Sexual Harassment by Customer Employee

I am an HR Professional for a mid-sized company that provides courier services for local businesses and I am a first time poster to the forum.

One of our couriers has reported that she is being sexually harassed by an employee of one of our customers, of whom she delivers to on a daily basis. The customer's employee apparently flicks a pen on the chest of our employee. Our employee is typically carrying boxes as she is delivering throughout the customer facility, and their employee apparently flicks her chest with a pen as she passes him. This has been happening for the past few months. She apparently does not encounter this individual every day, but when she does he gives her a quick flick of the pen!

I would like to ensure that the situation is addressed quickly and appropriately by our customer. What steps can I take to make sure that the customer understands the seriousness of this accusation and handles it appropriately? And what type of documentation can I request from them as follow-up?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

HRVolley

Comments

  • 17 Comments sorted by Votes Date Added
  • Hi HRVolley. Welcome to the forum.

    You have a serious problem which I have never seen addressed here before. I am by no means an expert, but I will get the responses started and we will see what other contributions will then be made.

    The first thing you must do is stop all deliveries to your client. You have a legal obligation to protect your employee, and it must come first. Your client will then need to conduct an investigation. (I would probably also do a little investigating of my own, and get the client involved if possible.) You should request your employee to cooperate fully with the investigation of the client. However, if she is more comfortable, I would have someone appropriate from your organization there with her while she is being interviewed.

    Assuming the investigation goes the way you expect it to, your client, especially the employee, owes your employee a sincere apology. I don't know if you can really expect one though. You CAN expect something in writing from your client after the investigation assuring you that appropriate steps have been taken. You really cannot ask for more than that as they also have a legal obligation to their employee.

    If, and only if, you and your employee are fully satisfied with the outcome you can then continue your business relationship. Continuing the relationship is a risk, so be careful.

    Good luck!

    Nae
  • HRVOLLEY: WELCOME TO THE FORUM; I suggest that you inform the management of the customer company of the situation. Do you have the individual's statement and has the individual informed the other party that she does not care for his actions and was there a witness to the event?

    I believe that if this is inplace then contact the customer company and so inform them that you will not accept there business if this individual is involved in our relationship!

    To do nothing is a wrong approach!

    PORK
  • [font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON 05-02-06 AT 11:27AM (CST)[/font][br][br]Has she asked him to stop? I assume that's what she wants to happen.

    If she doesn't feel comfortable doing that, I would call the correct person in the company, report the incident and ask that the tapping stop. Tell her to let you know immediately if it does not stop or if anything else happens. Document everything you did. I'm going to guess that it stops.


  • Several years ago I had a similar problem. Here's what I did as the Mfg Manager. One of the women working for me complained that the onsite customer inspector was asking her out and wouldn't take no for an answer and kept pestering her. I called my contact person with our customer and we had a good professional relationship so he took my concern seriously. He discussed the problem with the offender's manager who conducted his own investigation talking both to the offender and other customer ee's who spent time in our facility. The offender readily admitted his guilt. Turned out, my ee was leading him on and he crossed the line in the sand not knowing where the line was. Since this customer, being a large international organization, had strict policies, he was reprimanded accordingly and kept out of our facility for one year.

    So, I recommend discussing the situation with your customer contact.
  • Thanks for all of the advice.

    Our customer is also a large organization that I would hope has strict policies as well.

    The Transportation Mgr. has arranged for another courier to deliver to this customer until this situation has been resolved. I am planning on calling our contact with this customer, but I am waiting for our courier to return from her route so that I can obtain her statement.

    HRVolley
  • Let us know how it turns out.
  • This is a intereting issue as the employer is responsible to protect the employee from persons the employer has no control over. Make sure you take action. If nothing else, send a male employee to take care of this account. This is not unique. I did read a parallel case in Vegas where a dealer complained about comments made by a customer. It was much harder to address these complaints as a customer is not an employee and the only way to stop them from certain behavior is to ask them to leave, but customers come and go, thus in resolving a problem, there is no one person to deal with, plus the casinos need the customers. Further, no touching of any kind was involved but only verbal comments. There, the women were dressed to attract male customers and the natural reaction would be to say that a scantily clad woman in a casino might well expect some comments. You might think she was simply in the wrong profession but the complaint was taken very seriously by the EEOC/courts.
  • My thoughts were on the same line as Smace. Has she protested? If so, what was the offending employee's reaction? Ideally, a simple "Please stop. You are making me uncomfortable." should be the end of the matter.

    Otherwise, I would think that contacting this idiot's supervisor would resolve things.

    The only thing I would add would be to tell your employee to let you know if the harasser gives her dirty looks, ignores her, or makes derogatory comments towards her as retribution.
  • I was finally able to get a statement from our employee. Apparently, the offender first asked her for her phone number about two weeks ago. She stated that she does not give out her phone number, and since then he has been "flicking her" on whatever body part he could get to. She told him to stop, but he continues. Our employee also stated that there was a witness to these "flickings" yesterday morning.

    To make matters worse, I contacted the customer to report this situation, and apparently this employee is contracted through another company, and our customer is not their employer or manager. What a headache!

    HRVolley
  • With this info, I would pull her off the route immediately. Then work your way through the problem (document each step) and put her back on if necessary.
  • Is your customer going to follow through with your complaint by contacting the offenders employer? Or did they wash their hands since he isn't their ee? Did they give you contact info for his employer?
  • Prompt action is your key here. You need to put a stop to the problem. Get that female employee off this account promptly and then run up or down the chain to lodge a complaint. If the employee is by contract, who is paying the contract. For most contract employees, it is pretty easy to say, "Send us somebody else." If your customer is paying, then they have some measure of control. If not, find out who is responsible for this employee. If you are getting the run around on the employee tell your customer you may need to take up the matter with the local police since harassment is also an offense that can be dealt with in court. You may be surprised at how quick things can be sorted out if you start talking arrest warrants.
  • We have already removed our employee from the delivery route to this customer, and have actually stopped deliveries to them all together, until this issue is resolved.
    So far, the customer has been apologetic and concerned for the welfare of our employee (from what I can tell), and claims they are pushing the contractor to investigate and to contact me as soon as possible with their plan of action.
    If I don't here something by the end of today, I'll be back on the phone hollering!
    Thanks for all of the help!
    HRVolley
  • You have received some very good advice. Not knowing anything about your business operations I offer the following for consideration. Is the route your employee works considered better than others in anyway? If so talk to your employee first explaining your reasoning for the route change, you don't want/need an unhappy employee feeling you retaliated against her because she complained of harrassment.
  • > Is the
    >route your employee works considered better than
    >others in anyway?.

    That is an excellent question, and yes our couriers do have routes that they prefer, to others. And, when I expressed my thoughts that she should be removed from the route until the situation has been resolved, she was thankful. She did not want to encounter this individual anymore.

    HRVolley


  • Removing her from her route is a good move as long as the route on which she was assigned does not have a negative impact on her ability to enjoy the income dirived from her hard and dedicated work with all of our clients/vendors/customers! Make sure that her compensation was not hurt as a result of this bad guy on her route!

    PORK
  • Just to throw in my two cents worth, when you mentioned that the offender was a "contract employee", there still is a burden on this customer to investigate and resolve the issue (which it appears that they are attempting to do that) The point is, for all of us that periodically employe temps or contract lablor, there is an implied co-employment relationship that places liability on the user of the temporary services to insure no employment laws are violated, including harassment. They cannot wash their hands of potential or complete liability. The temp agency, once informed of the illegalities, has a duty to insure the offending behavior stops, or remove the employee from the assignment.
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