General Privacy Statement
(2) Correspondence
Working with these documents
Probably the most important thing senior management can do to show their commitment to EEO and a harassment-free work place is issue a policy statement. (Companies with 100 or more employees should already have in place a policy statement about equal opportunity for women in the workplace.)
The policy statement should:
- explain what discrimination and harassment are and state clearly that this type of behaviour will not be tolerated in the workplace;
- list the grounds of discrimination that apply in your jurisdiction;
- explain the consequences of a breach of the policy;
- indicate who is responsible for implementing EEO within the organisation;
- indicate what employees should do if they have a complaint;
- be signed off by the CEO or contain some other indication of support from senior management.
Policies should be distributed widely throughout the organisation by a number of different means:
Employee grievances about discrimination and harassment need to be addressed in a confidential, speedy and effective way. An effective grievance handling procedure will form an integral part of an organisation's overall strategy for dealing with discrimination and harassment at work.
An employee with a grievance that is unaddressed is more likely to take a complaint of discrimination or harassment to an outside agency.
The sample Policies include a Grievance Handling procedure within the EEO policy, and the sample Correspondence includes letters for handling grievances.
