EEOC Advises Employers to Update Anti-Harassment Efforts

Employment Law, Inclusion and Diversity

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) released a bipartisan report this week that concludes "much of the training done over the last 30 years has not worked" and recommends employers change how they conduct anti-harassment training, and teach the workforce only about more than legal liability.  Notably, the report recommends the EEOC and NLRB should "attempt to jointly clarify and harmonize the interplay" of the NLRA and federal EEO statutes regarding the permissible confidentiality of workplace investigations and the scope of policies regulating workplace social media usage.  In an effort to reboot workplace harassment prevention efforts, the report recommends employers:

• Conduct surveys to assess the extent to which harassment is a problem;
• Offer a range of reporting methods, multiple points-of-contact, and geographic and organizational diversity; and
• Periodically test their reporting systems to determine how well they're working.

The report also encourages employers to explore new approaches to training, including "bystander intervention training" and "civility training."  Separately, the EEOC has also proposed enforcement guidance that sets forth the agency's updated interpretation of the case law surrounding Title VII national origin discrimination.  Where the courts have disagreed, or the EEOC has a different view of the law, the proposed guidance sets forth the EEOC's enforcement position and explains its analysis.