Three strikes ?

Former BBC HR Director Lucy Adams has been sharing her thoughts on 'handsy' older bosses with Elle Magazine...

Adams outlines a three-step plan for dealing with a handsy older man. "Try a degree of humor," she says. "In my experience, 90 percent of the time, dealing with it in a way that doesn't humiliate and embarrass the guy, but just deals with it in a kind of slightly humorous way, really works."

If it happens again, Adams recommends confronting him one-on-one, before going to HR. "Once you involve HR, you have put in a grievance, you've made it formal [and] what you'll find is that that guy will become defensive, he will start to protect himself," she says. "In that situation, usually he or you are leaving that role. It's very difficult to come back from that. I've met so many women that did go down the formal grievance route, who said, 'I just wanted the behavior to stop. I didn't actually want him to be punished or humiliated.'"

But if it happens a third time, "go nuclear," Adams says. "Go to HR."