Reply To: “My New Male Boss Called Me and Other Women in the Office ‘Hens’!”

It doesn’t sound like you’re in the US and I only know how things work in the US, but as a people manager who takes annual harassment training and inclusive interactions training, I can tell you that what he did was absolutely an HR issue. It’s harassment to put someone down on the basis of a protected characteristic, and your company should take it seriously and not tolerate it.

Were any of the bystanders who observed this a people manager? If so, they are actually obligated to report it, so if they didn’t that’s not cool. Even if they’re not people managers, they should have done the right thing and gone to HR.

Does your company have an HR policy on harassment? Go to the intranet and look it up. Read about how they deal with harassment. I think they are obligated to deal with your complaint and then come back to you and explain the resolution. There’s a period of time where they have to look into it and corroborate with others and determine how widespread it is, so you need to be a little patient. If your complaint is the only one, I think they would talk to him about it and let him know he cannot say things like that. It would likely just be a discussion and reprimand. They would not fire him unless they looked into it and found a pattern of harassment and abuse, or he’d done something so egregious it was a fireable offense on its own.

So what’s likely to happen is they’ll come back and let you know they talked to him and assure you this won’t happen again. If they don’t, something is wrong with that company. Unfortunately he’s probably not going anywhere though, and you may want to start looking around for other jobs if you can’t stand working for him.