Sexual harassment law extends outside the workplace to all work-related activities regardless of the time or place they occur.
As a manager, you are required to maintain the same code of conduct for yourself and your team during offsite or after-hours events as you would in the workplace. Here are 18 of the Best Code of Conduct examples to consider.
Here’s are examples of inappropriate conversations.
Katie: Hey congratulations on your award. How does it feel?
Joel: Great! I’m going to go dancing tonight.
Katie: Dancing?
Joel: Yeah.
Don: Congratulations, Joel. Your group’s doing some great work. We’re all very excited about what you guys are going to do next year. We’re expecting some big things.
Joel: I’m not going to let you down, Don.
Don: Good.
Theresa: Hey, sexy!
Joel: Whoa! Okay!
Theresa: Congratulations! What? I don’t get a hug from Mr. Fancy Awards Guy?
Theresa: Oh hi, Don!
Don: How’s it going?
Theresa: I’m good! How are you?
Don: I’m good, I’m great!
Theresa: This party is awesome!
Don: Yeah it’s fun, right? I’m glad everyone’s having such a good time.
Theresa: Yeah!
Don: Good. Look, I don’t want to make a big deal out of this but I thought I should bring it up since it is kind of my job and all, right? Look, I want everybody to have a really good time at this party, so it’s important to remember that with your coworkers and office friends, there’s still a protocol that we should follow after hours. And I’m not coming down on you personally, but I just thought I should remind you that this is an office party, and as such, you shouldn’t do anything or say anything that you wouldn’t do or say at the office. Right?
Theresa: You’re so cute when you put your serious hat on.
Don: Great.
I’m glad we had this talk. See you Monday.
Theresa. Yeah! Bye
Katie: Da-yum! They do know this is a work party, right?
Joel: I think they don’t care right now… somebody’s going to be in deep doo doo tomorrow.
Katie: And it could be you if you don’t watch it!
Joel: Aw, come on girl, give me that.
But just as a side note, when you come talking about off-duty work conduct, you know it’s often impossible to separate on-duty and off-duty conduct because something that may happen in a bar often translates into feelings in a workplace.
And so even though the law there now tells us that off-duty work does impact the legal liability issues for the company, it’s also true that this is a practical matter – it’s impossible to draw some sort of invisible line between conduct that occurs off the workplace and then on.
I can remember a situation that happened after hours at one company where a team had gone out for what they call team building, but they really had gone out on St. Patrick’s Day for a little green beer. The green beer ended up not being a little bit, but a lot, and after a while the team stayed for dancing and whatnot. And after that evening, the next day, one of the women came in and said she felt like there was some harassment going on because there was lots of innuendo after a few drinks, and some of the dancing got a little handsy.
Afterwards, when we learned that she felt uncomfortable about things that had gone on, is we put together an investigation and had a conversation with all the people who were there. And as those things usually go, the more we dug, we found some people had left, some people stayed on, and at the end when things got kind of uncomfortable there was a small group of people there. And so we were able to determine, of the people who were there, who were the ones involved. All of them had too much alcohol and were very apologetic about the fact that they had gotten to that point.
The person who was the one who was accused of being a bit handsy was actually admonished, had a letter was put into his file, and so he was warned that if anything ever happened like that again his position could and probably would be terminated with the company.
Engaging, high quality sexual harassment training could easily prevent situations like this.
Consider Accelerate’s online HFC (Harassment Free Culture) training for your organization.
HFC is the best harassment training you can buy because it:
- Has engaging and relatable videos viewable anytime, anywhere; do some in the office, some in the airport or on the plane (LMS permitting);
- Exceeds legal requirements of all fifty US states; and,
- Is provided at a great price.
For more information, email Mike@Accelerate-LD.com.
Photo compliments of Pexels.com
