Canadian Olympic Committee Summary

1214 Words3 Pages

The article written by Vicki Hall is about how employees of the Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) have either suffered or were a witness to personal and sexual harassment under their former president, Marcel Aubut. During Aubut’s leadership, the staff of the Canadian Olympic Committee felt that the upper management was knew about the acts of harassment happening in the workplace but did not do what they could to address them. This lead to apologies to the employees and anybody affected by the COC’s current president, Tricia Smith, and Aubut, and a pledge by Smith to adopt new workplace recommendations such as an anonymous complaint system and the hiring of a senior human resources leader (2015). There are several reasons as to why this article …show more content…

The article states that the current president, Tricia Smith, has said that the committee could have done more to address the claims and that there was a lack of monitoring of individuals who showed inappropriate behaviour and have a history of such behaviour (Hall, 2016). This is a clear human resources management issue for the COC as it deals with the unwillingness and inability to even address the problems and claims submitted by the employees. Even when problems were addressed and there was an evident need for monitoring certain individuals the COC failed to do so, which lead to not being able to prevent further acts of harassment from happening. Many of the staff felt that the board and senior leadership failed to meet its obligation to create a safe working environment for them (Hall, 2016). They were certainly right to feel that way. According to the Supreme Court of Canada, protecting employees from harassment is part of an employer’s responsibility to provide a safe working environment (Dessier et al., 2014, pg.38). The Supreme Court also states that if harassment is occurring and the employers are aware, then they can be charged as well as the harasser (Dessier et al., 2014, pg.38). However, it is no surprise that these harassment claims have gone unaddressed or unresolved because in this case the leaders of the COC were not only as guilty as the harasser, but some leaders were the harasser

More about Canadian Olympic Committee Summary

Open Document