How should you deal with harassment complaints?

As HR departments across the globe look at the ongoing fallout from Uber’s insidious corporate culture, clear questions come to the fore. Amongst them; how best does an employer deal with a claim of sexual harassment?

Although businesses should always be ready to react to serious employee concerns, a blogpost by an ex-Uber engineer, laying out claims that her complaints against her line managers sexual advances were ignored by HR, got HR departments around the world scrabbling to check if their own guidelines were watertight and being followed adequately.

Speaking exclusively to HR Grapevine, Rachel Suff, Public Policy Advisor at Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, explained that workplace allegations, of any type, should never be automatically dismissed.

She said: “Organisations should treat any form of alleged harassment seriously, not just because of the legal implications and because it can lead to under-performance, but also because people have the right to be treated with dignity and respect at work.”