On June 18, the EEOC released a harassment prevention guide for the construction industry to follow, bringing attention to the unrest rampant among workers in the field. The EEOC contractor guidelines titled Promising Practices for Preventing Harassment in the Construction Industry include recommendations to combat systemic harassment and the undesirable barriers that affect the underrepresented groups in the industry. The documentation is extensive and the suggestion for harassment prevention among contractors falls in line with the commission‘s Strategic Enforcement Plan for 2024-2028.
The guidelines for leaders in the industry outline their responsibilities and what they owe to their subordinates, making clear suggestions on how they can improve the working conditions for other contractors.
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EEOC Harassment Prevention Guide for the Construction Industry
Discriminatory practices have been witnessed in the construction industry for generations and while we occasionally discuss safety and security within the industry, the provision of equal employment opportunities often suffers without a note. The report followed a 2023 discussion on Building For the Future: Advancing Equal Employment in the Construction Industry, which accumulated a variety of data that gave more concrete evidence of the issues at hand.
“The unique structure of construction jobs leaves workers especially vulnerable to workplace harassment. The strategies outlined in our new Promising Practices document will help all construction industry stakeholders identify and take concrete steps to effectively prevent harassment, address it if it occurs, and create a worksite culture that promotes equal opportunity for all workers.”
—EEOC Vice Chair Jocelyn Samuels
The construction industry is a male-dominated field that has long held that there is no room for women where physical labor makes up a significant part of the work. The ideology is further strengthened when their managers and overseers share the same sentiment and often don’t have the authority to put an end to discriminatory sentiments even when they do disagree. The cyclic, project-based nature of the work causes workers to move from location to location which impedes the enforcement of any regulations for very long.
The EEOC harassment prevention guide identified five core principles on which to structure their strategy recommendation and while they focus on the construction industry, leaders from any industry can see to customizing it for their own workforce. The EEOC contractor guidelines recommend:
- Establishing a committed leadership team
- Demonstrations of accountability
- Well-designed harassment policies
- Accessible complaint procedures to give employees room to register their concerns
- Regular training sessions customized for the audience
Understanding the EEOC Anti-harassment Guide for Contractors
The EEOC’s construction guidelines are less about the construction industry and more about creating equal and safe opportunities for users. The guidelines are not necessarily legally binding and cannot be externally enforced. However, the recommendations are in the best interest of the employer and employee. All of the EEOC contractor guidelines lay out how to reduce the number of complaints of harassment within the industry.
The list of recommendations is quite extensive and under each segment, there are a variety of suggestions for all authority figures, from managers to union leaders. To get a comprehensive understanding of the EEOC harassment prevention guide, it’s best to read through the whole document. What we can do here, is go over some of the highlights of the EEOC’s contractor guidelines.
Starting with Leadership and Accountability
Holding workers accountable is a leader’s responsibility and they are best placed to model and enforce the behavior that is desired on the worksite. Creating a harassment-free workplace for employees and ensuring all workers are treated equally are part of the employer’s responsibility. Regardless of whether the workers are covered by anti-discrimination laws, employers need to look into preventing any harm to their well-being.
Even while working with external contractors and staffing agencies, businesses need to hold them to the same standards that they hold themselves. This can be done by explicitly requiring contract bids to include the contactors own strategies to address workplace harassment to get a sense of what measures they will take to set up a safe work environment during your project.
General contractors can chalk out their plans to provide training, monitoring, union coordination, and regular checks to oversee harassment prevention among contractors. Collecting feedback from the work site is the best way to feed back into the system and continue the cycle of supervision and enforcement.
Establishing Harassment Policies That Are Comprehensive and Clear
Policy development is an essential part of the process of establishing regulations and the EEOC construction guidelines agree with that sentiment. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission suggests talking to all the involved parties, from supervisors to the workers who will be most affected by the regulations, in order to design policies that are comprehensive and leave no room for uncertainty. A half-hearted policy will result in an approach full of loopholes that cannot be pursued very easily.
According to the EEOC construction guidelines, the policies should be clear in how they are stated and they should be communicated with workers regularly to establish the standards that are relevant to the organization. The guidelines include recommendations of elements that are essential to the anti-harassment policy such as stating the behaviors that are prohibited and encouraging workers to report any bullying at once.
The Complaint System Needs to Be Accessible to All Workers
The EEOC harassment prevention guide does not stop at designing and communicating a comprehensive policy to workers. For the policy to be effective, it has to be utilized and enforced. Workers should be encouraged to report their experiences without hesitation and there needs to be multiple channels for them to communicate their concerns. Every complaint needs to be taken seriously and a comprehensive complaint entry should be recorded as the first course of action instead of it being dismissed as a minor concern.
The reporting process should be simplified and a clear record system for maintaining these reports needs to be put in place to ensure that a thorough investigation can be conducted into the situation and action can be taken swiftly. To stay in line with the EEOC’s anti-harassment guide, contractors and everyone involved on the worksite need to see these policies being enforced for them to take it more seriously.
Enforcing Anti-harassment Training
Workers come in with different perspectives, experiences, backgrounds, and a varied understanding of what is acceptable at work. The EEOC harassment prevention guide suggests regularly training employees to help them understand the rules and procedures of the worksite to ensure they are all on the same page. The training needs to be conducted in a language that they understand and customized to suit the audience at that particular worksite. These trainings also need to be revisited regularly to ensure it is fresh on their minds.
Workers should be encouraged to ask and when it comes to the type of training, live interactive training should be embraced to help with a dynamic explanation of the regulations. The word “harassment” is not enough to convey what behaviors are not permissible on the ground and so the training needs to be comprehensive to make it easier for workers to grasp. These trainings need to be conducted for the workers as well as the leadership teams to ensure they are aware of their role and how they are required to enforce the regulations.
Overall, the EEOC harassment prevention guide for the construction industry is very elaborate and it covers all its bases on how a healthy work environment can be created on the worksite. Every employee hired on the basis of their skills deserves a spot in the workforce and it falls to contractors and staffers to ensure all the workers are treated equally.
