Sexual Harassment as a Health and Safety Issue

SEXUAL HARASSMENT AS A HEALTH AND SAFETY ISSUE 1
Sexual harassment as a health and safety issue
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SEXUAL HARASSMENT AS A HEALTH AND SAFETY ISSUE 2
Introduction.
Sexual harassment is a pestering technique related to nature of sex and the inappropriate
or unwelcome promises of rewards in exchange of sex favors. It includes variety of actions from
sexual abuse or assault to mild transgression. Sexual harassment may occur in either workplace,
school, home, churches, etc. From HR perspective the concerns that surrounds workplace sexual
assault is that many employees are not comfortable to reporting the sexual harassment that occur
in workplace. This paper will main focus on sexual harassment as a health and safety issue.
Different kinds of work place harassments.
Sexual harassment is not permitted; it has been a big problem globally; every employer
should make sure that all the employees are protected from sexual harassment for a safe and
healthy working environment. An individual should act appropriately to prevent sexual
harassment and similarly respond accordingly in case it happens. It is sexual behavior that is
unacceptable it may occur in any of the following forms: asking for sex to give favors at work,
talking about someone’s sexual life, touching somebody, rape, making jokes that are sex-related
among many others. Every individual has a responsibility of behaving ethically to avoid
offending others, in cases where you may fall a victim of being harassed sexually, you can talk
about it with someone you can trust, confront whoever you feel is harassing you, inform your
superiors at work or speak to a peer counselor Bates (Henry & Powell 2015)
Sexual harassment could be from bosses, colleges, customers or any other person who is
involved with the organization’s operations. Every employer should ensure that the working
environment is healthy for all employees, they should, therefore, take all sexual complains
brought to them very seriously, find out more about the issue and take proper actions to make
sure that it won’t happen again. The reaction of the employer to reports of sexual harassment is

SEXUAL HARASSMENT AS A HEALTH AND SAFETY ISSUE 3
key to the organization’s productivity, maintaining good interpersonal relationships in the
organization as well as avoiding liabilities. After following up with any sexual harassment
complaint, feedback should be given to the victim to make them feel safe and relieved to enable
them to work comfortably.
Impact on work
A working environment characterized by sexual harassments makes workers feel
uncomfortable; it may cause emotional problems such as low self-esteem, and spoil interpersonal
relationships among the workers and victims may also suffer mental illnesses. There are also
affected physically and show signs such as weight loss, reduced appetite, lack of sleep and
diseases such as high blood pressure. This health problem affects their financial stability as they
require money for treatment which may be more expensive; some may even opt to leave the job
to avoid harassments. It also affects the productivity of the organization as harassed employees
have no working morale and work under mental pressure giving poor results (McLaughlin,
Uggen & Blackstone 2017).
Sexual harassment may cause work stress that leads to decrease efficiency and
effectiveness when performing their duties if the harasser is superior, the employee cannot report
any matter to them or request for clarification on the issues that are not well understood. This
increases the errors made in the process and affects the whole organization at large. Every
organization should create awareness of sexual harassment to their employees and also come up
with rules that prevent and deal with sexual harassment. Employees who are not able to deal
appropriately with sexual harassment and are ashamed to share with a trusted person, they end up
suffering a lot of psychologically which has a tremendous and negative impact on their health
(Hom, Stanley, Spencer & Joiner2017).