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Workplace Trends Survey: Sexual Harassment Prevention Training on the Rise

March 14, 2006

Increases in sexual harassment prevention, fewer harassment complaints and common workplace drug and alcohol testing are just some of the findings a national law firm has released in its 2005 "on-the-job" survey.

Katherine Torres

Jackson Lewis, a law firm that represents management exclusively in employment, labor benefits and immigration law, conducts the annual survey as a means to chart trends and developments in workplace law and related issues.

The most notable results of the survey indicate that sexual harassment prevention training for supervisors occurs at almost at 90 percent of the businesses surveyed.

According to the survey, 89 percent of companies train supervisors to prevent sexual harassment, which is an increase from 81 percent in 2004 and 79 percent in 2003. In addition, 49 percent of those participating in the survey said there were no complaints of sexual harassment in their companies, demonstrating a steady decrease from 2004, in which 44 percent of those polled said there were no complaints.

Gender discrimination, on the other hand, was the most frequent claim in 2005. Some 51 percent of those who were sued, when asked of the nature of the claims, cited gender discrimination, while 45 percent cited race discrimination, 40 percent cited age discrimination and disability discrimination and 17 percent cited national origin discrimination.

Other results included the following:

The number of companies reporting workplace lawsuits fell from 57 percent in 2004 to 49 percent in 2005.
Drug and alcohol testing is commonplace at work, with 62 percent of those surveyed saying they conducted such tests with 91 percent of those doing them on a pre-hire basis.
Many human resource executives (48 percent) say job security is the most critical issue facing the country, despite the low national unemployment rate.