The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) held another public meeting on workplace harassment recently as part of the agency’s continuing effort to keep the issue front and center in response to the year-old #MeToo movement. This latest session featured a panel of invited witnesses who offered their recommended approaches for harassment prevention through cultural change. There were no company representatives on the panel of six witnesses.
Even before the #MeToo movement, the EEOC had singled out combatting workplace harassment as one of its six national enforcement priorities. In 2015, the agency convened a Select Task Force to study the problem, which resulted in publication of a report in June 2016 that offered several recommendations on steps that employers might take to maximize proactive harassment prevention efforts. More recently, EEOC Acting Chair Victoria Lipnic reconvened the Select Task Force and held a public meeting to further explore harassment-related issues that have arisen in light of the #MeToo movement, including ways to address them.
The October 31, 2018, public meeting focused on harassment prevention strategies by way of workplace cultural change. Copies of the panelists’ prepared testimony are available on the EEOC’s website.
Members of the Center for Workplace Compliance (CWC) can read more here.