No sex please, we're working

A beautifully coiffured middle-aged man, smooth as a TV game show host, stands before an audience of 50 men and women, all busy taking notes. "Why are we here?" the man asks. "We are here to prevent sexual harassment law suits, which as you all know can go horribly wrong and can generate terrible publicity."

The scene is a conference room in Washington's illustrious Jefferson Hotel. The man's name is Stephen Paskoff, founder and president of Employment Learning Innovations Inc. He is addressing human resource managers employed by the United States Congress, by the Department of Justice, by accounting firms, supermarket chains and fast-food companies.

Mr Paskoff, a lawyer, is giving them a one-day course in sensitivity training, the fruits of which they will in turn impart to the staff of their respective organisations. For most of the employers this will be money well spent: the number of sexual harassment charges filed with the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC) rose from 4,000 in 1990 to 15,691 in 1995.

When the likes of Bill Clinton, Richard Branson, the Oscar-winning actor George C Scott and - as the Independent on Sunday revealed last week - the Nobel Prize-winning poet Derek Walcott find themselves facing sexual harassment suits, the word is out in the business world that companies had better take prophylactic measures.

The Mitsubishi plant in Normal, Illinois, did not ... and see where it is: facing a class-action suit from female employees who say they have been systematically groped and verbally abused by male colleagues for years. Mitsubishi, facing the largest sexual harassment case on record, could stand to lose $200m (pounds 131m) in damages. For in such cases it is companies, and not individual offenders, who must pay up.

Enter firms such as Employment Learning Innovations, dozens of which have emerged around the United States in the five years since the celebrated Anita Hill incident provoked a legal amendment empowering victims of sexual harassment to claim punitive damages. The lawyers who usually head these enterprises have learnt that there is money to be made from teaching companies the legal ins and outs of how to keep their employees' baser instincts in check.

"My job," Mr Paskoff explains to his class, "is to prevent legal bills by teaching correct behaviour. My aim is to equate sexual harassment in your minds with stealing in the workplace." He steps to one side as a large screen lights up behind him with the words: "Avoid the common legal pitfalls that can turn employees into plaintiffs and turn an organisation into a defendant." Mr Paskoff reads out the words slowly, for those in the audience who lack the advantages of a solid elementary education.

The answer to the problem was contained in two words: "Civil treatment." Mr Paskoff paused, smiled, then repeated his mantra, making sure this time clearly to distinguish each syllable. "Ci-vil Treat-MENT."

The guiding principle of civil treatment was contained in the admonition: "Watch your words and your actions." Prescriptive rule number one, he said, was: "Make it impermissible for your managers to make sexually based jokes. Why? Because sexual comments have serious risk-management implications. Bear in mind that once sexual comments have been made they provide legal grounds for a person objecting to a dismissal, however valid the grounds for dismissal are."

Sensing that his class has had enough of theory, Mr Paskoff says that now they're going to watch a little TV. The lights dim and what seems like a banal office scene unfolds. A young woman is complaining to a slightly older woman sitting behind a desk that she has been bothered by a certain male colleague - nothing nasty, she is quick to explain, but she wishes he'd stop being a pain. The older woman, evidently the younger woman's immediate boss, asks if he was making overtures of a sexual nature and the younger woman says: "Well, yes." But she would not want the discussion to go beyond those four walls.

Whereupon the boss responds by sympathising sincerely and agreeing that, yes, they would keep the problem to themselves, woman to woman. Of course, if things escalated she would write an official report and send it to her superiors.

The young employee thanks her profusely and the scene ends with the two women shaking hands and smiling. The lights come on again and Mr Paskoff asks for a show of hands. "How many of you believe that the supervisor responded to the young woman's problem in an appropriate fashion?" Most hands in the room shoot up. "How many of you think she mishandled the situation?" Three hands, all of them men's, tentatively rise.

Mr Paskoff turns to the three and glowers. "Aha! So what would you do?" One mumbles that he would report the complaint to a superior. "So," Mr Paskoff says, looking knowingly around the room. "You would violate the woman's confidence? You would betray her wishes?" The man, deeply uncomfortable, shrugs. A murmur of amusement goes around the room.

Whereupon Mr Paskoff turns to his wider audience. He is nodding his head, smiling to himself, converted suddenly into the image of the rapacious lawyer contemplating his prey. "The gentleman," he declares, making no effort to suppress his triumph, "is absolutely right. And most of the rest of you are absolutely wrong! You are leaving your company open to the possibility of a massive legal suit!"

Never mind trust between two people, is the message, your job is to think of the company's interests first and last. If you betray a colleague's confidence you might be diminishing yourself. But if you fail in your duty to your employer you will be failing the bottom line, and putting your own job at risk.

The epidemic of sexual harassment lawsuits in the US has been a boon to lawyers with an eye for the main chance, and while little evidence has yet come forth of improved civility in relations between the sexes, the price has been paid not only in dollars but in a distortion of human relationships in the workplace.

Confidential chats between staff and bosses, Mr Paskoff teaches, will increasingly become out of the question, especially if they touch on relations between men and women.

Some companies, such as IBM, are even imposing restrictions on office romance, issuing guidelines demanding that supervisors who become involved with a subordinate must immediately report the relationship to their superiors, who will see that the innocent couple are assigned to different departments.

Wal-Mart, a vast American retail chain which employs 600,000 people, enforced a total ban on dating between staff working in the same stores or offices after a female freight clerk from Warsaw, Montana, won $5m in damages from the company because one of her male colleagues had made crude comments about her body. Wal-Mart lived to regret the ruling, which it reversed after two employees who were fired for breaking the no-dating rule then brought successful suits against the company for unlawful dismissal.

Cosmopolitan magazine, concerned that laws designed to protect women might be denying them the opportunity of falling in love, published an article two months ago providing readers with tips on how to navigate the troubled waters of office sexual politics. "Save the mushy stuff for outside the office," Cosmo counselled. "Be professional at all times. Treat your lover like a colleague, because when he's at work, that's what he is."

The advice is wise because, apart from anything else, a jilted lover might turn against you in the courts by claiming that he or she (15 per cent of sexual harassment charges are brought by men) was abused in the hallowed sanctum of the office. The plot of the Michael Douglas-Demi Moore film Disclosure offers a hypothetical case in point.

But the main reason that the legislation on sexual harassment has strained relations between the sexes in America is that in many instances the question of what constitutes sexual harassment is not defined until a case reaches a court of law.

Some cases are clear enough - for example when a boss trades sexual favours for career advancement. But these only represent 5 per cent of the cases filed at the EEOC. The rest come under the definition of what is known as "hostile work environment". This can include using crude language, touching, making sexual remarks and sending erotic messages on E-mail.

The problem the courts have to grapple with can often be frighteningly subjective, depending as it does on the precise nature of the relationship between the respective parties, the attitudes of each towards sex, even - in a country as ethnically diverse as the United States - the cultural differences between them.

The only thing certain is that lawyers, and shrewd entrepreneurs such as Mr Paskoff, are making a lot of money. Mr Clinton, the complications of whose case are enhanced by his political position, has so far spent $900,000 in his defence against Paula Jones's charges. His lawyer is charging him $400 an hour.

All of which renders judicious, timely and generously disinterested the observation made in a recent issue of American Lawyer magazine that "anyone who's not engaging in self-censorship to some degree in today's litigation- happy environment is nuts". Or, as Mr Paskoff puts it: "Companies should seek to avoid sexual harassment suits with as much care as they seek to avoid grand theft."

Troubled trio: facing lawsuits alleging harassment

George C Scott, 68, was sued two weeks ago for $3.1m dollars by Julia Wright, 26, a film student who worked as his assistant. Ms Wright says the Oscar-winning actor had repeatedly made unwanted advances, kissing and groping her and asking her to have his baby. Mr Scott, married with five children, was taken to hospital last week seriously ill.

Bill Clinton is accused by Paula Jones of sexually harassing her at a hotel in Little Rock in 1991. She won a small battle in her legal war against the President last week when an appeals court refused Mr Clinton a further delay in the lawsuit, which he wants to put off until he leaves office. His lawyers are confident they will manage to have the stay extended.

Richard Branson, the Virgin chief, is being sued by Elizabeth Hlinko, 34, for allegedly making unwanted advances to her at a party at his English home in May 1994, including fondling her breasts. He denies it. Ms Hlinko was later fired from her job as a public relations manager in the US with Virgin Atlantic - for incompetence, says the company.