Prior harassment? Let supervisor know

Sometimes, you may want to use a last chance agreement to give a worker who violated your rules a second chance. Make sure supervisors know about it so they can be on the lookout for potential problems.

Recent case: Mindy worked as a dental assistant. She complained that a dentist she worked with sexually harassed her. Several years earlier, the dentist had signed a last chance agreement after making advances to another dental assistant. The agreement was never passed on to Mindy’s supervisor, who didn’t take the situation seriously. Mindy went to HR, and the dentist was fired.

She sued anyway and a jury awarded her $200,000 for the harassment. The court concluded that the supervisor should have known about the dentist’s past behavior and the employer was therefore liable for not stopping the harassment as soon as Mindy initially complained. (MacCluskey v. UCHC, 2nd Cir., 2017)