This could be one of the toughest parts of any employer’s job. Sure, it can be hard to make the ends meet every month and every quarter. It can be hard to hire and retain quality personnel for skilled and unskilled positions throughout your organization. And it’s no piece of cake dealing with customers and clients, your suppliers and your supervisors, all catering to each and keeping each happy so they in the long run keep you happy.
But when it comes to difficulty, nothing may match having to interview witnesses and parties involved in a sexual harassment case. Whether or not the sexual harassment actually occurred, you are bound to have differences of opinion, and with those differences of opinion, you are bound to have the full range of emotions, from anger to confusion, from sadness to regret.
It will be the responsibility of you or someone trained in your human resource department to handle these interviews, and not only that, to do so in a calm enough and collected enough manner to actually keep notes using forms for a Harassment Witness Interview. Because as emotional as it may get from your employees standpoint—and from your own, since you care about and know your employees—you have to handle these sexual harassment cases as objectively as would a police officer.
The Harassment Witness Interview forms you might use are your proof that you did indeed interview witnesses to the supposed sexual harassment, but they also can allow you to concentrate at the task at hand. Ask the questions and fill out the appropriate spots on the Harassment Witness Interview form. Breathe. Ask the next question.
Dealing with a sexual harassment case can be one of the hardest, if not the hardest things, you’ll have to deal with as an employer. But with the right attitude and forms, you can do it.
