Sexual Harassment in the Workplace in Wuppertal

Sexual harassment in the workplace is seldom characterised by a colleague panting, drooling and staring crazily at you all the way to the toilet. In most cases these incidents are far more subtle and therefore not noticed quickly by the surrounding environment. This includes explicit offers of shared sexual activity, unwanted embraces, smacks on the bottom and so on. More public, albeit not necessarily more obvious, manifestations include lewd remarks made in front of colleagues that attack the victim’s dignity and marginalise them.

Whenever you feel pressured or coerced at work, the investigators of Kurtz Investigations Wuppertal offer expert advice and discreet assistance. The same applies to managers who have been informed of such incidents and wish to investigate the matter internally: +49 202 5289 0063.

Sexual Harassment Harms Both Victims and Employers

A real example from the circle of acquaintances of our staff: Ms Meier arrived in the office in the morning. Half-closed eyelids and faint dark circles suggested she had slept badly. Any reasonable and well-mannered person would infer sleep problems or private distress. Not so Mr Schmidt! When he saw his colleague, he called across several workstations: “Well, Ms Meier, again some high-performance sport on the mattress last night?”

Here the offence of sexual harassment is already fulfilled. It is not about Mr Schmidt’s flippant wording itself, but about the substantive core of the question. Asking whether Ms Meier had had sexual intercourse the previous night is a very personal and lewd question that should only be posed if there were a correspondingly close personal relationship between the asker and the addressee. As this was not the case here—Mr Schmidt was a colleague whom Ms Meier habitually avoided—the question had a harassing character. Ms Meier was offended by the colleague’s behaviour but ultimately decided to let it go and attempted not to encourage him further by ignoring him.

Even if the remark itself was not threatening, such actions form the basis for deeper discrimination at work that can later grow into forms of bullying, threats and even stalking. The workplace climate deteriorates for the victim and performance will accordingly decline—after all, who can work with full motivation and concentration if merely going into the office becomes intolerable? It is therefore in the interests of both victims and the business to eliminate such inter-collegial discrepancies—by warning or dismissing the perpetrators. To identify those responsible and collect evidence to support labour law measures, our detectives from Wuppertal are at your disposal: kontakt@kurtz-detektei-wuppertal.de.