Harassment or Misunderstanding? Navigating a Job Referral Gone Wrong

Harassment Case Overview

Recently, I encountered a harassment case. The situation is as follows: One of our employees is a Facebook friend of a woman who, a year ago, shared her resume with him to be referred to our company. Due to workload, he forgot to upload it to the portal. After a year, he found the resume on his desktop and decided to upload and refer it to the organization. Since he didn't have her contact number, he took it from the resume and sent a WhatsApp message to check if she was still interested in the job.

Messages Sent

All the messages below were sent separately after receiving responses from that number:

"Hi, this is Sanjay. How are you? Do you remember me? Are you working in the same company? Last time HR mentioned you didn't pick up the phone for the interview. Should I ask HR to call you again?"

The Issue

The actual issue arose when it was discovered that the number on the resume belonged to her husband, who replied to all the above messages. Other than the messages, there is no proof of harassment. Our employee has an email from the woman requesting a referral. Now, her husband has come to our office claiming that our employee harassed him.

Please suggest what to do.

If all this is the only messaging done, there is no harassment. But why was a one-year-old resume picked up again? What was the reply given by the husband from the number you thought belonged to the lady in question? Was the complaint in writing or verbal? Kindly give full details for a better answer. What is your role in the incident and your official position?

Hi,

She is just a Facebook friend who pinged and requested a referral in the company but lost the messenger messages. The resume was saved on the desktop. He thought he had uploaded the resume to the portal by entering the required details but forgot to click the submit button and turned off the laptop. Normally, after uploading, we receive a notification that the resume has been successfully uploaded.

After a week, when he checked for the status, the notification was not available. He decided to check with the lady if she had received any mail or call from the company. However, there was no reply from her to the messages or calls on Messenger. He assumed she wasn't responding because he hadn't uploaded the resume.

Several months later, he found the resume and felt guilty for not uploading it earlier. Upon receiving a mail about job openings, he decided to upload the resume. Before doing so, he wanted to ask her if she was still interested.

As her Facebook account was deactivated, he messaged her on WhatsApp. He mentioned that he was a friend of the guy who had sent a message and that he was an Associate in the company. He also stated that a written complaint had been submitted.

If this is all that happened, there can be no case of harassment. What does the written complaint state? There are always two sides to a story. Sometimes people become suspicious and protective, and there are also cases where people harass on the phone (may not be in this case). An independent person from the company should review WhatsApp and telephonic records, as well as the written complaint of the husband, and resolve the matter in a professional and neutral manner.