Harassment
Overview & Definition of Harassment
The Code promotes equal employment opportunities and the right to work in a harassment-free environment.
Your company is responsible for preventing or stopping harassment. The company, people acting on its behalf, its employees, and its agents, must not harass employees and co-workers based on the prohibited grounds of discrimination. Whether harassment or discrimination is intentional does not matter: what matters is the effect of the behaviour on an individual or group.
The Code’s Definition of Harassment
“A course of vexatious (embarrassing, distressing or humiliating) comment or conduct that is known or ought reasonably to be known to be unwelcome.”
What does it mean in plain English?
- Behaviours associated with harassment are unasked for and unwelcome by the recipient;
- Generally, depending on the severity of the behaviour or nature of the comments, to be considered harassment they must occur more than once (i.e. be ongoing);
- A one-time incident, if severe enough, may be sufficient to meet the legal definition of harassment;
- A reasonable person should know when they do or say something that may be offensive to others. Whether a person intends to offend someone does not matter.
Examples of Harassment
Types of behaviour associated with prohibited grounds, which may constitute harassment, include, but are not limited to:
- Unwelcome remarks, jokes, innuendos, or taunting;
- Practical jokes of a racial or religious nature that cause awkwardness or embarrassment;
- Mocking someone’s accent;
- Displaying or electronically transmitting pornography, racist pictures or other offensive material;
- Condescending or paternalistic behaviour that undermines self-respect;
- Refusing to converse or work with an employee because of his/her race or ethnic background.
Harassment is not...
- Normal and appropriate exercise of supervisory responsibilities, including performance management, training, work assignments, and discipline.
- Normal social interaction, good-natured joking, and appropriate humour in the workplace.
Human Rights Reference Tool Overview
Discuss the responsibility and liability of all parties, the scope of protection, prohibited and non-prohibited grounds, and the social areas covered within the grounds.
Provide definitions and examples of all forms of harassment and discrimination.
Provide a downloadable version of the company’s Human Rights and Anti-Harassment Policy.
Provide a number of quick links on the key themes of this Human Rights Reference Tool.
Provide commonly asked questions and answers as it applies to your company’s policy.
This Human Rights Reference Tool can be further customized and enhanced by including your company’s brand/logo, and policy.
Contact HR Proactive Inc. to discuss customization options and pricing.
Sexual Harassment
Sexual harassment still exists in the workplace. Targets of sexual harassment can be male or female, or those whose gender expression and gender identity differs from stereotypical norms (e.g., transgender, non-binary, two-spirit). The majority of complaints, however, are made by women against men. Research indicates that most women will experience at least one incident of sexual harassment during their working career and that most will not report it.
Sexual harassment is covered under a separate section of the Code, which guarantees that every person has a right to freedom from sexual harassment. There are four types of sexual harassment. Click on each of the labels for details on the roles regarding responsibility liability.
QUID PRO QUO
Something in exchange for something.
A person in a position of authority directly or indirectly makes sexual behaviour a condition of employment. An example of this would be when a manager or supervisor states that they will give the subordinate employee a poor performance review or will not support their advancement if they do not consent to sexual favours.
GENDER OR PREGNANCY
In some cases, comments or conduct may not be sexual in nature, but related to an individual’s gender. A person may be harassed because she is a woman. This too is a form of sexual harassment.
BEHAVIOUR BASED ON SEXUAL STEREOTYPES
Behaviour based on sexual stereotypes is a form of sexual harassment. Comments or conduct suggesting that women are suitable for only certain kinds of work, for example, discriminate against women in the workplace.
POISONED WORK ENVIRONMENT
Insulting, degrading or sexual comments and displays (e.g., pornography) are examples of a work environment that has become poisoned. Employees have a right to a workplace free from such harassment.
The following are some examples of behaviours that may constitute sexual harassment:
- Continual conversation of a sexual nature;
- Persistent and offensive jokes of a sexual or gender-specific nature;
- Suggestive or insulting sounds (e.g. whistling or cat calls);
- Lewd gestures;
- Sexual comments about body shape, clothes or weight;
- Comments or questions about a person’s sex life or relationship with partner;
- Posting or electronically transmitting pornographic or sexually explicit pictures and jokes;
- Sexual exposure;
- Unnecessary physical contact (e.g. pinching, touching or patting);
- Condescension or paternalism which undermines self-respect;
- Sexual assault;
- Sexual innuendoes or taunting; or
- Vulgar humour or language.
- Most targets of sexual harassment are women.
- An individual targeted for sexual harassment may feel confused, angry, frustrated and humiliated.
- Sexual harassment can affect the targeted individual’s ability to do their job, lead to physical and emotional problems, withdrawal from co-workers, and absenteeism.
- Targets of sexual harassment are often afraid to report incidents of sexual harassment for fear they will not be believed, they will be labelled as troublemakers, they will be fired, they are afraid it will reflect badly on them, nothing will be done or they will suffer repercussions and guilt.
When an individual in the workplace is being harassed, it can have a negative and detrimental effect on the whole workplace. It may:
- Increase stress (if the employer is not committed to dealing with harassment issues, witnesses may fear for their jobs if they come forward);
- Create a lack of trust;
- Create a divisive workforce (as employees take sides with either the targeted individual or the harasser);
- Decrease productivity;
- Increase turnover rate (some targeted individuals choose to leave the workplace either through transfer or quitting rather than making a complaint) due to the harassment.
The types of support mechanisms an employer should have in place are:
- A harassment policy and procedures;
- An Employee Assistance Program;
- Procedures for maintaining confidentiality;
- Supportive management;
- A work environment that encourages the reporting of complaints;
- An environment where complaints are taken seriously and handled promptly and appropriately;
- Steps to minimize contact of harasser and targeted individual.
Personal Harassment
Personal harassment is improper comment and/or conduct, not related to a legitimate work purpose, directed at and offensive to another person or persons in the workplace and that the individual knows or ought to reasonably know would offend, harm or is derogatory, demeaning or causes humiliation or embarrassment.
Personal harassment is not explicitly covered by the Ontario Human Rights Code.
Behaviours that Constitute Personal Harassment
The range of behaviours that may constitute personal harassment is very broad and can include:
- Frequent angry shouting/yelling or blow-ups;
- Regular use of profanity and abusive or violent language;
- Physical, verbal or email threats, intimidation;
- Violent behaviours – slamming doors, throwing objects;
- Targeting individual(s) in humiliating practical jokes;
- Excluding, shunning or ostracizing;
- Abuse of authority;
- False accusations;
- Sabotaging, taking credit for, or deliberately impeding another’s work;
- Making inappropriate, embarrassing, or belittling comments or jokes about an individual;
- Public humiliation;
- Spreading gossip, rumours, negative blogging, cyberbullying;
- Bullying;
- Unsubstantiated criticism, unreasonable demands;
- Insults, name calling;
- Communication that is demeaning, insulting, humiliating, mocking.
More and more employers are being held legally accountable if they allow this type of behaviour to occur in the workplace. At the present time, the only recourse available to an employee who is personally harassed is through the courts or through an internal personal harassment complaint policy.
Psychological Harassment
- On June 1, 2004, Quebec introduced new protection against psychological harassment at work – the first jurisdiction in North America to do so.
- Saskatchewan (in 2007) and Ontario (in 2010) enacted changes to their Occupational Health and Safety Acts to address violence and harassment, including personal and psychological harassment.
- British Columbia effectively did much the same through its amendments to the Workers Compensation Act in 2012.
- In Ontario, Saskatchewan, and B.C., employers are required to develop and implement written policies addressing both workplace violence and harassment, and train employees on those policies.
- In Ontario and B.C., employers are required to establish procedures to investigate incidents of harassment.
Definition of Psychological Harassment in Ontario and Saskatchewan
Non-Code-related harassment is defined in Ontario as “engaging in a course of vexatious comment or conduct against a worker in a workplace that is known or ought reasonably to be known to be unwelcome.”
In Saskatchewan harassment is “any inappropriate conduct, comment, display, action or gesture by a person that:
- adversely affects a worker’s psychological or physical well being; and,
- the perpetrator knows or ought to reasonably know would cause the worker to be humiliated or intimidated.”
These definitions clearly encompass bullying, which can thus be cause for action under occupational health and safety law.
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