OBJECTIVES: To describe the experiences HEOR/MA professionals with sexual harassment and the state of current employer policies vis-à-vis discrimination and harassment.

METHODS: A descriptive, global, cross-sectional, web-based survey was administered to individuals working in HEOR/MA between April and July 2019. Respondents were recruited from the HealthEconomics.Com active global subscriber database (N=25,000). In addition to questions regarding demographics, respondents were asked: if they or someone else they knew in HEOR/MA had ever experienced sexual harassment; who committed sexual harassment and company’s policies related to harassment in the workplace.

RESULTS: A total of 306 responses were included for final evaluation. The majority worked in pharma/biotech companies (42.8%) with 4.9% in academia. Nearly a third of respondents (30.9%) reported either experiencing sexual harassment directly (10.9%) or knowing someone who had experienced sexual harassment (20.1%). Of the 82 respondents who specified type of harassment, 41.1% reported remarks/jokes of sexual nature occurring in the work place, while 19.2% reported unwanted physical contact. A boss/supervisor or senior person in organization was named as person committing sexual harassment by 56.1% of respondents, while 25.6% reported a /colleague. The remaining 18.3% reported someone outside their organization, subordinate or other as the person committing harassment. Of 92 responses regarding report to Human Resources (HR), only 29.4% of the cases were eported to Human Resources. Only 37.9% reported that their company had a clear process to report sexual harassment.

CONCLUSIONS: The occurrence of sexual harassment was reported by more than a quarter of respondents in this study. However, of the 92 participants who responded whether incident was reported to HR, less than 30% specified that it was reported. Furthermore, respondents are not well informed on their companies' processes to report sexual harassment. Employees may benefit from further education on policies and processes.