The Top 5 Harassment Trends - Trend 4: Contingent Workers

Each day this week I am blogging about one of the 5 latest workplace trends impacting harassment claims. We’ve covered retaliation, Web 2.0 and religious harassment. Next up? Contingent Workers. (I also spoke with Littler Shareholder Margaret Hart Edwards about this subject. Click here to view.)

Trend #4: Contingent Workers

As employers respond to our turbulent economy, contingent (temporary) workers could soon account for 30-50 percent of the US workforce. Contingent workers can create the same (if not more) legal risk as their permanent counterparts.

Contingent workers are rarely trained on company policies regarding issues like sexual harassment and how to report a complaint. But, according to a study by the University of Melbourne, contingent workers are 5 times more likely to be subjected to unwanted sexual advances, and 10 times more likely to be sexually harassed in their temporary workplace. This can leave their host employer liable for increased sexual harassment claims. Contingent workers can also be the perpetrators of very risky and very costly harassing behavior.

Managing the Risk Among Contingent Workers

To alleviate the “second class citizen syndrome” among permanent employees and contingent workers, policies and training are once again key.

Make sure you update your harassment and discrimination policies to cover all workers, even temporary ones. These policies also need to protect against retaliation and discrimination for workers who do report suspected wrong doing.

And everyone, including contingent workers, needs to be trained on these policies and how to report misconduct. Sexual harassment training, along with EEO training, is a proactive step to ensure an ethical workplace for all workers, whether official “employees” or not.

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s post on my next harassment training trend:  Male on Male Harassment