Harassment including sexual harassment

The first step is to identify hazards in your place of work. This means looking at everything from the work environment to work tasks, how they’re carried out, and the way work is designed and managed.

Situations that may increase the risk or likelihood of harassment include:

• particular cohorts of workers who are more vulnerable such as young workers, workers with a disability, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander workers, workers in insecure or precarious forms of employment, and workers on working visas
• low worker diversity (e.g. the workforce is dominated by one gender, age group, race or culture)
• power imbalances (e.g. workplaces where one gender holds most of the management and decision-making positions) or workplaces organised according to a hierarchical structure (e.g. police and enforcement organisations, or medical or legal professions)
• workplace cultures that support or tolerate sexual harassment, including where lower level (but still harmful) forms of harassment are accepted (e.g. small acts of disrespect and inequality are ignored and reports of sexual harassment or inappropriate behaviours are not taken seriously). This conduct can escalate to other forms of harassment, work-related bullying/violence and aggression.

Sometimes, a worker may avoid reporting concerns because:

• it’s thought to be ‘part of the job’ and nothing can be done about it
• the worker believes that only ‘serious incidents or issues’ are to be reported
• there’s a belief that nothing will happen if they report
• the worker believes they will be blamed for not being able to handle the job
• the reporting process is time-consuming and complex
• the workplace culture encourages “just getting on with it”.

To determine if harassment is potential hazard in your place of work:

• talk with health and safety representatives, health and safety committees and workers
• walk through and inspect your place of work, including how people interact
• review workers’ compensation claims
• refer to industry standards and guidelines
• review the hazard and incident reports, exit reports and complaints.

A risk assessment involves thinking about what could happen if someone is exposed to a hazard (the consequence of exposure) and the likelihood of it happening.

Psychosocial hazards may interact or combine to increase the overall psychosocial risk so need to be considered together.

A risk assessment can help you figure out:

• the severity of a risk
• whether any effective control measures are in place
• what actions you can take to control this risk
• how quickly you should act.

To determine the likelihood that someone will be harmed by harassment at work, ask yourself:

• has it happened before, either in this place of work or somewhere else?
• if it has happened, how often does it happen?

To determine the possible consequences, ask yourself:

• will it cause minor or serious injury, or death?

After the risks have been identified and assessed, you'll need to control them. Risk control measures should be selected on the basis of highest protection and most reliability.

Control measures

• Eliminating the risk
  The most effective control measure is to eliminate the hazard and associated risk. If you are unable to eliminate the hazard, you must identify ways to ensure you are managing it in a way that minimises risks to health and safety.
• Minimising the risk
  If it’s not reasonably practicable to eliminate the hazard, the risk should be minimised by using a range of control measures, for example:
  • Provide facilities that give privacy and security.
  • Ensure the layout of the workplace provides good visibility of work areas and avoids restrictive movement. Ensure there are no areas where workers could become trapped, such as rooms with keyed locks.
  • Provide communication systems like phones or duress alarms (and provide workers with information, instruction and training on how to use these).
  • Ensure a safe working environment for workers during access and egress from the workplace, during travel, at client or customer premises and any other location where work is performed.
• Using administrative controls
  You must also use administrative controls if there is still a risk after you’ve tried to reduce it with other control measures. Administrative controls protect your workers by working in ways that reduce their exposure to a hazard, for example:
  • Empower workers to refuse, restrict or suspend service if people fail to comply with the expected standard of behaviour.
  • Set standards of behaviour and procedures for what a worker should do if they experience or see harassment at work or work-related events or from third parties to the workplace (including sexual harassment).

You may need to use a combination of these control measures to meet your responsibilities under WHS laws. Refer to the Managing the risk of psychosocial hazards at work Code of Practice 2022 for more information.

Risk management should be an ongoing process in your business, and you should review your control measures regularly. Don’t wait until something goes wrong.

In some situations, WHS legislation requires you to review controls.

These are:

• when the control measure is not effective in controlling the risk
• before a change that might give rise to a new risk
• when you identify a new hazard or risk
• when consultation with workers indicates a review is needed
• when the dynamic and complexity of your business changes, for a new supervisor or worker
• after a health and safety representative requests a review.

A review of risk control measures should be undertaken after incidents or complaints involving harassment.

A review of risk control measures can include an examination of:

• the physical work environment
• work systems and procedures
• worker training and information
• the consultation processes in your place of work.