There are many types of unlawful sexual harassment that results in a hostile work environment. Now we’re going to look at the other area where sexual harassment training is crucial known as Quid Pro Quo.

Quid Pro Quo occurs when an employee’s continued employment, promotion or other job related benefits are conditioned upon compliance with sexual advances or demands, or negative job consequences result from the refusal by the employee to comply with the advances or demands.

Only individuals with supervisory or management position over a worker can engage in Quid Pro Quo harassment, since they have the authority to grant or withhold job benefits.

In my very first company in Silicon Valley I came in as a Recruiter, which was pretty much what HR was back in those days in small companies, a company of about six- seven-hundred people. And the person who hired me was right around my age.

A young woman, director of HR, my boss was in her late twenties, I was probably in my early thirties. I had no concept of what sexual harassment was, but I developed a close relationship, a working relationship with my boss. And I would consult with her regularly.

She was a great person to brainstorm with. Eventually she asked, “Why don’t we go out and have dinner after work?” And so I just followed her lead, she was an attractive woman, but in my mind I really didn’t think anything was happening on a romantic level with either of us. And it’s really funny because we had been out a couple of times.

I got promoted, I got a raise, you know – quickly. And I just didn’t put two and two together I just thought I was doing a good job.

The guy I shared a house with and his girlfriend and I went out for dinner one evening. I can still remember it. And after dinner he came and said, you know, “Cheryl really likes you.” And I said, yeah, well we have a good working relationship. He said, she really likes you.

Then one night I went over to my boss’ place for dinner with the whole staff. She was doing a little dinner at her house, and when we were leaving, she said, (everyone else was sort of slowly going out to their cars), and she said, you can stay. I said, oh yeah, you mean like have a glass of wine? And she says, no, no, you can stay the night. And I said, you know Cheryl, I don’t think that’s a good idea.

The next day when I came to work it was like I was working for a totally different person. She had literally morphed into a beast – said I wasn’t doing my job well, I needed extra training – she starting micro-managing me. I mean it was miserable. Projects that she’d been supporting me on, she started to withdraw her support. It was pretty bad. And ultimately what ended up happening was, I began to realize that she was pissed off because I wouldn’t spend the night.

They talk about two different types of sexual harassment. There’s what we’ve been talking about mostly, which is hostile environment sexual harassment, but there’s the other species of Quid Pro Quo sexual harassment. And it’s easy to understand it as a definition, but it’s much more subtle in practice.

As a definition, really all it means is that you offer something in exchange – something inappropriate, some sort of sexual thing presumably – in exchange for some sort of job benefit. So you say, If you have sex with me, I’ll give you a better job. Or the flip side of it would be to say, If you don’t have sex with me, I’ll demote you.

Those cases are rare, and they’re probably rare for two reasons. One is, few people are really dumb enough to do that, but it’s also rare because the evidence of it is never as clear as you’d think. You never have a video recording or an audio recording of somebody saying, “Gosh, if you have sex with me I’ll give you a promotion.” That just doesn’t happen.

So those cases are usually proven by circumstantial evidence, and the way it works is, someone is propositioned and they say no, and the next thing you know they’re demoted, or they’re given a bad performance review, or both, or they’re suddenly fired. And then the court is allowed to use the facts surrounding what we know to show, well this wouldn’t have happened but for a decision to say I’m not going to have sex with that person or I’m not going to agree with their invitation.

So Quid Pro Quo is the subtle occurrence where the jury is allowed to link a change in the workplace to, or a change in someone’s review rating, or a change in their position to an alleged conversation that occurs about wanting to have sex or wanting to have some sort of an affair. But the cases, they just don’t happen that often and I think that’s a good thing.

You know it was    interesting in my second company, I was working as a recruiter and I had been there about six, seven months, and one day a manager came into me and said that she had seen a women crying in the women’s bathroom.

Obviously, because I couldn’t go in the woman’s bathroom I wouldn’t have seen it. And she…Without giving me any details she strongly recommended that I spend some time talking with this woman, it was a young girl from the production line.

She came into my office very hesitant to talk to me, and… but I put her at ease and I asked her what happened, and the story came out that her boss was asking her to have sex to keep her job. He basically told her that if she didn’t do that he was going to fire her, and he had the power to do it. I found out there were other women, and eventually it turned out that there were four women that he had tried this with.

Two had basically told him to go shove it, excuse my language, but the other two were scared – I mean they were outright scared.

So I went to my  boss, and told him the findings, and he said – he was the head of HR – he said, you’ve got to go to the VP of Operations and tell him the story. And I did, and he looked at me and said, well you know the guy was in Vietnam, you know, went through a lot of stress – boys will be boys. In other words, there wasn’t going to be any resolution except a hand slap.

So what I ended up doing, and I don’t know why I had a moral moment, I agonized about it for a couple of weeks and I resigned and left the company.

HFC (Harassment Free Culture) training is the best harassment training you can buy because it:

1. Has engaging and relatable videos viewable anytime, anywhere; do some in the office, some in the airport or on the plane (LMS permitting);
2. Exceeds legal requirements of all fifty US states; and,
3. Is provided at a great price.

For more information, email Mike@Accelerate-LD.com.

Photo compliments of Pexels.com