Home Health & Hospice Week

Be careful in handling sexual harassment allegations, or you may end up paying in court. That’s a lesson Chicago-based Help at Home is learning the hard way. When three employees in the Hillsboro, Mo., office complained about sexual harassment to the Help at Home CEO, they were demoted and/or fired afterward, alleges the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Employees Shannon Schroeter, Kari Mc-Connell and Jaclyn Stone say they were harassed by Area Manager Christine Qualls, according to an EEOC release. The EEOC alleges Qualls made sexual comments and propositions to Schroeter, McConnell and Stone and openly engaged in sexual activities with her girlfriend in the office.

After firing off a complaint email to CEO Ron Ford, Regional Vice President Rick Cantrell came to the Hillsboro office and interviewed the complainants. "During the interview, he showed them blank termination and disciplinary forms and told them their answers to his questions would determine which form they would be given," the EEOC claims.

Later that day, Stone was demoted from an administrative position to an hourly home health care aide position. Three weeks later, Qualls ordered McConnell to be discharged for poor attendance after she returned from an approved medical leave to care for her seriously ill daughter, the EEOC says. Qualls disciplined Schroeter several times and discharged her four months after she complained. No adverse action was taken against Qualls.

The result: The EEOC filed suit after failing to settle the matter informally. Help At Home has agreed to pay $302,500 in back pay to the complainants and is taking measures to avoid a similar incident, including "providing training to managers and supervisors on sexual harassment and retaliation and how to handle sexual harassment complaints." The company will also train its non-management employees and will report to the EEOC on any sexual harassment complaints it receives and how it’s handled them, the EEOC says.

"Sexual harassment is unacceptable and illegal whether it is engaged in by a supervisor of the opposite sex or the same sex," Barbara A. Seely, regional attorney of the EEOC’s St. Louis District Office, says in the release. "The company further compounded its illegal conduct by discharging the complaining employees as retaliation."

"In this case, it just appeared to us that the situation was out of control, and we decided to step in so it wouldn’t happen to anyone else," Seely told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "I certainly think (the settlement) has gotten the company’s attention."

Help at Home, however, denies the allegations, the newspaper says. An attorney representing Help at Home said the company agreed to the settlement to avoid costs associated with going to trial. "Our decision to settle was based on economic factors and the personal wear and tear on the organization," he said. "It was economically smart."