EMPLOYEES’ PERCEPTION OF SEXUAL HARASSMENT AND ITS IMPACTS ON EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE IN GHANA

Abstract

Sexual harassment is any form of unwanted and dissenting sexual advances aimed toward another person. The drive of this paper is to understand how Ghanaian employees perceive sexual harassment in the Ghanaian work environment and how sexual harassment affects harassed employee work performance. This study adopted a qualitative research method using the semi-structured interview to collect data from 30 participants from six public and private companies. The findings of the study indicate that workers in Ghana perceived sexual harassment as demanding sexual favors from the opposite sex, touching of buttocks and or breast and kissing, superior enticing or forcing subordinate to have an intimate affair or relationship with, untoward behavior of staff towards the opposite sex or other skirmishes towards the opposite sex with a sexual connotation, any situation where a male or a female uses his or her position to make sexual advances to another person at the workplace, looking or commenting on any part of the body of which the victim may interpret as being offensive, forcing a female or male worker to go to bed with. The study further revealed that sexual harassment had negative impacts on the harassed employees’ performance. The study offers some important recommendations and implications for consideration.