Harassment creates what is known as a hostile work environment. Employees who are in a hostile work environment are extremely criticized, threatened, embarrassed, or made uncomfortable in some way that leaves them unable to do their job at the optimum level.

While sexual harassment is the best known and most common type of workplace harassment, many other kinds exist, and are sometimes more dangerous because they are more likely to be ignored. Here are a few examples of other types of harassment:

Harassment by non-employees: Customers or other non-employees who come to your place of work and consistently criticize or belittle employees (perhaps in one of the above-listed ways) are harassers.
Bullying: Verbal and nonverbal bullying in the form of threats, slander, glaring, excessive rudeness, or simply blatantly ignoring an employee constitute a growing form of workplace harassment. One recent survey of Michigan residents found that 38.4 percent of workers felt bullied in some way during the previous year.