Harassment In The WorkplaceHarassment in the workplace leads to a hostile work environment. Such situation crop up due to harassment or discrimination by a person towards an employee of the company. Harassment takes the shape of many forms. If an employer treats his or her employee unfairly on the basis of race, religion, gender, age, disability, colour, nationality or ethnic origin then he is regarded as violating the civil rights of an individual. The hostile work environment makes the victim uncomfortable to work in that place and moreover such illegal behaviour affects the individual performance and hinders in his or her job profile. Moreover, the harassment or discrimination can have severe impact on an employee's benefits that include hiring, promotion, termination, compensation or pay. Sexual harassment is an unwelcome conduct or approach by an individual person towards an employee that constitutes a sexual nature. It include passing of lewd comments on looks, physical characteristics and even the attack could be on a personal life of an individual. Also, the sexual orientation constitutes of making offensive gestures, forwarding of e-mails and pictures and hanging of sexual postures. The sexual approach can also be in the form of touching, patting or clinging on other's body. Racial harassment is another type of unlawful behaviour that include forming awful gesticulations, passing unwelcome comments or speaking or writing against ten person's race or colour. Other types of harassment include gender and age discrimination. Gender harassment includes an unfavourable actions or comments on the basis of an individual's gender. Age discrimination involves treating a person of above 40 years of age illegitimately by an employer and the action could be of violation of an individual's rights. Disability discrimination is also a type of harassment that occurs at a workplace. It includes making comments or unwanted gestures towards an individual's physical or mental impairments moreover, when an employer attacks his or her employee's religious beliefs in any way that could also be counted among religious harassment. There are various factors that make the harasser to behave differently towards an employee. It could be a business relationship factor or when the harasser wants to empower his or her employee. The harasser is generally an authoritarian individual at a workplace. It could be a supervisor, workmate, manager or a person from managerial authority. The reason of harassment could vary. It may be that the there are no good terms on business relationship or the harasser wants to empower the individual. However, every individual has a right to work in a safe environment and if an employee feels that he or she is being suffered or affected by such harassments. It is considered as acts that are against the laws. In such cases, you can claim for your right. Agencies like Human Rights Commission, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Age Discrimination Employment Act and Racial Relations Act. There are also discrimination attorneys that offer their services to fight against all such harassments that occur at workplace. But the victim must have evidences in order to prove his or her claim. |