Who Can Be Sexually Harassed At Work?

Who Can Be Sexually Harassed? The Short Answer, and the Useful One

Anyone can be sexually harassed. Any sex, any gender identity, any sexual orientation, any age, any race or cultural background, any level of seniority, in any industry.

Nobody is too senior, too junior, too old or too new to be sexually harassed at work.

Anyone can be sexually harassed is true, and it is where most guidance stops. It is also not the question employers are actually asking when they land here.

The practical question is narrower: which people does my organisation owe a duty to, and whose conduct am I answerable for?

The circle of people who can be sexually harassed, and the circle of people who can do it, are both wider than most policies assume, and they have both been widened by law since 2022.

An organisation that treats sexual harassment as something that happens between two employees, inside a workplace, during work hours, has drawn its circle in the wrong place on all three counts.

Who Is Protected From Being Sexually Harassed Under Australian Law

The people who can be sexually harassed in a legal sense are not only the ones on your payroll.

The Sex Discrimination Act does not limit protection to employees. It covers workplace participants broadly, and the Fair Work Act goes wider still.

Two points make the practical difference here.

Prospective workers are covered

Someone sexually harassed during a job interview, at a recruitment event or in the messages that follow an application has protection, even though they never worked a day for you. Most organisations have no process at all for that scenario.

The Fair Work Act uses a wider term than employee

Its prohibition protects workers and prospective workers, taking “worker” in the work health and safety sense rather than the narrower employment one.

That reaches beyond people on your payroll. Where you engage labour hire, contractors, apprentices, trainees, work experience students or volunteers, work through the categories with your adviser rather than assuming your employment contracts define the boundary.

Who Can Sexually Harass Someone at Work

The question of who can sexually harass someone catches organisations out more often than the question of who can be sexually harassed.

• Managers and supervisors: Being sexually harassed by someone with authority makes refusing and reporting harder, which is what makes it more serious rather than less.
• Co-workers, at any level, including someone junior to the person being sexually harassed.
• Customers, clients and patients: Covered, and covered badly by most policies.
• Contractors, suppliers and visitors to your site.
• People of the same sex: Whether someone has been sexually harassed does not turn on the sex of either person. The Commission has noted increasing rates of men being sexually harassed by other men.
• Owners and principals: Being the business does not put someone outside the law.

The conduct itself is equally broad. Being sexually harassed does not require physical contact: unwelcome remarks, questions about a person’s private life, gestures, staring, jokes, images and messages all count, and conduct that creates a hostile environment counts even where nothing was said directly to anyone.

Nothing in the definition requires sexual attraction, a relationship, or an intention to cause harm.

The test is whether a reasonable person, having regard to all the circumstances, would have anticipated the possibility that the person harassed would be offended, humiliated or intimidated.

Being Sexually Harassed by a Customer, Client or Patient

Being sexually harassed by a third party is concentrated in the industries where Australians most often work face to face with the public: hospitality, retail, health care, aged care, disability support, transport and personal services.

It is also the category most likely to be normalised, and the one where workers are most often told that being sexually harassed is part of the job.

A worker who is sexually harassed by a regular customer is often told, in effect, that it comes with the job.

That is a compliance failure and a work health and safety failure at the same time.

The positive duty introduced by the Respect at Work reforms is the provision that closes this gap.

Section 47C of the Sex Discrimination Act requires organisations to take reasonable and proportionate measures to eliminate sexual harassment, sex-based harassment, sex discrimination, hostile workplace environments on the ground of sex, and related victimisation.

The duty extends to the conduct of the organisation itself, its workers and its agents, and in some circumstances to third parties.

The Australian Human Rights Commission has been able to enforce it since 12 December 2023.

Practically, that means your controls need to exist before a worker is sexually harassed by a customer, not after: a stated standard for how people may treat your staff, a way to record it, the authority for a worker to end an interaction, and a decision path for removing a client who will not change.

Sexually Harassed Without Being the Target: The Hostile Workplace Environment

A person can be affected without having been sexually harassed directly.

The Respect at Work amendments recognised this directly by making it unlawful to subject a person to a hostile workplace environment on the ground of sex.

The test asks whether a reasonable person, having regard to all the circumstances, would have anticipated the possibility of the conduct resulting in the workplace environment being offensive, intimidating or humiliating to a person of that sex, by reason of their sex or a characteristic associated with it.

Read that carefully, because it does not require anyone to have been sexually harassed personally.

Pornographic material on a screen, a running stream of degrading commentary, or a culture of sexual jokes can create a hostile workplace environment for a worker nobody has spoken to directly.

The same reforms lowered the threshold for sex-based harassment by removing the word “seriously” from the requirement that conduct be demeaning. Conduct that is demeaning on the basis of sex no longer has to reach the old bar.

Where You Can Be Sexually Harassed: Trips, Work Functions and Online

Where someone can be sexually harassed is the question on which most organisations draw the circle too tightly.

Sexual harassment is not confined to workplaces. It also occurs in educational institutions and community settings, and the Sex Discrimination Act reaches those areas of public life too.

This article deals with the work context, which is where an employer’s duty sits.

Conduct is covered when it happens at the workplace, at a remote or home work location, on work-related trips including training, conferences, hotels, cars and trains, and at work-related social events such as work lunches, office parties, bars and restaurants.

It is also covered when it happens through email, social media and mobile phones.

The Fair Work Act prohibition goes further again. Since 6 March 2023 it has covered sexual harassment in connection with work, which is deliberately broader than the previous “at work” formulation.

A message sent at eleven at night, from a personal account, between two people who know each other only through work, can be in connection with work.

The Christmas party is the case study every Australian employer already half knows.

The useful reframing is that there is no bright line at the office door or at five o’clock, and a policy that implies otherwise gives managers false comfort.

Where to Complain About Being Sexually Harassed: The Two Federal Routes

A person who has been sexually harassed has more than one avenue, and they work differently.

The consent requirement on Fair Work arbitration is worth knowing.

Where a respondent declines, the matter does not end: the applicant can obtain a certificate and take it to court, where penalties and compensation are available.

Both routes turn on the same employer defence. You are liable for conduct by your workers unless you can show you took all reasonable steps to prevent it, and a policy on its own has never been all reasonable steps.

Sexual Harassment Statistics: Who Is Affected in Australia

Prevalence and reporting figures: Australian Human Rights Commission, Time for Respect, 2022, a survey of more than 10,000 people. Claims data: Safe Work Australia, Key Work Health and Safety Statistics Australia 2025, 2023–24 preliminary.

The reporting figure is the one to act on. At 18%, your internal complaint records are showing you roughly a fifth of what is happening, and an empty register means your reporting path is not trusted rather than that nobody has been sexually harassed.

One in three over five years also means that in any team of reasonable size, someone has been sexually harassed at work and has not told you.

Where Employers Get the Sexual Harassment Coverage Question Wrong

• Policy applies to employees only: Contractors, agents and prospective workers are protected and are usually outside the induction.
• Nothing covers customer conduct: The largest exposure in customer-facing industries, and generally the least documented.
• Assuming someone must have been sexually harassed directly: The hostile workplace environment provision does not require an individual target.
• Treating same-sex conduct as something else: It is sexual harassment on the same terms.
• Drawing the line at the premises or the shift: Trips, functions, messages and out of hours conduct connected to work are all in scope.
• Assuming seniority is protective: Partners, owners and PCBUs can be sexually harassed, and can be the harasser.
• Waiting for a complaint: The positive duty is proactive, and controls that only activate on complaint do not satisfy it.

Sexual Harassment Policy and Training: What Coverage Means in Practice

• State who the policy covers in the first paragraph, and name contractors, agents, labour hire and candidates rather than saying “staff”
• Cover conduct by customers, clients, patients and visitors explicitly, with the controls you will actually use
• Say where the policy reaches: trips, conferences, work functions, messaging platforms and out of hours conduct connected to work
• Include the hostile workplace environment concept, so conduct with no individual target is covered
• Give contractors and labour hire workers who are sexually harassed a reporting path that does not run through their own employer
• Train supervisors separately on receiving a disclosure and on the first hour, including where the harasser is a client
• Keep completion records by name and date, because that is the evidence the all reasonable steps defence rests on

Sentrient’s sexual harassment prevention course covers the worker level and the version for supervisors and managers covers the handling side, with respect at work training setting the behavioural baseline underneath both.

Responding When the Person Sexually Harassed Is Not Your Employee

This is the scenario organisations handle worst, because the usual levers are missing.

1. Take the report the same way: A contractor, agency worker or candidate who has been sexually harassed gets the same seriousness as an employee.
2. Work out who else has a duty: With labour hire and contracting, more than one organisation usually holds obligations at once. Coordinate rather than assuming the other party owns it.
3. Use the controls you do have: Site access, rosters, supervision, account allocation and, where necessary, ending the engagement.
4. Do not send the complainant away: Removing the person who was sexually harassed from a shift or a site, is the most common own goal and reads as victimisation.
5. Offer support, not just process: Employee Assistance Program access, time, and a check-in after the matter closes rather than only while it is open. Extend it to contractors and agency workers, who usually have no equivalent of their own.
6. Record it in your system: A complaint that lives only in a supervisor’s inbox is a complaint you cannot evidence acting on.
7. Fix the conditions: If the arrangement made the person hard to protect, that is the finding.

Workers who want to take it further can go to the Australian Human Rights Commission, the Fair Work Commission, their state or territory anti-discrimination body, or their work health and safety regulator.

Time limits apply, so early advice from a union, a community legal centre or a lawyer is worth getting.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Who Can Be Sexually Harassed at Work?

Anyone, regardless of sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age or seniority. In legal terms the protection covers employees on any contract type, independent contractors, contract workers, commission agents, partners and prospective workers, and the Fair Work Act also protects persons conducting a business or undertaking.

2. Can Men Be Sexually Harassed at Work?

Yes. Sexual harassment is not defined by the sex of the person harassed or the harasser, and the Australian Human Rights Commission has noted increasing rates of men being sexually harassed by other men.

3. Can Someone Be Sexually Harassed by a Customer or Client?

Yes, and it is common in customer-facing industries. You cannot discipline a customer, but you control site access, rosters, supervision and whether that person continues dealing with your workers. The positive duty expects those controls to exist before an incident.

4. Are Contractors and Labour Hire Workers Covered?

Yes. Contract workers, independent contractors and commission agents are protected, and the Fair Work Act uses “worker” in the work health and safety sense rather than the narrower employment sense. Confirm the specific categories that apply to your engagements with your adviser.

5. Can a Job Applicant Be Sexually Harassed?

Yes. Prospective employees, contract workers and commission agents are protected, so conduct during recruitment is covered even though the person never worked for you.

6. Does Sexual Harassment Have to Happen at the Workplace?

No. It is covered at remote work locations, on work trips including conferences and hotels, at work social events, and through email, social media and phones. Since 6 March 2023 the Fair Work Act has covered sexual harassment in connection with work, which is broader than at work.

7. Can You Be Affected if You Were Not the Person Targeted?

Yes. It is unlawful to subject a person to a hostile workplace environment on the ground of sex, and that provision does not require conduct aimed at any individual. Material on display or a pattern of degrading commentary can create it.

8. Is an Employer Responsible if the Harasser Is Not an Employee?

The employer cannot discipline a non-employee, but the duty to provide a safe workplace does not stop at the payroll. The positive duty covers the conduct of the organisation, its workers and its agents, and in some circumstances third parties, and work health and safety duties apply regardless.

Where to Start

Open your sexual harassment policy and read the first paragraph, then ask who it says can be sexually harassed. If it says “employees” and stops there, you have found the gap in one line.

Then ask a manager in a customer-facing team what they would do if a worker said they had been sexually harassed by a regular client. The answer tells you whether your largest exposure has any control attached to it at all.

Read More About Sexual Harassment:

• Addressing sexual harassment in the workplace: statistics, laws, prevention and training
• Understanding workplace sexual harassment: what constitutes unacceptable behaviour
• Understanding sex-based harassment
• How to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace
• The risks and impacts of workplace sexual harassment
• How to identify, prevent and respond to discriminatory harassment in the workplace