Immediate and Appropriate Corrective Action

The employer must make clear that it will take immediate and appropriate corrective action, including discipline, whenever it finds that harassment has occurred in violation of the employer’s policy. Remedial measures should be designed to:

1. Stop the harassment;
2. Correct the effects of the harassment on the employee; and
3. Ensure the harassment does not recur.

Disciplinary measures should be proportional to the seriousness of the offense. The measures taken do not have to be those that the employee requests, as long as they are effective.  Remedial measures should not adversely affect the complainant, and should be designed to put the complainant in the position he or she would have been in had the misconduct not occurred.  The employer should follow up to ensure that the remedial measures were effective.

Some examples of measures intended to stop the harassment and ensure that it does not recur include the following:

• Oral or written warning or reprimand
• Transfer or re-assignment
• Demotion
• Reduction in wages
• Suspension
• Discharge
• Training or counseling to ensure the harasser understands why the conduct violated the policy
• Monitoring the harasser to ensure the harassment stops

Some examples of measures intended to correct the effects of the harassment include the following:

• Restoration of leave taken because of the harassment
• Expungement of negative evaluations that arose from harassment
• Re-instatement
• Apology by harasser
• Monitoring to ensure the complainant is not subjected to retaliation because of complaint
• Correction of any other harm that may have occurred (e.g., compensation for losses)