Respect@Work – Positive duty to eliminate sexual harassment
The respect at work act introduced a positive duty to eliminate sexual harassment in the workplace. What exactly does this mean for your business and what should you do about it? This is a chapter from a more detailed free online training course on the subject. If you would like to check out the full course, please visit ondemandhr.com.au/free.
Please see below for a full transcript of this video
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Transcript
The sex discrimination act 1984, was amended to include new provisions, introducing a positive for an employer, or a person conducting a business to take reasonable proportionate measures to eliminate as far as possible conduct that includes any of the following:
- Harassment, which of course is unwelcome conduct based on the sex of the person but also we need to be cognizant that this does not mean that is necessarily sexual in nature
- Discrimination on the grounds of a persons sex
- Conduct which subjects a person to a hostile workplace environment on the grounds of sex
- Acts of victimisation that relate to compliance proceedings, sessions or allegations in relation to harassment or discrimination on the basis of sex.
Now, to the question of what are “reasonable and proportionate measures?”. Well, like most legislation of this type, this is going to be determined through precedent. However, the legislation provides some guidance that the size, nature, and circumstances of the organisation, its financial and other resources, and the practicability, and cost of steps to eliminate such conduct will be taken into consideration.
So this definition gives a little bit of peace of mind to small and medium businesses that they’re not going to be held to the same standard as their larger brothers and sisters.
The other key point here is that this positive duty extends to your employees, volunteers, if applicable, and other third parties like clients and suppliers as these external parties behaviour also impact your workers.
Now, whilst there is much being made in the media of around these changes, the reality is that impact much of these obligations already existed. It would be foolish to consider that there was not an obligation to take practical steps to prevent and eliminate sexual harassment in the workplace. So, from On Demand HR’s perspective, there really isn’t too much to see here. However, as we will cover later in the course, we are recommending to our clients that they provide formal training when it comes to workplace bullying discrimination and sexual harassment as part of meeting their positive obligations in this space.