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Emc Face Sexual Harassment Essay

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Running head: EMC Confronts Harassment Charges

EMC Confronts Harassment Charges
Milissa Bell
Kaplan University
AB203: Human Resources Management
Prof. Carol Hannon
May 27, 2013

EMC Confronts Harassment Charges
Introduction
EMC Corporation is an aggressive sales company that specializes in IT software however it also a company plagued by sexual harassment accusations. More than six lawsuits have been filed against the company, which have stemmed two class action lawsuits and 30 affidavits filed. These affidavits include claims of male employees displaying behavior that inflicted sexual harassment and discrimination upon the female employees. They also claim that the salesmen are very aggressive in nature and because …show more content…

This constitutes harassment because the women were treated differently simply because they were women.

EMC has touted itself as having a very aggressive sales force. They also claim the reason for this is they primarily recruit former college athletes, who tend to be more competitive. Because of the fact the male sales force is dominant in both number and spirit and also overly competitive; this put the women at a disadvantage. Increasing the ratio of women to men with the sales department can maintain the level of aggressive selling while diluting the testosterone levels in the department. Recruiting female college athletes is a possible way of keeping the competitive edge without the harassment. The current environment and culture of EMC seems conducive to sexual harassment rather than preventative. At some point, company sales may have to be sacrificed for a hostility free work environment.

While Frank Houck addressed the issue, he did little to validate the claims or admit the slightest of wrongdoing. While the company maintains they have a zero tolerance policy for sexual harassment, the evidence indicates otherwise. The HR department of EMC needs to extensively train their sales staff on sexual harassment and also create an effective way for someone to report harassment in a way that does not induce retaliation. Management must be ready to act upon allegations of harassment and not merely sweep them under the rug. Many of these

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