It is almost daily that dealers’ consultants and attorneys receive a client call concerning an internal complaint of harassment or, even worse, an EEOC charge of harassment wherein the employer must respond in defending the charge. Statistically, complaints and formal charges of harassment continue to increase. As with our society and culture today, workplace cultures are wrought with poor language, nasty jokes, affairs, inappropriate behaviors, etc. It is, frankly, impossible to segregate today's societal culture from workplace culture. Additionally, employees tend to know their "rights" and aggressively pursue those, many times to protect their job, look for a windfall of money or in defense of their own inappropriate actions.

As such, it is critical that employers continue to remain on the offensive to include developing and implementing effective policy, training management as well as employees, aggressively looking into all complaints, directing frontline managers to be aware of and preventing or stopping inappropriate language. These and other measures are critical in any defense of an EEOC charge.

Click here to read the ACTION PLAN from SESCO.