Defining Sexual Harassment in the Workplace, Corpedia Weighs in on The Diane Rehm Show

Phoenix, AZ – November 1, 2011 – Corpedia’s Senior Vice President of Compliance Advisory Services and Assistant General Counsel, Erica Salmon Byrne, weighs in with the current perspective on sexual harassment in the workplace on The Diane Rehm Show.

Listen to the conversation here.

There has been remarkable change over the course of the last 20 years, as we have seen a tremendous rise in awareness of appropriate workplace behavior as well as awareness in handling sexual harassment allegations. Nowadays, organizations with best in class investigation protocols raise allegations involving a senior executive to the board level.

When advising organizations on sexual harassment, we ask them to consider two main pieces of their compliance programs: 1) having the right written standards in place (policies, procedures, a code of conduct) that talk about the ways we treat and behave with each other to ensure that everyone is comfortable in the workplace. A trend we have seen over the course of the last several years is the rise in males reporting harassment by female superiors. This is not simply male to female harassment any longer, we are seeing same sex harassment claims and things along those lines as well. The second critical piece is training employees on these standards.