Dating back to the late 1800s, common law in the United States defined the employment relationship as "at will," meaning that employers were free to hire and fire at will. Employers could, for example, refuse to hire minorities, segregate the work force, assign unpleasant work to women, and deny such groups opportunities for advancement. That's all changed. Federal and state laws now prohibit discrimination and harassment in the workplace on the basis of age, sex, race, religion, national origin, disability or pregnancy.
Training employees to prevent workplace discrimination and harassment is nothing less than essential. Not only can workplace discrimination and harassment affect employee productivity, it can divert resources from the company's real business. Improper conduct can also lead to company liability for workplace discrimination and harassment. The U.S. Supreme Court has recently established legal standards that employers must meet to avoid — or at least minimize — incidents of discrimination and harassment and avoid liability for punitive damages.
The first steps in meeting these standards are
(1) to create an anti-discrimination and anti-harassment policy, and
(2) to communicate it to all employees and independent contractors, both full-time and part-time, permanent and temporary.
This training program includes a generic policy, which you can use or readily substitute with your company's policy.
Program Summary
There are four versions of the program — two for managers and two for non-managerial employees. Some versions include video vignettes, and others are text-only. The manager's version covers the following topics:
Reasons for concern
Key federal laws
Sexual harassment
Types of sexual harassment
Conduct to be avoided
Other prohibited harassment
Conduct to be avoided
Employer liability for harassment by employees
Retaliation
Responding to Complaints
Maintaining a respectful work environment
The non-managerial employee's version covers the following topics:
Key federal laws
Sexual harassment
Types of sexual harassment
Conduct to be avoided
Other prohibited harassment
Conduct to be avoided
Retaliation
Maintaining a respectful work environment
Employees training for sexual harassment prevention. Also covered are gramm-leach-bliley act, HIPAA privacy & security compliance & information security
Other Ethics Areas
Sexual Harassment Statistics
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission tracks sexual harassment statistics based on the number of complaints they receive. In Fiscal Year 2007, EEOC received 12,510 charges of sexual harassment. 16.0% of those charges were filed by males. EEOC resolved 11,592 sexual harassment charges in FY 2007 and recovered $49.9 million in monetary benefits for charging parties and other aggrieved individuals (not including monetary benefits obtained through litigation).
Other statistics can be found in a telephone poll conducted by Louis Harris and Associates on 782 workers revealed:
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31% of the female workers claimed to have been harassed at work
31% of the female workers claimed to have been harassed at work •7% of the male workers claimed to have been harassed at work
7% of the male workers claimed to have been harassed at work •62% of targets took no action
62% of targets took no action •100% of women claimed the harasser was a man
100% of women claimed the harasser was a man •59% of men claimed the harasser was a woman
59% of men claimed the harasser was a woman •41% of men claimed the harasser was another man
41% of men claimed the harasser was another manOf the women who had been harassed:
•43% were harassed by a supervisor
43% were harassed by a supervisor •27% were harassed by an employee senior to them
27% were harassed by an employee senior to them •19% were harassed by a coworker at their level
19% were harassed by a coworker at their level •8% were harassed by a junior employee
8% were harassed by a junior employee Studies suggest anywhere between 40-70% of women and 10-20% of men have experienced sexual harassment in the workplace.
The very high percentage of sexual harassment reported as coming from a supervisor means that sexual harassment training of supervisors is vital. It's also a California requirement (through AB-1825).
More Sample Courses
Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) Training
Advances in "information technology" have enabled companies to collect, compile, analyze and deliver data around the world much more quickly and cheaply than ever before. These advances have given consumers better access to information, and they've given companies lower-cost and better-targeted opportunities to market and provide their goods and services.
But these technological advances have also brought new challenges to protecting information privacy. In response, Congress recently passed the "Financial Services Modernization Act" (also known as the "Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act" or "GLBA" after its Senate sponsors), which imposes significant information-privacy requirements on a broad array of "financial institutions." The Act applies not only to banks, securities firms and insurance companies, but also to other providers of financial products and services such as retailers issuing credit cards, money transmitters, check cashers, mortgage brokers, real-estate settlement services, appraisers, tax-preparation services, and even online companies that offer aggregation, funds-transfer or payment services.
Numerous federal agencies have passed regulations implementing the GLBA in somewhat different ways in different industries. This training program focuses on the privacy and security regulations passed by the Office of Thrift Supervision, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Because the program content is fully customizable, however, the program is readily adaptable to cover the similar regulations passed by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, the National Credit Union Administration, and the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, as well as individual states.
Program Summary
The topics covered in this program include:
• Overview of the GLBA
• What information is covered?
• Notice requirements
• Opt-out choice
• Opt-out exceptions
• Security requirements
• Enforcement
HIPAA Online Training
The privacy and security of personal information is something everyone should be concerned about. This is especially true in the area of healthcare, where individuals share details of their health, personal lives and finances when they are at their most vulnerable. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act ("HIPAA") addresses these issues by imposing stringent record-keeping and security requirements on healthcare providers and related entities. The regulations require uniform coding for the electronic transmission of patient data.
In addition, the regulations require "covered entities" — healthcare providers, health insurance plans, healthcare clearinghouses, and those who contract with these entities — to create and implement privacy and security policies covering all patient data that is electronically transmitted or maintained (along with all paper counterparts). The work needed to comply with these regulations presents a tremendous challenge for all organizations that handle healthcare information.
Program Summary
This program explains the HIPAA regulations pertaining to the privacy and security of healthcare information.
Information Security Training
• Along with music and movies, information is increasingly digital, making it easy to transmit and copy — and easy to misuse. While the entertainment industry scrambles to find ways to protect its copyrights, corporations are likewise struggling to protect their confidential information and to keep pace with the increasingly stringent laws that protect consumer and employee privacy.
• Although teenage hackers from Singapore to Helsinki make the headlines, ordinary breaches of information security often start with things such as an intruder in the workspace, an unscrupulous co-worker or a laptop swiped at an airport. A password scrawled on a post-it note under an employee's desk or an un-shredded, discarded memo may be the keys to security breaches that cause grave damage to a company's financial status and reputation.
• Laws such as HIPAA and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act demand that employees take specific precautions with certain types of personal information they handle. But even companies that are not subject to these laws must be sure their employees understand and follow company policies for protecting data in all forms.
• Program Summary
• This program covers the fundamental principles of information security, both in cyberspace and by the water cooler. It helps employees distinguish between levels of information sensitivity and explains how they can protect their workspaces, passwords and other gateways to company information systems.
States Served:
Employees training for sexual harassment prevention. Also covered are gramm-leach-bliley act, HIPAA privacy & security compliance & information security
Employees Training For Sexual Harassment Prevention
