Among those who do not look good following the revelations of sexual harassment on the part of formerly revered figures such as Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose, and Garrison Keillor, are the formerly revered businesses that employed them. NBC, PBS, and MPR could not drop their three respective “hot bricks” fast enough before questions were raised about their corporate values and the conditions that existed for the women they employed.

In failing to prevent harm to their employees, the employers also harmed themselves—not just as a result of the shame and disgrace brought on by the public disclosures, and not just because they will have to pay damages to harassment victims, but also because they had allowed sexually hostile environments to suppress the talents and contributions of many of the women who work for them.

As each new disclosure makes clear, employers that complacently assume that harassment does not exist in their workplaces risk steep consequences as residual tolerance of sexually hostile workplaces burns away in the heat of the #MeToo Movement. Moreover, since not only sexual harassment, but workplace harassment based on race, color, national origin, disability, and religion are likewise prohibited under U.S. law, the risks of complacency are greater than many employers realize.

Sexual harassment is a type of unlawful employment discrimination because when it is severe or pervasive it imposes burdens on women that other employees are not required to bear—harassment changes the terms of their employment for the worse on the basis of their sex. But apart from issues of legal liability, even harassment that is not severe or pervasive enough to create a legal violation can still burden employees and impair a business, since it’s clear that many women who experience even such low levels of workplace harassment just quietly leave, and often their employer never know the real reason they quit.

Many businesses actively monitor customer satisfaction because dissatisfied customers may simply go elsewhere without warning. Yet, by failing to actively maintain a harassment-free environment, businesses invite potentially equal or greater losses due to experienced and productive women employees leaving to join competitors. Additionally, as a hostile workplace reduces job satisfaction and employee morale generally, productivity will be impaired among those women who do not leave.

Employers are mistaken in assuming that if there are no harassment complaints, then all is well. Many, if not most, employees are reluctant to report harassment, whether by a supervisor or a co-worker. Although retaliation against an employee who reports harassment is itself a separate and additional legal violation, many employees avoid reporting harassment to their employers due to fear of potential retaliation, of becoming conspicuous or isolated in the workplace, of “unnecessarily picking a fight,” or due to similar concerns.

The absence of complaints is thus an unreliable indicator for employers. In fact, the issue the employer knows nothing about is often its biggest threat: if the severity of low-level harassment increases, or it simply becomes more pervasive over the passage of time, an employee who had previously resolved to suffer in silence can reach her limit and hire a lawyer. Under federal employment discrimination law, employers that offer prompt and effective internal resolution of harassment problems may actually avoid liability entirely, but once the employee has become adversarial, that opportunity is often lost, and the matter is largely beyond any easy resolution by the employer.

An active program of harassment prevention is thus essential, not just to employers’ avoidance of actual legal liability for damages, but to their avoidance of competitive disadvantages through employee turnover and reduced productivity. Of course, adopting user-friendly reporting procedures, and training employees in their use, is essential. Training of supervisors, however, should also include, not just avoidance of harassing conduct themselves, but recognition of potentially harassing conduct among those they supervise, and their affirmative duty to intervene, even without a complaint.

Employers that have adopted anti-harassment rules and user-friendly complaint procedures, and provided initial training and periodic training reviews, are thus not only acting responsibly in protecting their employees’ interests in a workplace free of discrimination, but they are also adopting a longer view of their own interests.

Frank Albetta is an employment attorney whose practice focuses on advising and defending employers.

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