Types of Workplace Harassment
Different types of workplace harassment do not always fit neatly into separate categories. The same conduct may be sexual, verbal, discriminatory, retaliatory, or even physical, and not every instance of rude, offensive, or inappropriate behavior meets the legal definition of unlawful harassment.
Understanding the different ways harassment can show up in the workplace can help organizations identify concerns earlier, respond appropriately, and address problematic behavior before it becomes a larger issue.
Under federal law, unlawful workplace harassment generally involves unwelcome conduct based on a legally protected characteristic that either results in a change to employment or is sufficiently severe or pervasive to create a hostile or abusive work environment.
Federal protections come from several laws. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act prohibits harassment based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. Other federal laws provide protections based on disability, age for workers 40 and older, and genetic information. The EEOC’s guidance on federal protections against workplace harassment provides additional information about these protected characteristics and when harassing conduct may violate federal law. State and local laws may provide broader protections, including requirements that address workplace bullying or abusive conduct.
This distinction is important. Even workplace bullying does not necessarily meet the federal legal standard for unlawful harassment. Under federal EEO law, bullying generally must be connected to a legally protected characteristic to constitute unlawful harassment. State and local requirements may go further, and an employer’s own policies may prohibit bullying regardless of whether the conduct violates federal law.
Organizations don’t need to wait for behavior to cross a legal threshold before deciding it warrants attention. An organization can and often should establish standards of conduct that go beyond what the law requires.
For a deeper discussion of when workplace conduct may meet the legal standard, see our hostile work environment examples below.
The main types of workplace harassment are easier to understand by looking at two questions: what is the conduct based on, and what form does it take? Harassment may target a protected characteristic such as race, sex, religion, age, disability, or national origin, while terms such as verbal, physical, psychological, or online harassment describe how the conduct occurs. These categories can overlap.
A racial slur, for example, targets race and is also Verbal Harassment. Repeated sexual messages sent through Teams may be both Sexual Harassment and Online Harassment (Cyberbullying). Looking at both the basis for the conduct and the way it occurs can help HR understand the full picture.
Sexual Harassment can include unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, sexual comments, inappropriate touching, sexual messages, or other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature. It can occur between people of any sex and does not have to involve a supervisor and subordinate.
Recent EEOC enforcement illustrates how serious the conduct can become. In 2025, Walmart agreed to pay $415,112 to settle an EEOC lawsuit alleging that a store manager subjected female employees to unwanted sexual touching, sexual propositions, and other offensive conduct. The EEOC also alleged that the company had received multiple complaints before taking appropriate action.
Cases like this are a reminder that preventing harassment is not simply about teaching employees what conduct is prohibited. Managers need to understand what they are expected to do when they see or hear about inappropriate behavior.
Effective sexual harassment prevention training should prepare both employees and managers for those moments.
Discriminatory harassment based on race or color can include racial slurs, offensive jokes, symbols, images, graffiti, stereotypes, or other demeaning conduct directed at an employee because of race or color.
In August 2025, TNT Crane & Rigging agreed to pay $525,000 to settle an EEOC racial harassment and retaliation lawsuit. According to the EEOC, Black employees were subjected to frequent racial slurs as well as displays of nooses and other white supremacist symbols. Employees complained, but the EEOC alleged that the employer failed to stop the harassment.
The case also involved Retaliation: the EEOC alleged that a white employee who reported the treatment of his Black coworkers had his work hours reduced after speaking up.
Religious harassment can include offensive remarks, ridicule, stereotypes, or other unwelcome conduct directed at an employee because of their religious beliefs or practices.
At Wheeler Trucking, the EEOC alleged that a Torah-observant Israeli employee was compared to a terrorist and had his religious beliefs mocked. The company agreed to pay $65,000 to resolve the race, religion, and retaliation lawsuit.
Employers should distinguish harassment from the separate obligation to consider requests for religious accommodation. A disagreement about an accommodation is not automatically harassment, although the circumstances surrounding an employee’s religion, religious practices, or accommodation request may raise other compliance issues.
Federal age discrimination law protects employees and applicants who are 40 or older. Age harassment may involve repeated derogatory comments, stereotypes about older workers, or conduct intended to push older employees out because of their age.
In February 2026, South Valley Care Center agreed to pay $75,000 to settle an EEOC lawsuit alleging that a supervisor mocked and harassed older workers, treated them less favorably than younger employees, and that workers were ultimately fired after repeatedly complaining.
Age-related remarks are sometimes dismissed as jokes. Context matters. Repeated comments about being “too old,” needing “younger blood,” or making room for the next generation can take on very different significance when they accompany decisions about assignments, promotions, discipline, or termination.
Disability harassment can include mocking an employee’s disability, making demeaning comments about a medical condition, using disability-related slurs, or intimidating or isolating an employee because of a disability.
In 2025, a convenience store management company agreed to settle an EEOC disability harassment, discrimination, and retaliation case involving a cashier with multiple disabilities. The EEOC alleged that managers, employees, and even customers routinely mocked the employee. The agency further alleged that after he complained, the employer took actions that ultimately resulted in his termination.
Harassment based on sex does not have to be sexual.
Sex-based or gender-based harassment may involve hostility toward an employee because of sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, transgender status, or because the employee does not conform to gender stereotypes.
Sexual conduct isn’t required. In an EEOC case involving Sandia Transportation, four female employees allegedly faced disparaging comments because of their sex, sexual orientation, or failure to conform to gender stereotypes.
A manager does not need to make sexual advances for sex-based conduct to raise concerns. Repeatedly demeaning women as incapable of leadership, for example, presents a different issue from sexual advances but may still implicate federal discrimination law.
National origin harassment is based on an individual’s ethnicity, accent, ancestry, or country or region of origin. It can include ethnic slurs, mocking an accent, derogatory comments, stereotypes, or other offensive conduct.
Bob’s Tire Company agreed to pay $250,000 in 2025 to resolve an EEOC case alleging that Hispanic workers were subjected to ongoing harassment involving sex, race, and national origin. The EEOC alleged that at least one employee complained to the owner, who responded by mocking the employee rather than correcting the conduct.
Some harassment labels tell us why an employee is being targeted. Others describe what the behavior actually looks like in the workplace. Verbal harassment, physical harassment, psychological harassment, and online harassment (cyberbullying) can all become unlawful when the conduct is connected to a protected characteristic and meets the applicable legal standard.
Verbal harassment describes the form conduct takes rather than the legal basis for the harassment. It can include slurs, insults, threats, offensive jokes, repeated demeaning remarks, or other verbal conduct.
A 2025 EEOC settlement involving Insurance Auto Auctions the EEOC alleged that a Black yard worker was repeatedly subjected to racial slurs by coworkers. Local managers knew about the conduct but either ignored it or failed to take adequate steps to address it. The company agreed to pay $175,000 to resolve the lawsuit.
A manager who routinely yells at everyone may be creating a difficult or even toxic working environment, but that behavior is not necessarily unlawful harassment under federal EEO laws. If the manager directs racial slurs at Black employees or repeatedly makes degrading comments about women, however, there is a protected characteristic involved and the legal analysis changes.
Organizations do not need to tolerate the first situation simply because it may not be illegal. Setting expectations around respectful workplace behavior can help organizations address conduct before the question becomes whether it meets a legal threshold.
Physical harassment may include unwanted touching, physically blocking someone’s movement, intimidation, assault, or threats of physical harm.
Chipotle agreed to pay $400,000 to resolve an EEOC lawsuit involving three young crew members who allegedly experienced sexual touching and assault. The EEOC also alleged that a manager trapped employees in a walk-in refrigerator by blocking their exit, causing them to fear for their safety.
Physical conduct does not have to cause an injury to warrant immediate attention.
Psychological harassment describes behavior rather than a distinct category of unlawful harassment under federal EEO law. It may include repeated humiliation, intimidation, exclusion, undermining, or other conduct that causes an employee significant distress.
A 2024 EEOC settlement involving Asphalt Paving Systems illustrates how humiliating or degrading treatment can be part of unlawful discriminatory harassment. According to the EEOC, Black employees were subjected to racial slurs as well as degrading working conditions, including being required to work in pouring rain while white workers watched and being denied the same access to indoor restrooms. The company agreed to pay $1.25 million to settle the lawsuit.
The legal question remains why the employee is being targeted and what the conduct involves.
This is where personal harassment (bullying) can become confused with unlawful harassment. Bullying may violate company policy and seriously damage a workplace without being based on a legally protected characteristic. If the same behavior targets someone because of race, sex, disability, religion, age, or another protected characteristic, it may also raise discrimination and harassment concerns.
Organizations can address these behaviors proactively through workplace bullying training that helps employees recognize and respond to inappropriate conduct before it escalates.
Online harassment (cyberbullying) can occur through email, text messages, Slack, Teams, social media, video calls, or other digital platforms.
Remote and hybrid work have changed where employees interact, but an employer’s responsibility to address workplace harassment extends to the digital channels employees use to communicate.
Sexually explicit text messages were among the conduct at issue in an EEOC settlement involving Balfour Beatty Infrastructure. According to the EEOC, a female truck driver experienced harassment from several male coworkers for more than a year, including sexually explicit messages from one coworker whose conduct escalated after she complained. The company agreed to pay $80,000 to settle the sexual harassment and retaliation lawsuit.
An inappropriate message does not become less significant because it was sent after hours or from someone’s home. The EEOC recognizes that harassment can occur outside the physical workplace when there is a connection to employment.
Digital communications can also leave an evidentiary trail. Messages, images, chat histories, and emails may become important when HR investigates what occurred and how long it had been happening.
Power or authority harassment generally refers to a manager or another person in a position of influence using that authority to intimidate, pressure, punish, or mistreat another employee. It is not a separate category of unlawful harassment under federal EEO law.
The power relationship can still be highly relevant to the organization’s risk.
A supervisor controls or influences schedules, assignments, performance reviews, promotions, compensation, and sometimes an employee’s continued employment. When that authority is used in connection with discriminatory or harassing conduct, the circumstances can create significant risk for the organization.
Retaliation is different from the other categories because it focuses on what happens after someone engages in legally protected activity, such as reporting discrimination or harassment or participating in an investigation. The employer’s response can create a separate compliance issue from the conduct that prompted the complaint.
An employee who raises a concern should not suddenly find themselves excluded, subjected to increased scrutiny, given undesirable assignments, or punished because they spoke up. Managers need to understand this because their actions after a complaint can matter just as much as what happened before it.
Our guide to retaliation in the modern workplace takes a closer look at what organizations should consider after an employee raises a concern.
Managers are also often the first people to hear that something is wrong, which makes the manager’s first response to a workplace concern particularly important.
Third-Party harassment involves inappropriate conduct by someone who is not an employee, such as a customer, client, patient, contractor, or vendor.
Employers sometimes assume they have less responsibility when the person engaging in the conduct is outside the organization. That assumption can be dangerous. Workplace harassment can involve clients and customers as well as supervisors and coworkers.
A 2026 EEOC settlement involving an Applebee’s operator makes that point particularly clear. The EEOC alleged that young female employees, including minors, were sexually harassed by managers, fellow employees, and customers. The company allegedly failed to take appropriate action to address the conduct, and the restaurant operator agreed to pay $270,000 to settle the lawsuit.
In workplace investigations, the most important question is rarely which category of harassment best describes the conduct. What matters is understanding what happened, why it happened, who knew about it, whether concerns were raised before, and how the organization responded.
Throughout my career conducting workplace investigations and advising employers, I’ve seen situations that looked relatively straightforward at first become more complicated as the facts emerged.
What initially looks like one incident can change as you start talking to people and gathering the facts. Sometimes you learn that others heard the same comments or had similar experiences. You may also discover that concerns were raised earlier but never made their way to HR.
That’s why I would caution HR professionals against becoming too focused on labels.
Employees don’t need to walk into HR and use the right legal terminology. They may say, “My manager is making me uncomfortable” or “She treats people like me differently.”
Those statements may or may not ultimately establish unlawful harassment. They are still information worth understanding.
Managers are often the first people to hear comments like these. Preparing them to recognize when a workplace concern needs to be escalated can help HR learn about potential issues earlier.
Recognizing harassment at work requires HR and managers to pay attention not only to individual incidents but also to patterns: repeated complaints, employees avoiding a particular person, unusual turnover on one team, changes in behavior, or similar concerns arising over time.
One complaint does not always tell the whole story. Neither does one offensive comment.
Look at context. Who was involved? Has similar behavior been reported before? Is one employee or group being treated differently? Did managers know about the conduct? What happened after concerns were raised?
It is also useful to distinguish among harassment, bullying, and ordinary workplace conflict:
The distinction matters legally. From an organizational standpoint, however, none of these categories require HR to ignore problematic behavior until it becomes unlawful.
Employees who witness inappropriate conduct also have options. Bystander intervention training can help employees recognize when something warrants attention and choose an appropriate way to respond.
For more examples of what HR should look for, see our hostile work environment examples.
Employers should make it easy for employees to raise concerns about potential harassment and make sure managers understand what to do when a concern comes to them. Employees should not have to determine whether conduct meets the legal definition of harassment before they can speak up.
Reporting procedures should be clear and accessible, with more than one way for employees to raise a concern. Managers should also understand when something they hear or observe needs to be brought to HR, even when an employee has not made a formal complaint or used words such as “harassment” or “discrimination.”
Once a concern is raised, how the organization responds matters. That includes taking the concern seriously, involving the appropriate people, documenting the response, and watching for potential retaliation.
Organizations can prevent workplace harassment more effectively when employees feel comfortable raising concerns early and managers know what to do when they receive them. Workplace harassment training should reinforce both sides of that process.
Understanding the different types of workplace harassment can help employees and managers recognize when something warrants attention. They do not need to determine whether conduct is legally actionable before raising a concern.
Throughout my career, I’ve seen workplace issues become more difficult because someone recognized that something felt wrong but assumed it wasn’t serious enough to report. Giving employees the confidence to speak up, and giving managers the judgment to know what to do when they do share their concerns, creates opportunities to address concerns earlier.
Effective workplace harassment training should help prepare people for both.
SHIFT HR Compliance Training’s attorney-developed sexual harassment prevention training uses realistic workplace situations to help employees and managers practice recognizing and responding to conduct before they are making those decisions on the job.
For a broader look at building an effective prevention strategy, read our guide on how to prevent workplace harassment.
These frequently asked questions address some of the most common issues surrounding the types of workplace harassment, including bullying, remote harassment, hostile work environments, and harassment involving customers or clients.
Common types of workplace harassment include sexual, racial, religious, age-based, disability, sex or gender-based, and national origin harassment. Harassing conduct may take verbal, physical, psychological, or online forms, and more than one category may apply to the same behavior.
Bullying and unlawful harassment are not necessarily the same. Personal Harassment (Bullying) may involve intimidation, humiliation, or mistreatment but generally must be connected to a protected characteristic or other legally protected activity, along with meeting other applicable requirements, to constitute unlawful harassment under federal EEO law.
Yes. Online Harassment (Cyberbullying) and other forms of workplace harassment can occur through email, messaging platforms, video meetings, text messages, social media, or other digital communication. Conduct does not necessarily have to occur at a physical workplace to raise a workplace harassment issue.
Under federal EEO law, a hostile work environment generally involves unwelcome conduct based on a protected characteristic that is sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter working conditions and create an abusive environment. Whether conduct meets that standard depends on the circumstances.
Yes. Workplace harassment can involve supervisors, coworkers, clients, customers, vendors, or other non-employees. Third-Party Harassment can create employer obligations even though the person engaging in the conduct works outside the organization.
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. (n.d.). Harassment. https://www.eeoc.gov/harassment
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. (n.d.). National origin discrimination. https://www.eeoc.gov/national-origin-discrimination
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. (n.d.). Prohibited employment policies/practices. https://www.eeoc.gov/prohibited-employment-policiespractices
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. (n.d.). Religious discrimination. https://www.eeoc.gov/religious-discrimination
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. (n.d.). Small business fact sheet: Harassment in the workplace. https://www.eeoc.gov/small-business-fact-sheet-harassment-workplace
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. (2023). Chipotle to pay $400,000 to settle EEOC sexual harassment lawsuit. https://www.eeoc.gov/newsroom/chipotle-pay-400000-settle-eeoc-sexual-harassment-lawsuit
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. (2025, March 24). Walmart to pay $415,112 in EEOC sexual harassment and retaliation suit. https://www.eeoc.gov/newsroom/walmart-pay-415112-eeoc-sexual-harassment-and-retaliation-suit
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. (2025, June 12). Bob’s Tire to pay $250,000 in EEOC sex, race, national origin harassment and retaliation lawsuit. https://www.eeoc.gov/newsroom/bobs-tire-pay-250000-eeoc-sex-race-national-origin-harassment-and-retaliation-lawsuit
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. (2025, August 1). TNT Crane & Rigging to pay $525,000 in EEOC racial harassment and retaliation suit. https://www.eeoc.gov/newsroom/tnt-crane-rigging-pay-525000-eeoc-racial-harassment-and-retaliation-suit
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. (2025, August 11). Convenience store management company settles EEOC disability harassment, discrimination, and retaliation case. https://www.eeoc.gov/newsroom/convenience-store-management-company-settles-eeoc-disability-harassment-discrimination-and
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. (2026, February 27). South Valley Care Center to pay $75,000 in EEOC age discrimination and retaliation lawsuit. https://www.eeoc.gov/newsroom/south-valley-care-center-pay-75000-eeoc-age-discrimination-and-retaliation-lawsuit
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. (2026, May 13). Applebee’s operator to pay $270,000 in EEOC harassment lawsuit alleging sexually hostile work environment. https://www.eeoc.gov/newsroom/applebees-operator-pay-270000-eeoc-harassment-lawsuit