Today’s workplace is extremely diverse. A large number of cultures, religions and viewpoints are wrapped into nearly every workplace. It’s more important than ever to understand harassment and to find way to stop it. Harassment can have a costly toll on an organization. Workplace productivity suffers and so does the company’s bottom line in harassment claims. The problem is that harassment is more complex than ever and people can commit harassment without even knowing it.

Harassment is defined as verbal or physical conduct that denigrates an individual on the basis of one of these protected classes: race, color, national origin, citizenship, religion, gender, marital status, sexual orientation, age or disability. Conduct such as jokes, slurs, stereotyping, emails, printed materials or posters, touching, bullying, threats, put-downs or any other action that shows an aversion to one of these groups is illegal and the victim can seek civil damages in court.

Harassment is not always obvious. Jokes and physical contact that might be ok in your private life are not ok at work. Conduct that consistently makes another person feel inferior or uncomfortable and involves any of the protected classes mentioned above can result in a law suit. The behavior does not even need to be directly to the aggrieved party. Hostile workplace harassment could occur if jokes, pictures and other behavior is prevalent, but not directed at the individual who is the victim. Courts look at how the victim felt, rather than what the perpetrator intended.

The best way to avoid harassment is to ask yourself if you would behave or the something in front of your kids or your grandma. If it isn’t then, it’s probably not ok for work. Most people don’t knowingly harass but the law doesn’t care. Stay away from jokes that center on volatile subjects such as religion, sex and race and try to imagine how your conduct might affect others.

With our already diverse workplace constantly becoming more diverse, harassment prevention is more important than ever. Don’t let your workplace suffer from low morale, productivity and expensive lawsuits. Understand and avoid harassing behavior.

Charlie Bentson King is a writer and producer of training videos for TrainingABC. TrainingABC has been a leader in the distribution of harassment training for the last 15 years specializing in harassment videos and DVDs.