Promoting a Safer Workplace: NSW’s Respect at Work Strategy for Preventing Sexual Harassment

The NSW government recently released SafeWork’s NSW Respect at Work Strategy: preventing sexual harassment. It’s a comprehensive four-year plan to prevent and address sexual harassment in workplaces across NSW. 

It’s a response to the landmark Respect@Work report by the Australian Human Rights Commission and the facts that:

  • 1 in 3 Australians have experienced sexual harassment at work in the past five years, according to a 2022 Australian Human Rights Commission report.
  • Sexual harassment occurs in every industry and at every level, regardless of business size.

Aligning with Respect@Work, the strategy takes a proactive, prevention-led approach to create safer and more respectful work environments and places businesses front and centre for taking responsibility for health and safety in their workplace – including preventing sexual harassment.

There are five key objectives of the strategy

  1. Educate

Raising awareness among NSW businesses about their proactive duty to prevent and respond to workplace sexual harassment.

  1. Capability

Equipping NSW workplaces with knowledge and tools to effectively prevent and respond to workplace sexual harassment.

  1. Action
    Encouraging NSW workplaces to take effective and systematic actions to prevent and respond to workplace sexual harassment.
  1. Effective Regulation

Strengthening and enforcing WHS laws to protect workers from sexual harassment.

  1. Prevention-Led
    Emphasising a prevention-led approach to addressing the underlying drivers of workplace sexual harassment.

How can organisations respond to these?

Like almost everything, it must come from the top down. It must start with Leadership. It is not a set-and-forget policy task to be allocated to HR but a compliance-prevention plan supported and driven by those at the top.

Educate

For prevention to be successful, education needs to be specific and provided to everyone within the business.

Ways to educate your employees

  • Develop policies and procedures for preventing sexual harassment and communicate them to everyone in the workplace, including workers, visitors, customers and patients.  
  • Train staff through interactive workshops on the definitions of sexual harassment and bullying so they can recognise the behaviours and take appropriate action. 
  • Promote the benefits of a gender-equal, inclusive, and diverse workplace. 

Capability

Organisations need knowledge, processes and procedures to prevent and respond to workplace sexual harassment. 

Ways to build your capability

  • Identify, assess and control the risks and review the controls around workplace sexual harassment.
  • Take continuous action to learn about and meet your WHS obligations  
  • Regularly assess environmental risks​, for example, remote, isolated, evening work, and consumption of alcohol in the workplace and include them in your policies​ ​ 

Action

Knowledge and processes are one thing. Taking action is another. Have effective and systematic actions in place that mean you can empower prevention and respond quickly. 

Ways to take action

  • Understand deeply what is happening in your organisation by conducting a culture review. 
  • Be explicit and firm about the process and negative ramifications for anyone found to have sexually harassed anyone in the workplace. 
  • Empower staff to refuse or cease services to customers, clients and colleagues who display disrespectful behaviours.  

Effective Regulation

Workplace sexual harassment creates risks to workplace health and safety. It can lead to psychological or physical harm. NSW’s WHS laws state businesses must ensure, so far as reasonably practicable, the health and safety of workers. This includes taking steps to eliminate or minimise the risk of sexual harassment.

Ways to ensure compliance

  • Provide appropriate support to employees.
  • Meet the effective regulation objective and conduct unbiased workplace investigations by using an external third party.
  • Know how to report and get support for sexual harassment in the workplace.

Prevention-led

Treat the prevention of sexual harassment in the workplace with adequate time, effort and resources it requires. 

Ways to prevent sexual harassment 

  • Consider high-level controls to help eliminate or minimise risk to meet the Respect@Work Bill and OHS/WHS obligations.
  • Create a safer work environment where everyone is empowered to manage conflict. 
  • Review relevant documentation, including policies and procedures, codes of conduct, workplace incident reports, and grievances/complaints.

Respect in the workplace and a prevention-led approach to workplace sexual harassment is everyone’s responsibility but has to be driven by senior leaders. NSW organisations can benefit by using this strategy as a catalyst for greater, embedded safety for all employees. 

Get started today. Contact us at 02 8036 5558 or email: saranne@segalconflictsolutions.com.au.

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