Respect@Work
Respect@Work
The Anti-Discrimination and Human Rights Legislation Amendment (Respect at Work) Act 2022 has commenced and implements legislative recommendations of the Respect@Work Report.
The Act strengthens the legal and regulatory frameworks relating to sex discrimination and shifts the system to focus more on preventative efforts to eliminate sexual harassment in Australian workplaces by creating safe, gender-equal and inclusive environments.
In order to imbed these changes, it will require transparency, accountability and leadership.
Respect At Work Legislation Amendment
These reforms represent a significant change in the way sexual harassment in the workplace is treated.
The key reform is the introduction of a positive duty in the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 that requires employers to take reasonable and proportionate measures to eliminate certain forms of unlawful sex discrimination, including sexual harassment, as far as possible.
Four Major Changes:
- The positive duty to prevent workplace sex discrimination, harassment and victimisation
- Hostile work environments
- The role of the Australian Human Rights Commission
- Sharing of legal costs.
- Sexual harassment in the workplace should be considered as both an employment/discrimination issue AND a WH&S issue, affecting ALL workers, including contractors & volunteers
- Conduct a risk assessment, considering the drivers, to identify particular risk areas and workers at risk
- Implement strong measures to not only respond to but PREVENT sexual harassment in the workplace. Updating policies and procedures is not enough
- Sexual harassment is not behaviour targeting an individual, it can occur via workplace culture and “hostile work environments.” Culture must be inclusive and void of offensive, humiliating or sexist comments, behaviours, or jokes
- Create a medium and long term plan on how these issues will be dealt with as opposed to having a short term and ‘reactive’ response when the issue arises.
- Content on Respect@Work legislation
- Overview of statistics and active reflection on the statistics that have triggered the Respect@Work legislation
- Definitions, examples, case studies of key concepts related to Respect@Work
- Understand definitions to help individuals identifying and prevent workplace gender-based harassment, sexual harassment and discrimination
- What is psychological safety and what can be done to create a psychologically safe work environment
- Empower workers to build a positive workplace culture of respect and inclusivity
- How to be an upstander and call out inappropriate behaviour.
- Leaders – are at the core of prevention
- People at all levels of your business – it is a societal issue, every Australian, and every Australian workplace can contribute to addressing.
