Employees just received a survey asking if they have been sexually harassed or discriminated against. This survey needs to be signed and dated and return to HR. Is this legal?

Legal, maybe. Required to be completed - I would venture a guess that it would be border line. If someone was scared and said no, then later said yes, it would not be good. I can't believe that an HR department would ever even think about sending out such a survey?

There should have been an explanation of why the survey is being undertaken. Was the bank mandated to do this or have they just gone round the bend?

I once worked at a non-bank federal contractor and records showed that all pregnant women in accounting were laid off! Turned out in interviewing the controller, he was being "nice" and laying them off so they could collect unemployment. The company had to reach out to every female employee who had worked at the company going back x years and send a survey. I had the pleasure of creating and mailing the surveys and tracking down the returned mail. The surveys had a lot of questions all revolving around what had transpired and whether they left voluntarily or not, etc. Everyone of them that could be contacted confirmed that the company did not really lay them off due to lack of work but to facilitate unemployment compensation.

So at least we put the illegal discrimination problem to rest; don't recall if anything came up in the unemployment compensation area!

So your answer could be "it depends".

I have to ask: All employees, or just the women?

In the absence of circumstances like Kaybee describes, this sounds pretty crazy. How could I possibly sign a statement saying I had never been discriminated against on any prohibited basis? I could have suffered from gender based discrimination and not even be aware of it.

I wonder what they think they are going to do to employees who do not comply.

This survey was included with all bank employees pay stubs.

did it mean at your current place of employment? or anywhere? agree that there must be something that is triggering this...

All employees have to sign this once a year at our bank and this is required by our bonding company and the insurance company that the bank uses. We must keep them in payroll so that may be why it came with payroll. The employee who handles the banks insurance policies sends our out and then after they are all signed and back then they come to me to be put in the employee file.

Bonding company - what would a bonding company need this for??

Insurance company requirement? I would say show me....

Sounds like a CYA thing to me.

Yes, we don't know what kind of insurance the bank purchased.

If there was some negative issues going on it the workplace and a jury was to get hold of the fact that the survey was madatory to be signed. Could it add to the hostile workplace claim?

Is there a process to follow up on an (or several) issue(s) that may be uncovered during the survey process?

I have seen this (in a previous position) being required by the bonding company, as well.

We had to fill out and return these forms annually to my previous employer. Problem is, there was a lot of sexual harassment/discrimination going on, but everyone was afraid to say anything about it so all the forms were returned "No, I have not been sexually harassed or discriminated against" for fear of retaliation. So what good did it really do?

I really don't want to sign this. There is a person that has said some offensive stuff, they think it is funny. I just ignore the comments and move on but I don't want to put this in writing. So if I say no - this would not be entirely true.

I think that I would do refuse to sign it....When they say "YOU MUST"....I'd say "PROVE IT"....

That is my personal opinion.....
FWTIW