Sexual Harassment

Sexual Harassment

Like many employers, you may feel that you don’t have a problem with employees being bullied at work or that sexual harassment is not an issue in your workplace.

You may not know that Safe Work Australia commissioned a report which found that ‘there is a serious concern regarding levels of bullying and harassment.’ Their report found that levels of bullying in Australian workplaces are ‘substantially higher’ than international rates.

It takes just once incident to pose a serious threat to your company’s brand and reputation. Depression, anxiety and even suicide are real outcomes. Bullying and harassment pose a significant risk to the physical and psychological health of an employee.

Such claims can also lead to significant exposure under Health & Safety legislation, the Fair Work anti-bullying scheme and contract law.

As an employer, you can now be held vicariously liable under harassment legislation and Health & Safety legislation if it is found that you didn’t take all reasonable steps to prevent unacceptable behaviour from occurring.

If you only pull your policy out of the drawer once you have received a bullying complaint you may find that:

·         It states the law but doesn’t give examples of what bullying or other unacceptable behaviour is and is not. If employees don’t fully understand what types of behaviour are unacceptable then there is a greater risk of bulling occurring in your workplace;

·         You have no code of conduct which catches unacceptable behaviour that may fall short of the repetitive nature inherent in bullying

making it difficult to act on inappropriate behaviour before it amounts to bullying;

·         Employees have never received training on the policy or the complaints procedure and are relying on their own general understanding of what is unacceptable behaviour. If your employees don’t know of or understand your policies then as an employer you are failing to take reasonable and practical steps to minimise the risks of bullying occurring in your workplace thereby failing to make a genuine commitment to prevent bullying in your workplace and failing in your duty to provide a safe workplace;

·         It doesn’t encourage by-standers to support colleagues who have been subjected to unacceptable behaviour;

·         It doesn’t spell out the consequences of a finding being made against an employee leaving open an argument that the perpetrator had no reasonable expectation of being dismissed as a consequence of having engaged in the unacceptable behaviour.

To reverse the worrying trend reported in the Safe Work Australia report we all need to make a commitment to prevent bullying and harassment in the workplace. Don’t just pay lip service to your workplace policies and complaints processes. Ensure that they are current, relevant and outline the consequences. Make sure your employees receive training that is targeted to your workplace. And take all reports of unacceptable behaviour seriously and deal with them in accordance with your policy, thereby ensuring that your workplace culture supports your brand and reputation.