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908: Harassment in Dentistry: What You Need to Know – Alan Twigg

We've all heard about workplace harassment. But how much do you really know? In this episode of Practical Solutions Day, Kirk Behrendt brings back Alan Twigg, president of Bent Ericksen & Associates, to share everything you need to understand about harassment in a dental practice. To learn how to protect your team and practice, listen to Episode 908 of The Best Practices Show!

 

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Main Takeaways:

  • Know that there are multiple types of harassment.
  • Have clear, documented policies against harassment.
  • Different states have different harassment policy requirements.
  • Document that you have reviewed your policies with employees.
  • Specify who people need to report to if they're a victim of harassment.
  • Frequently do training and reminders about your policies with your team.
  • Take reports of harassment seriously! Don't just sweep things under the rug.

Quotes:

“I think that one of the biggest mistakes folks have is a narrow mindset or a narrow definition of harassment. Oftentimes, people think, ‘Well, harassment is just one thing. That's a male employee who's constantly hitting on a female employee, and that's what harassment is, end of story.’ Of course, the reality is there are so many different types. There could be male on female or female on male. There could be female on female or male on male. There could be multiple employees harassing one person. There could be multiple employees harassing multiple employees. There could be the UPS driver hitting on somebody or harassing someone. There could be an equipment person who is coming in and doing something inappropriate. So, it's really important that we expand our minds and expand our definition of what harassment is. It's not just sexual harassment. It's not just a particular thing in our mind.” (2:48—3:44) -Alan

“Another big thing folks need to be aware of is that there are some individual states that have individual harassment rules, individual harassment protections, requirements, and so on. If you are in Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maine, Rhode Island, Vermont, California, D.C., Oregon, New York, or Colorado, those are all states that have specific state-based harassment rules. In most cases, it's a requirement about training. In other cases, it's other requirements, particular language that has to be in a policy. There's information about that on our website. You don't even have to be a Bent Erickson client — this is free information. It's on a part of our website called the Resource Library and Compliance Alert. If folks want to check that out and you're in one of those states, take a look.” (3:46—4:44) -Alan

“One of the biggest things is you need to have a policy. This would be in your employee handbook or your policy manual. So, of course, if you don't have a policy manual or an employee handbook, you need to get one of those. The harassment policy needs to be really good and really comprehensive, and it needs to get, at the very beginning, really clear about some of the different types and examples of harassment. So, for example, there is what's called quid pro quo harassment. That's where someone is basically saying, ‘Hey, look. If you give me this, I will give you that.’ That could be sexual favors. That could be, ‘Hey, I'll give you a raise if you do something for me.’ Another really common one would be a hostile work environment. That could be doing any sort of things physically, verbally, non-verbally, that is all about making someone feel uncomfortable, feel like their workplace is adversely affected. This could be about all the protected things that we normally think of like race, religion, national origin, sexual orientation. It could even just be something that has the purpose or effect of unreasonably interfering with somebody's work performance. So, again, it may not be something as overt as hitting on someone, or actually bumping into someone walking down the hallway, but something that truly does have a negative effect on somebody's ability to do their job.” (5:34—7:11) -Alan

“When the courts or lawyers or state labor boards get involved in this, one of the big things that they want to see is that you have a policy about harassment and that you have made it crystal clear to your employees that, ‘This is what harassment is. We don't tolerate it. If you do it, you will be subject to disciplinary action up to and including termination,’ that all of that is in there and that you also have, not just buried this in your policy manual, but that you've actually talked about it. So, maybe when you hire a new person, you make sure that you sit down with them and say, ‘Hey, you’ve got to read all of this policy manual. I really want to emphasize this harassment policy because at our practice we take this really seriously, zero tolerance,’ et cetera. Then, this idea of training. Those states I mentioned earlier, most of them have a training requirement. That training requirement can be for supervisors or managers. It can also be for non-managers. So, you need to make sure that you're adhering to all of that.” (7:17—8:24) -Alan

“Here's one idea for folks to consider. At one of your morning huddles or maybe at a team meeting, let's say it's once a month, maybe you just pick a policy out of your policy manual, and that month you're emphasizing that policy. It could be the harassment one. It could be the policy about cell phone usage. It could be a policy around mission, vision, values, philosophy. It could be something about your systems and procedures that you want to emphasize. So, if you build that into your every day or every month kind of deal, then it's just part of your pattern. Then, when you bring up and remind folks about the harassment policy, it's not weird. It's just, ‘Yeah, this is what we do.’” (10:15—10:57) -Alan

“Number one would be having that policy we talked about earlier. Number two would be doing the training, or the reminders, or something to that effect. Number three is real important. This one is often missed if someone has written the policy manual themselves or if it's not been reviewed by a professional, and that is that the policy needs to specify who the person goes to if they feel they've been the victim of harassment. So, you can't just have an open-ended thing that says, ‘Oh, if you feel like you're a victim, then tell someone.’ It needs to be, ‘Tell this person,’ or, ‘Tell the doctor or the manager.’ It needs to be a specific person, because otherwise one employee may go to another employee, or it's like, ‘Where am I supposed to go with this?’ Especially for larger practices, what this does is it basically confuses the employees, and it makes the process drag on. So, instead of us getting this resolved quickly, we're burning precious time while someone is trying to figure out who to even report this to or who can actually handle it.” (11:34—12:51) -Alan

“You, as the manager or the dentist, have to make this a priority. I can't tell you how many times we get a call and someone will say, ‘Hey, my front desk person just said that she's getting harassed by the UPS driver and she feels uncomfortable working. But I'm leaving on vacation next week and I'm gone for a couple of weeks, and the practice is going to stay open. So, can I just deal with this in like three weeks when I get back?’ No — you can't do that. That's not making this a priority. If you think about it from the standpoint of this person being in a potentially unsafe situation and the message that you're sending by saying, ‘Oh, yeah. I'll get to that later. I'll get to that later. I'll get to that later,’ you're not making this person a priority and you're, in a sense, complicit in an unsafe situation. So, you've got to make it a priority. That means you need to do the next step, which is your investigation. That is doing an impartial investigation where you are sitting down with the person who reported it and getting a very detailed summary, who, what, when, where, and how. You're sitting down with the other person who is the alleged perpetrator, again, who, what, when, where, and you potentially may be sitting down with other employees and saying, ‘Hey, have you ever experienced this? Did anyone witness this?’ So, you're gathering all of this information, and that's what the investigation is, is basically a big discovery process for you as the manager or the owner to gather all of this evidence, if you will.” (12:59—14:36) -Alan

“The last step in it, which would seem obvious — surprisingly enough, this one, a lot of folks don't do — and that is making a final decision or coming to a resolution where you are actually deciding something and taking action. We hear this one all the time where someone will gather all this evidence, and then it's usually one of two reasons why they don't take action. One reason would be that the alleged accused or perpetrator person is a real high-level person. Maybe it's an associate dentist. Maybe it's a hygienist that really produces a lot. Maybe it's the office manager who is really integral to the practice operations, and the dentist kind of goes, ‘Oh, geez. It would be a real big deal if I had to suddenly fire that person right now.’ So, they try to make peace, or sweep it under the rug, or go back to the person and say, ‘Yeah, I know they did that to you a whole bunch of times. But they said they're not going to do it anymore. So, are we cool?’ and they don't make a decision with it. The other reason folks don't often make a decision or take action is that it's just a he-said-she-said kind of thing, or a she-said-she-said, or one of these things where they go, ‘I don't feel like I have actual proof. Nobody witnessed this. It was in a hallway and no one else was around. Nobody heard it.’ So, it's just one person's word against the other, and they feel paralyzed. But that final decision is really important.” (14:37—16:21) -Alan

“There have been a number of cases where a dentist or an employer makes the final decision. The employee or somebody appeals this to the state labor board. The state labor board comes in. They do their own big investigation. In some cases, the state labor board may find a different conclusion than what the dentist did. They may say, ‘Well, we think you actually should have done this instead of that.’ In a lot of those cases, the dentist does not get in trouble, or the employer does not get in trouble. The reason they don't get in trouble is because they did all of these steps. They had the policy, they did the training, they did a really good faith investigation, they came to a decision. Even though the state labor board disagrees with that decision, the fact that they did all the steps, they did it in good faith, they don't, in a sense, get penalized for that. Now, where people do get in trouble is when they don't do the steps. They don't have a policy, or they don't make it a priority, or they just try to sweep it under the rug and not make a final decision. That's where people do get in trouble or have to then lead to some sort of out-of-court settlement or something like that.” (16:22—17:37) -Alan

“It's a common thing that people accidentally mess up — and this is not because people are bad or trying to do anything nefarious. So, let's say it's your front office employee and she says, ‘I'm being harassed by the UPS driver,’ and it's one of these things where maybe the UPS driver comes in every day or every other day, so it's a frequent thing. One common mistake would be saying, ‘Oh, okay. You're feeling harassed by the UPS driver. What I'll do is I'll just take you off the schedule for a couple weeks. So, we'll just have you go home, and I'll sort this out, and you come back in a couple weeks once we've got a different UPS delivery driver,’ or something like that. That is, in a way, retaliation against the person who reported being harassed. Because you're essentially, now, if you're taking them off the schedule and you're not paying them, you're basically financially punishing them for reporting harassment. So, it's, in a sense, punishing the victim. So, that's an example of something. There are other ways that you could do something like that. If it's two employees who work together and you think, ‘Oh, okay. I'll just cut one person's hours so they're not working together. I'll schedule them on different days,’ and now they're making less money because they're not working the same, that's one of those examples where you're trying to be nice and you're trying to come up with a temporary solution while you figure everything out, but you end up, in a sense, in a retaliation situation because it looks like you're punishing the victim.” (20:07—21:48) -Alan

“In a situation where you don't have really rock-solid evidence — I mean, sometimes you do the investigation and you've got multiple employees who are all saying, ‘Oh, yeah. I always feel uncomfortable around so-and-so. They're always making lewd comments and hitting on,’ whatever. Sometimes, it's really, really obvious. In those times when it's not as obvious, and you're right on that fence, and you're like, ‘Well, do I go this way? Do I go that way?’ just know that, in these cases, you don't need some overwhelming quantity of evidence. If your gut is saying, ‘Yeah, I kind of get a skeezy vibe off of that person too,’ or, ‘Yeah, a couple months ago, we had that patient that said they were a little uncomfortable around so-and-so,’ you just need that little bit of feather, that little bit of evidence. You obviously want to document and say, ‘This is why I'm making this decision, because I also share this thing, or there was this report,’ or something. You want to document it. But again, it just takes that little bit, and you can make a decision based on that little bit. It's not like Law & Order where you have to have some mountain of evidence beyond a reasonable doubt. We're not talking a criminal thing here. So, just know that if you're on that fence and it's that he-said-she-said, you don't have a mountain of evidence, that's fine. You can still make a decision with what you have.” (22:06—23:36) -Alan

“We're still in a tight labor market in dental. Good employees, especially, are hard to come by. The last thing that we want to do in a case like this is not walk our walk and basically not do right by our team. So, in a case like this where you're in a tough situation, you may have to let someone go, you may have to let someone go who is an associate or a manager or something like that. You need to choose the lesser of two evils. Even though letting a team member go may seem like the worst case, the real worst case is that you send a message to your team that says, ‘I'm willing to allow bad behavior,’ or, ‘I don't actually have your back when it comes to making a hard decision,’ and then you're at risk of not only losing the employee who reported the harassment, you may lose other team members as well. Then, it's this domino effect where you're going to be left with the employees who share these values that say, ‘I don't care about you,’ or, ‘I'm not really here to have your back.’ That's incredibly toxic. So, keep that in mind that these hard decisions are hard, and you’ve got to do right by your team.” (23:58—25:18) -Alan

Snippets:

0:00 Introduction.

1:11 Alan’s background.

2:28 Why this is an important topic.

5:06 Have clear policies in place.

10:59 Important steps to take.

17:41 What dentists get wrong about harassment.

23:39 Final thoughts.

25:20 More about Bent Ericksen and how to get in touch.

Alan Twigg Bio:

Alan Twigg is the president of Bent Ericksen & Associates. For over 10 years, he has guided thousands of clients and consultants through the ever-changing world of HR and employment compliance. He is a speaker, consultant, and author who is passionate about bringing education and peace of mind to such a confusing topic.

As a strong proponent of symbiotic employer-employee relations, Alan is passionate about teamwork and positive work cultures, with an emphasis on long-term personnel retention and employment compliance, where his solutions-oriented outlook excels.
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