Answer to Question of the Week
Each week, we post a thought-provoking question for your consideration. Here’s last week’s question, along with your responses:
1 out of every ___ employees has forwarded a sex-related email at work.
a. 50 (12% of the votes)
b. 25 (14% of the votes)
c. 10 (21% of the votes)
d. 5 (35% of the votes)
e. 2 (18% of the votes)
f. 1 (0% of the votes)
The correct answer is “e” – a rather shocking 1 out of every 2 employees, according to a recent Harris Interactive poll.
As anyone who watches NBC’s The Office can attest, ”email forwards” are one of the quickest ways a company can get itself in hot legal water. That topic was the theme of at least two shows — one in which regional manager Michael Scott inadvertently emailed semi-nude pictures of his boss to virtually the entire company and another in which he declared himself the “king of email forwards” and sent out lots of potential class action material to subordinate employees. In real life, both instances could have resulted in big $$$ lawsuits.
The lesson? All it takes is one wayward manager with an itchy “send” finger and –presto – you’ve got lots of potential plaintiffs each of whom has his or her own easily printable piece of documented evidence.
When I was in private practice, sex-related joking was the #1 trigger for most of the sex harassment cases I handled. People say lots of things in “jest” that they would never say for real. The problem is that things that seem funny in the context of an office chat may not be so funny when they’re read back to you during a deposition.
So, what should employers do? Similar to what we’ve discussed the past few weeks, employers should (a) have a policy in place banning inappropriate use of company email and (b) consistently enforce it. Virtually all employers have the former but, unfortunately, too few practice the latter. I also heartily recommend that — given the prevalence of sex-related emails — that this topic be specifically addressed in all sex harassment training.
Don’t let this happen to you. Allow me to repeat what I said the last couple of weeks, with a slightly different twist. Too often (prior to joining Manpower, of course), I had conversations that went something like this:
HR Person: We want to fire Joe Sleazebucket. We caught him sending sex-related emails.
Me: Do you have a policy that prohibits inappropriate use of the company’s computer systems?
HR Person: You bet.
Me: Is it consistently enforced?
HR Person: Um . . . define “consistently.”
Me: Well, tell me about recent instances in which you’ve taken action against employees under the policy.
HR Person: (Long pause) Umm . . . uhh . . . ehh . . . well . . .
Me: OK, maybe it’ll be easier to tell me about recent incidents where you DIDN’T enforce the policy.
HR Person: Well, we didn’t exactly do anything when our CEO forwarded an email to the whole company entitled “The Top Ten Dirtiest Jokes Of All Time.” Or when our top salesperson got caught downloading naked pictures of himself. Or when our head of legal “accidentally” visited 287 different porn sites. Or when (continues to reel off another 12,000 or so examples).
Want more? For even more discussion on this topic, check out this or this article from Business Week.
Our readers are now batting .480 (12 right, 13 wrong) on our weekly questions. The next one will be coming your way soon.
Thanks for your participation!
