Workplace harassment is back in the news again recently, both in terms of allegations against high-profile public figures and the increasing frequency with which juries have been awarding multi-million dollar verdicts to employees. With this heightened awareness of workplace harassment of all types, a refresher of workplace harassment basics and steps every employer can take to avoid harassment claims is particularly timely.

What Are The Legal Basics Of Workplace Harassment?

Generally, "sexual harassment" is:

Unwelcome, offensive conduct of a sexual nature that makes someone uncomfortable or embarrassed. Sexual harassment encompasses unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other physical or verbal conduct that enters into employment decisions and/or conduct that unreasonably interferes with an individual’s work performance or creates an intimidating, hostile, or offensive working environment. It is also the act of persistently engaging in words, gestures, and actions which tend to annoy, alarm, offend, embarrass, intimidate, demean, or verbally abuse another person.

Courts have grouped sexual harassment into two, separate categories -

(1) harassment that results in a tangible employment action (the former "quid pro quo"); and (2) harassment that creates a hostile work environment....