Our Board of Directors is currently in the process of rewriting our personnel policies. They have a question on our harassment policy. Currently it says “To report perceived harassment, the employee should contact the Equal Employment Opportunity Officer. Reports are to be in writing and submitted within two (2) weeks of the perceived harassment.” The suggested change is to remove 2 weeks and replace with immediately. One of the committee members was questioning the legality of such limitations with everything that we’ve been seeing in the media on reports of harassment incidents that are years old. Is there statutes/limitations on when an employee has to report harassment? Are we ok to request that reports are to be done in writing and immediately? We are in Kansas.

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Our Board of Directors is currently in the process of rewriting our personnel policies. They have a question on our harassment policy. Currently it says “To report perceived harassment, the employee should contact the Equal Employment Opportunity Officer. Reports are to be in writing and submitted within two (2) weeks of the perceived harassment.” The suggested change is to remove 2 weeks and replace with immediately. One of the committee members was questioning the legality of such limitations with everything that we’ve been seeing in the media on reports of harassment incidents that are years old. Is there statutes/limitations on when an employee has to report harassment? Are we ok to request that reports are to be done in writing and immediately? We are in Kansas.

This is a great question. The reports we hear in the news are surely getting people fired, but are not pursued legally if outside the statute in their state.

Here is a link to the EEOC explaining the 180-day rule: https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/sexual_harassment.cfm

If Kansas – or the state in which the harassment took place – has a law extending this time, the state will prevail. I searched Kansas statutes and cannot find a law on workplace harassment. However, sexual assault – which can take many forms – has a 10+ year statute in most cases. Kan. Stat. Ann. § 21-5107

I hope this helps!

February 2018