Case Study of Sexual Harassment at the Workplace
Abstract
This case study deals
with topic of sexual harassment in India. “Sexual & mental Harassment” – a
stigma which was prevalent both in organized and unorganized sector carrying a
social taboo which hampered its discussion. The women workforce of many
companies was at the receiving end of the torturous behavior of their peer and
boss but never raised their voice against it. In India, it was only after legal
consideration by Supreme Court in August, 1997 that the problem of sexual harassment
was thought upon and took a standardized approach towards curbing it. The court
of jurisdiction of different nations has framed different policies for sexual
harassment. Every law defines sexual harassment in a different way but the sole
aim is to comfort women in their respective workplaces. One’s “gender” should
not become a restriction for one to work. It is breaching the principles of
human rights. In this case, name of the employer company, the employees and place
of incident has been changed for the sake of confidentiality of the victims as
promised by me to her. This case has happened with one of my close friends
working in a telecom Company few years back.
Introduction to case study
The present case talks
about Mary who after completing her graduation from a reputed institute joined
Teletol Services as Graduate Engineer Trainee. She was stuck in the criticalities
of her workplace conditions. She has been an outstanding performer throughout but
now her manager Arvind and her Human Resources Manager Rinu are forcing her to come
to work in graveyard shifts. Moreover, the manager of another department has
tried making a move towards Mary. Mary is in a dilemma whether to be a passive
sufferer and continue with her work or to report the matter to the concerned
authorities or to quit and look for another job.
Mary did her
engineering in Electronics from NIT, Patna (India), and a premier engineering
institute of India. She had been a bright student throughout. She was from
2006-2010 batch of NIT. Being a consistently high performer, everybody around,
expected her to get a job from one of the best companies that recruit from
their campus. But unfortunately recession hit India in 2008.
As Mary and other
students of her batch progressed through their engineering, recession also grew.
A campus which was visited by more than 400 top companies was all dry and pale during
the recruitment season. It was in the month of March when Teletol Pvt. Limited
showed interest in hiring from NIT. Mary and her entire batch started preparing
for it. The campus recruitment process designed by the company was such that
only the exceptional students could make it to the final round. The first round
was a technical test, followed by psychometric test, group task, group
discussion and personal interview in the subsequent rounds. After a rigorous
process of 5 rounds, Mary was the only one from SRIT to receive the final offer
from Teletol. 15th April 2010 it was, when Mary was on cloud nine. Her dream of
working in a telecom company was finally materializing.
About Teletol Pvt. Ltd.
Teletol Pvt. Ltd. was
started in the year 2000. It was an Indian subsidiary of Teletol Services based
at Germany. It was among the leading telecom companies as it was launched PAN
India and started its operations in all the telecom circles country wide. Based
at Bangalore, India, the company has progressed extensively since its inception
in the telecom sector of India. Teletol India has grown leaps and bounds by
acquiring different small and medium sized telecom companies. Teletol has
acquired around 1.5 lakh mobile broadband subscribers in less than six months, for
its high speed mobile broadband service, DataTel. Presently it is considered as
one of the best telecom service providers in India and has its market share at
3rd position.
Joining of Mary in Teletol
Mary joined Teletol
Services on 6th July 2010. Its corporate office based out of Bangalore. She had
her induction for a period of 15 days where she and 25 other Graduate Engineer
Trainees(GETs) like her, got the opportunity to meet leaders from various
domains viz. Marketing, Human Resources, Finance, Research & Development
etc. The sessions they took and the experiences they shared were very
insightful for the whole batch. After induction, Mary was sent to Delhi to
undergo a mandatory training for 6 months. The training comprised of two main
domains: -the in-function and the cross-function.
As Mary is from the engineering
background she was recruited for the technical department. Thus for her, in-function
training would include departments like Radio Frequency(RF) Planning, Switch, Quality,
Base Station Subsystem(BSS), Intelligent Network (IN) etc. And cross function would
include departments like Human Resources(HR), Marketing, Finance, Sales etc.
She performed excellently well throughout and was rated A+ in the review conducted
at the completion of training after 6 months. After her training, she was
posted to Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh (M.P), India. Gwalior was the regional head
office of Teletol Services M.P. circle. Mary conveyed her wish of working in
Switch department to the technical head of M.P. circle. Considering her
academic performance and feedback which endorsed her to be hard-working, agile
and quick learner, her request was acknowledged and she was placed at the
switch department.
Problems faced by Mary while working in Teleltol
For the first few days
everything was according to Mary’s expectations – challenging work, cooperative
colleagues, lot of learning and new enriching experiences. After spending some
time with her teammates she sensed a hidden awkwardness between them. She
realized that her fellow team members were not able to accept her in the team.
She tried every possible way to gel with them but sarcasms and bullying was all
she got from them. After having a word with few of her colleagues she learnt
the fact that she was the first girl to have opted to work in switch
department. The team somehow could not understand how to deal with a female
colleague and continued treating her as their male counterpart. On conversing
with a GET of a previous year, she got to know that most of her team members
are on the M1 Level while she was recruited directly on M3. She was earning
almost 2.5 times the salary as compared to them. A female, who has got no prior
work experience, coming directly at M3 and possessing an exemplary learning
capability created a concealed hiatus between she and her colleagues. She still
decided to be patient and continue with the job when the unexpected happened.
One fine Tuesday
morning Mary reached office at 7am sharp. Her manager, Arvind Mishra reached
office at 10am and asked his secretary Manisha to call Mary for a small
meeting. Arvind wanted to apprise Mary with the new decision he had made that
Mary has to come to work in night shifts as well. The night shift in switch
begins from 10 pm and stretched till 7am. So Mary’s confrontation was not
limited to her colleagues only but also to her manager.
An excerpt from the
conversation which took place between Mary and Arvind is posted below:
|
Arvind:
Good Morning Mary. How are you? How are you finding your work?
Mary:
I am good sir. Work is going on fine. However, I think that the team is
taking sometime to accept me.
Arvind:
It’s ok Mary. You are a fresher. Make sure you gel well with them. Do not
give them any room to complain.
Mary:
Sure sir, I will try my best.
Arvind:
Mary, in the meantime, I have to assign to you a very important task. We will
be upgrading
our
Mobile Switching Centre (MSCs) and Signal Transfer Points (STPs) this month
and you know that such activities can be carried out only during off-peak
hours from 1 am to 5 am when call and message traffic is minimum. I want you
to handle the process and thus you are required to come in night shifts from
tomorrow onwards. Rajiv, Ravi, Ashish, Prashant, Nishant and 5 other of your
colleagues would accompany you for all these activities. Once this
up-gradation process is over you will be required to make some changes in the
system for which you will have to come to work in night shifts only.
Mary:
Sir, I am pleased with the opportunity given to me. I somehow am not
convinced with the idea of coming to office in night shifts when I would be
alone working with 15 odd guys.
Arvind:
O’Come on Mary!!! They are your colleagues. Nothing is so awry. If something
goes wrong, we will look into the matter. Do not worry.
Mary:
Sir, You will look into the matter once it has already happened? You will not take precautionary measures?
Won’t you make some arrangements for extra security of female employees? Am I
demanding too much. Mary contemplated.
Arvind:
Look Mary, I treat you as an ‘employee’ not as a ‘lady employee’. I do not
want my team to blame me for being partial and biased towards a lady
employee. I want you take up this task and do not want any further
discussions on this.
Mary
(firmly): Sir, I am not ok with the work timings you are putting me through.
Nevertheless, I will think about this and will let you know.
|
Non Support of HR manager and criticism faced by her for not joining night shift
The decision made by
Arvind came as a shock to her. She mulled a lot over it. She tried her best to
convince him about her inability to work during odd hours, but, her manager
paid a deaf year to whatever she said. Disgruntled and frustrated Mary came
back to her desk thinking about the discussions she had with her manager. She
never expected to confront such a situation. Is it my fault that they don’t
know how to address the concerns of a lady employee? Or Is Arvind a Sociopath?
Mary is stuck in the labyrinth of her own thoughts. She wrote a mail to Arvind
expressing her inability to come to work during graveyard shifts. She waited
for his response, but, Arvind was out of town for a Managers’ Meet and did not
revert. Or was he shunning away from sending a written communication in this
regard, so that there could be no documentary proof in this regard? A few days
passed, after which she started getting calls from her manager insisting and
pestering her to come to office during night shifts. A few of her college
friends requested her to contact HR with this issue but she was too cautious to
take that step, thinking that it might jeopardize her career progression in the
long run. It was now a month since the dialogue has happened between Mary and
Arvind when one day her HR Manager, Rinu called her for a meeting. Happy with
the illusion that HR will do something about this, she went to have a word with
her. The conversation between Mary and Rinu is appended below:
|
Rinu:
Good Morning Mary. You seem to look energetic today.
Mary:
Hello Rinu. How are you doing?
Rinu:
Mary I am terribly upset about something. Never expected you to be a part of
it .
Mary
(stunned): What are you talking about?
Rinu:
Arvind told me that in spite of knowing the criticality of the task you have
shown disinterest in coming to office in night shifts. You know the
importance of the Switch department at our workplace and still you had the
audacity to refuse? Can you imagine how much negativity you have brought into
the system and also on your career? This will hamper your appraisal this year
and your progression in the company for all the coming years. Did you think
of all these aspects before reacting apprehensively and in a hasty fashion?
Mary
(in defensive tone): Rinu, I fairly understand the criticality of the Switch
department. I had requested Arvind that I would like to have some better
security for working in the graveyard shift, but, he did not seem to care
about this aspect.
Rinu:
Security and other agenda would be looked upon later, but make sure you start
coming in night shifts from next week onwards.
Mary:
Rinu, you said that my appraisal and career progression will be affected, if
I do not comply with what Arvind is asking me to. Does that mean that my work
and my efficiency have no weightage? Are we being assessed here, only on the
basis of work timings?
Rinu
(perplexed and irritated): I do not have more time to discuss this and have
to cut this conversation right here, I have to rush for a meeting
immediately. I believe we have discussed on your problem area and you know
what best you should do to progress in your career. Bye.
And
Rinu rushed towards the meeting hall.
|
Mental
& Physical Harassment faced by Mary in the job and Drop in performance
Contrary to Mary’s
expectations HR did not support her rather they criticized her for confining
herself to regular work timings. She was alleged for not contributing enough to
the success of the department. Mary quoted some genuine statistics to prove that
she has worked extensively on improving the network quality and has decreased
call drop rate by approximately 18%. She has evidence to show how efficient she
has been with her work throughout, but, Rinu did not care to listen let alone
acknowledging it. Mary was taken aback. In a growing company like Teletol, can
senior level managers be expected to be this apathetic towards his employees?
Is there something which is bothering him? May be the presence of a female in his
team or the probability of her being more successful than him in future? Scared
and upset Mary came to her desk again.
Mental Dilemma faced by Mary to discuss her problem with Senior Authorities
She logged into her
mailbox when she received a mail from Bala Krishnan, Vice President-HR, Teletol
Services that she had her final feedback scheduled for day after tomorrow. She
realized that she has completed a year at Teletol and hence this feedback
session was taking place. She was told in her induction that the whole aim of
this process was basically to capture the feedback of all to check and see how
comfortable they were working in the organization and if anything specific they
would like to share with corporate HR. Mary is in a dilemma now. Should she
share this with Bala Krishnan about the mental harassment she is going through?
Her last hope – the HR department, also failed, should she escalate the matter
to senior authorities? Will it not hamper the growth prospects of her job over
here? What if the senior authorities would give a similar response? What would
she do then? Should she look for another job? But getting an offer in the
current market scenario would be a tough proposition. The market is terribly
low because of recession. Mary is in a dilemma now. Bala Krishnan called Mary
on the scheduled date, time and asked about her experiences so far. She learnt
that sharing anything with corporate HR at this moment will be too early a step
and might be perceived as an impatient and naive move. She spoke all fair
things about the work culture and her colleagues. Mary decided to face the
present situation wisely and to fight all odds accordingly.
Discrimination faced by Mary at her workplace
One week has passed
since all this chaos and Mary was completing her routine tasks with full
dedication and perfection. She received a mail from Arvind which had an
attachment in it. The attached file was the shift plan for the coming week
which allocates morning, general and night shifts to all the employees of
switch function. The mail said that from every week then onwards, every
employee would be required to come in different shifts and weekly offs will not
be given on fixed days. She opened the attachment and upset on reading it. In
spite of requesting and also pleading, she still had been given night shifts.
Moreover it was only her in the whole team who was not getting offs on fixed
days. For all the other team members the weekly offs were fixed. She could not
understand the reason behind such discrimination. She tried finding out the
same from one of her colleagues in the other department when she discovered
that off late the Switch department has faced a very high attrition rate and
somehow Mary’s manager had a strong hunch that she might start preparing for
her post graduate studies. Giving her offs on fixed days and not pressuring her
with work might motivate her to join some preparatory classes. He did not want
to lose another of her employee under any circumstances and hence took these
measures to retain Mary in his department. He thought that by doing so he would
be able to prevent Mary from preparing for any post graduate programmes and was
very proud of the subtle nuances he played. The streak of troubles for Mary did
not end here.
Sexual Harassment faced by Mary
The senior manager of
Intelligent Network Department, Prabhash Kumar was highly impressed by Mary’s
charisma. But this was not just as a boss’s admiration towards his employee.
Over the time, Prabhash had developed some feelings for Mary and would look for
ways and means to talk to her. He would intentionally allocate work to her and
will create small hurdles so as to force her to seek for his help. It was New
Year’s Eve and whole of Teletol went to celebrate at Revorb the biggest bar cum
restaurant at Gwalior. Prabhash was drunk that night. After the party was over
he insisted that he should drop Mary home. Mary was highly skeptical in saying
yes but, saying “No” to a senior professional might be considered as rude
behavior and arrogance too. Prabhash while on their way back home made a move
towards Mary. She immediately pushed him back. Though Prabhash was drunk, he
realized his mistake and immediately apologized. The next morning Mary was
highly embarrassed in facing Prabhash. She had no idea of how to react. She
could not discuss it with anyone with the fear of being ridiculed and mocked
around. Later in the afternoon, Mary was completing some of her pending work
when everyone else in the department had broken-off for lunch. Prabhash sensed
this and came to Mary to apologize. Mary felt a little awkward and told
Prabhash that she has forgiven him considering the fact that he was drunk the
other night. Since then, Prabhash would look out for ways to apologize to Mary
in some or the other way. Mary found this getting on her nerves, but, being her
junior she preferred not to retaliate. Mary was stunned to no end. Does this
company have level of professional ethics? Does Teletol actually respect woman?
Is there any way of getting out of this maze?
Grievance Redressal Cell at Teletol and biasness in redressal of employees grievances
It has a centralized
grievance handling mechanism which permits employee to register any grievance
or complaint on company’s intranet. This directly goes to the central grievance
handling team. Online registration of complaints is done to provide assurance
to employee about the confidentiality of the matter. The involvement of central
team adds to the accountability of such procedures. When Mary got to hear about
this, she thought of filing her case with GRC at Teletol. It is then, when she
heard another alarming story.
There was a lady in the
marketing department named Shivi Saxena. She was an outstanding performer and
has contributed significantly when Teletol was in its expansion spree in the
areas of Kerala and Karnataka. Shivi’s case is currently under investigation,
with GRC. Shivi has put an allegation against her manager Sandeep Singh that he
had always forced her to come for team parties which last till late in night.
When Shivi refused to attend, she was threatened of a transfer or poor
performance appraisal review. She indicated that she has tried reaching out to
her HR but Sandeep’s seniority and influence has made HR indifferent to Shivi’s
problems. Bearing these atrocities for around a year she filed a case with GRC
which is still under investigation. She threatened the management of her
resignation and said that she would definitely sue the company for treating her
this way. It was only then, they decided to settle this matter as soon as
possible. Mary got to know that Sandeep has good say in GRC and the final
judgment of the case may or may not be in favor of Shivi. Mary smirked. “What
kind of system is this? Isn’t GRC supposed to act independently and
judiciously? The whole purpose of setting up such a cell is lost, if at the end
of everything it is nothing better than a puppet in the hands of a privileged
few?”
Sexual Harassment Policy at Teletol
Myriads of thoughts
were crossing her mind now. She was not able to concentrate on her work. A job
taken with so much passion has gone for a toss now. Mary was blank. She just
logged in, when a mail popped up in her inbox. The content of the mail were as
follows:
|
“Get
to know your organization better. Log in to your E-GURU account and have a
look at all the
policies,
benefits, learning modules and upcoming events
Log-in
Id- Your employee code
Password-
<first 2letter of your name><Last 3 digits of your employee
code>”
|
“E-GURU? What is that
now?” Mary thought. She quickly recollected that during her induction she was
informed about this intranet portal E-GURU which contains details of all the
policies, reimbursement forms, e-tests etc. She in fact had taken one test
which was based on the values of the organization. Mary (with an utter sigh)
said to herself “I hope this does not have any kind of hidden agenda. I do not
want to open another Pandora box.” She worked out her password and it came out
as “ma672”. She entered the E-GURU portal and browsed a few of the quiz forums
which say “How much do you know about your company”. She fared well in all of
them which proved that she knew Teletol well. She saw a tab saying HR and
workplace policies. She entered that section where she encountered a policy
saying “No woman employee should be asked to come to work in night shift (night
10 pm to morning 7 am) in the organization. Under any circumstances if such a
case arises, it has to be reported to HR which has to deal with it
immediately.” Mary was in a state of shock. A policy which so clearly states
that women should not be forced to come to work in night shifts is completely
overlooked and played with and the irony above all is that even HR was a party
to this. She finally reached a conclusion that the GRC and sexual harassment
policies seem structured only on paper. Only a few employees would know about
it, and very few among those would care to use it. There is no initiative being
taken from HR to make people understand these policies better. Mary suddenly
recalled reading a book “The first 90 days”, by Michael D. Watkins, which says
that a new hire makes up his mind for staying in the organization in the first
3 months itself. Thus employer puts in a lot of efforts, to show its best to
the employees during this critical period. Teletol seemed to be challenging the
work of Watkins as well. “90 days are too much for them to make an employee
run” May thought. The unorganized work culture and growing pressure has made
Mary ill at ease. She did not hold any prior work experience to handle such
situations in a work environment. On top of that, a subtle move by Prabhash has
added to her miseries. Mary has to take a decision now. She could not go on
working like this.
About
Arvind Mishra & HR Personnels ignorance about his behaviour
It has been 4 years
since he is with Switch at Teletol. He was awarded the best employee of the
month, innumerable times. He also received the award of a star performer in the
year 2003 by the CEO of Teletol. Though nobody can point a finger at the
impeccable work delivered by Arvind, HR has found that his inter personal
skills are not up to the mark of a responsible manager, he also needed to be a
bit more assertive when dealing with employees. In the language of Teletol, a
responsible manager is described as a person who accomplishes his goals, gives
full attention to the work of his team and puts in extra efforts for their
learning and development. In 360 degree, conducted last year for all the
employees, feedback was taken from an employee’s manager, peer, clients and all
other stakeholders with whom he interacts with at professional level. While
evaluating the inputs received for Arvind, HR found that, many employees have
given a review that Arvind’s professional behavior was not something they
admired about. Many members from Arvind’s team, even changed their departments
because they were unhappy with the way they were treated. Though HR had a fair
hint about all these incidences no corrective action was taken. Arvinds’s high
performance and contribution towards the company’s revenue has forced them to
keep this matter out of their discussion purview and Arvind continued enjoying
the accolade of a High Potential Employee.
About
Rinu Fernandes & her biased behavior towards Mary & Arvind
She came in contact
with Arvind, through linkedin, and requested him to consider her candidature
for any HR openings in his company. Arvind browsed through her profile on
linkedin. Impressed by the profile and recommendations, Arvind referred her to
Teletol. She went through a process of a written test and two rounds of
interview and was finally taken as Assistant Manager in the HR function in
November 2008. She respects Arvind a lot and was indirectly indebted to him for
giving her the job and in spite of being aware of the recent situation as to
what other employees feel about him, decided to keep mum.
About Prabhash Kumar
He was assigned the
post of a Manager in the Intelligent Network Department. His stint at Teletol
was applaudable. He has been in good terms with all his colleagues. His team
members have given him a nick name ‘Boss of Choice’. Prabhash was highly
focused towards his work and made sure that all work process and practices are
in place and tried his best to produce error free work.
Challenges faced by Functioning of Grievance Redressal Cell at Teletol
Grievance handling team
at Teletol consists of eleven dedicated members which look into various
complaints across the country. HR-Heads of each circle are also a part of this
committee and works with the central team to resolve issues pertaining to their
circle. The team worked quite efficiently till 2006 but with the increasing
size of company and dynamic work environment, the team is not able resolves
most of the issues effectively. Since last 3 years, grievance handling
committee has addressed only 30% of the issues. Many of the complaints were not
handled effectively which eventually resulted into employees’ resignations and
legal issues. Moreover less awareness amongst the newly joined employees about
the grievance handling procedure has aggravated the issue.
Figure: Grievance Handling Procedure at Teletol
Solutions to overcome the challenges of Grievance Redressal System
“The key principle of
confidentiality, fairness, impartiality, timely resolution and freedom from
victimization and repercussions which makes a grievance handling system
effective has to be supported by better investigation procedures and improved
awareness and confidence amongst the employee about the system. Certain
important factors which were not given importance earlier such as state of mind
or intention of individual, needs to be taken care of while any grievance
redressal ”, he added further. Another challenge faced by Teletol was no or
limited awareness about the grievance handling by the newly joined employees.
Many fresh graduates with almost no awareness about any such mechanism should
be made aware and proper redressal of various issues such as women biasness, mental
harassment as in case of Mary and sexual harassment as in case of Shivi should
be addressed fairly to avoid separation of employee from the organization and
arousal of legal issues against company.
