One for the Record Books
Rockie
2,136 Posts
Okay....I need your expertise on this one as I have never encountered this before.
Supervisor made an offer to Candidate A and he accepted. HR has sent him an offer letter, etc. When announcement was made to the office Candidate A was to work in, Employee B burst into tears. Supervisor wanted to know what was wrong.
It appears that in a former job these two employees knew each other. The story from Employee B is that Candidate A filed a sexual harassment complaint against her which, of course, was not true and caused her great mental pain and anguish. She states she will quit if this person comes to work for us as she cannot work with him.
I have not talked with Candidate A yet, to (1) make sure this actually is true and (2) to hear his side of the story and (3) to give him an opportunity to bow out as he may not want to work with her under these circumstances.
Oh wise ones, how would you handle this??? HELP.
Supervisor made an offer to Candidate A and he accepted. HR has sent him an offer letter, etc. When announcement was made to the office Candidate A was to work in, Employee B burst into tears. Supervisor wanted to know what was wrong.
It appears that in a former job these two employees knew each other. The story from Employee B is that Candidate A filed a sexual harassment complaint against her which, of course, was not true and caused her great mental pain and anguish. She states she will quit if this person comes to work for us as she cannot work with him.
I have not talked with Candidate A yet, to (1) make sure this actually is true and (2) to hear his side of the story and (3) to give him an opportunity to bow out as he may not want to work with her under these circumstances.
Oh wise ones, how would you handle this??? HELP.
Comments
The sooner you do this the better to avoid any estoppel issues with your candidate and to alleviate the agony of your employee. I'll assume you did your homework on the employee's story and found it credible.
Cheryl C.
It sounds like your motivation is your current employee's reaction rather than the fact that he made a complaint. Trouble is, it would be hard to prove the difference.
Good luck!
James Sokolowski
HRhero.com
Therefore i think, faced with the (A)bringing these two back together again or (B) telling candidate A "no thanks" and preserving workplace harmony; I would go with (B), knowing that I'd better do it "right". I realize that there may be more to the story than what was posted, but I'm basing my answer on the post as written.
Mandi
Since the offer was already made, the applicant is going to find it odd that it was rescinded. If the applicant begins poking around and finds out or suspects that your decision was influenced by his sexual harassment claim, I would think that could come back to bite you.
For example, you would never ask an applicant "Have you ever filed a sexual harassment lawsuit?" in the interview. That would be clearly discriminatory.
Even false harassment claims have some protection by the EEOC. Check this link: [url]http://www.hrhero.com/q&a/101405-false.shtml?home[/url]
My advice would be to either continue on with the hire or fully investigate the alleged sexual harassment claim before rescinding the offer.
Good to see you posting so much on the site!
I think we need some more information from Rocky. If the applicant is an internal (already working for the company) candidate, then I can definitely see your point and would agree. However, if this applicant is new to the company, then I think I would pass on the applicant. If the employee that's working there now is good for the company & does a good job - why unnecessarily stir up drama and unhappiness for the employee & disrupt the workplace with bringing on this particular applicant? Now, if the employee does this with everyone, then we have a different story...
I was at a SHRM labor law conference today and one of the subjects covered was retaliation discrimination. During the intermission I questioned one of the attorneys who spoke on the subject about the scenario you described.
Her response was that rescinding the offer of hire could be construed as retaliation for filing a harassment claim. Her advice was to continue with the hire.
In an interesting aside, I found out that our current employee actually threatened another employee at the hospital where she previously worked and was required to go thru anger management classes.
A lovely person.
Then when the facts come out that you rescinded an offer for someone exercising their legally protected rights, you would get toasted.
My $0.02 worth
the Balloonman