Recently we have had an interesting case with one of our clients involving sexual harassment at Work. In short, there was an incident between two employees whereby there was allegations of inappropriate touching and comments.

During an investigative meeting, the responding employee admitted to having touched the complainant on the backside and having made a number of comments, however, she suggested that this was standard in the work environment. She also made a request of the employer to have the opportunity to resign if termination of employment was being considered.

Ultimately, termination was being considered, and the employee therefore resigned and the company paid her notice period in lieu of having her work the notice period.

The responding employee then lodged an unfair dismissal claim, in an attempt to argue she should be reinstated for two reasons. Firstly she felt that there was a lack of training on sexual harassment which contributed to a company culture whereby there was a level of accepted inappropriateness. Secondly, she felt that because there was a lack of training, and due to the pre-existing culture, it was unfair for termination to have been considered.

Ultimately the unfair dismissal matter settled just prior to the formal hearing, it does point us to recognising the importance of at least providing employees with a policy on sexual harassment, and some level of training in preventing and defending these types of claims. On Demand HR Members not only have access to our policy drafting skills and expertise, but also access to roll out our Online Bullying, Harassment and Discrimination Training on these topics

To learn more, please visit ondemandhr.com.au.  Thats it for now, we hope that you are all staying positive and looking forward to seeing you all in the next update.