extreme sexual assault. Therefore, it’s sometimes hard to spot harassment. The key is to be mindful and think would a reasonable person find this to be harassment. Did anyone see or hear the jokes (sexual or otherwise) in the workplace? And was it ignored as just “locker room behavior?”

Here are some indications that a sexual harassment lawsuit might be coming your way:

• Compliments making people feel uncomfortable
• Texting folks back with heart emoji’s and kisses
• Sharing too much in the workplace, i.e. love life, dating
• Tickling and poking other employees
• Managers making advances towards younger employees

You cannot rely on Human Resources to take care of this problem. HR does not know who is doing their job, coming in late, has a bad attitude or potentially harassing people until it’s too late. Managers need to read the employee manual and be the referee in the workplace. When doing an investigation, a number of factors have to go into an interview to find out what happened:

• The nature of the conduct
• The frequency of the conduct
• The period of time over which it occurred
• Whether the conduct was physically threatening or humiliating
• The extent to which the conduct unreasonably interfered with an employee’s work performance

I also recommend getting a third party to do an investigation, such as a labor attorney who will know what questions to ask and how to document the interviews. You may also consider the language needs as English can often be a second language.

California law requires all employers of five or more employees to provide one hour of sexual harassment and abusive conduct prevention training to nonsupervisory employees and two hours of sexual harassment and abusive conduct prevention training to supervisors and managers once every two years. The law requires the training to include practical examples of harassment based on gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation.

Every person in the workplace: supervisor, subordinate, or co-worker, can be found personally liable for the damages caused by the unlawful harassment. Therefore, it’s important for your managers and employees to understand their responsibility and potential liability. However, at the end of the day the GM will be held responsible if the club is incurring losses, turnover, increased costs and litigation. And that’s one nightmare you may never wake from.