How To Deal With Discrimination In The Workplace As An Employee

Discrimination at work rarely arrives as a single dramatic moment. It is more often a pattern: the shifts you stop being offered, the promotion that goes to someone less qualified, the comments that are always framed as a joke. By the time most employees start looking for information, they have been carrying it for months and are not sure whether what happened to them has a name, let alone a remedy.

It usually does. This guide covers how to deal with discrimination in the workplace: what legally counts as discrimination, how to build a record that holds up, which complaint path fits your situation, and the deadlines that quietly decide whether you have a case at all. If you are not sure the treatment relates to who you are at all, the separate guide to unfair treatment at work covers that broader case.

What Counts as Discrimination at Work

Discrimination in an Australian workplace means being treated unfavourably because of a personal characteristic that the law protects, rather than because of your conduct or your capacity to do the job.

It takes two forms. Direct discrimination is being treated worse than someone else because of who you are, such as a worker taken off customer-facing shifts after disclosing a pregnancy. Indirect discrimination is a rule that applies to everyone but disadvantages one group without good reason, such as a blanket Saturday requirement imposed without anyone asking whether it was reasonable for staff whose religious observance falls on that day. The companion guide for managers works through that distinction in more depth from the other side of the conversation.

Under the Fair Work Act 2009, the conduct also has to amount to what the law calls adverse action. That covers dismissal, demotion, cutting hours, changing someone’s duties to their disadvantage, refusing to hire, or otherwise injuring an employee in their employment. The question that decides the case is why the action was taken. As the Fair Work Ombudsman puts it, “Adverse action isn’t always discrimination, even though it might seem to be.”

Three things are not discrimination, even when they feel unfair. Action unrelated to a protected attribute. Action that is lawful under anti-discrimination legislation. And action that relates to the inherent requirements of the job, meaning the things the role genuinely cannot be done without.

The Attributes You Are Protected For

The Fair Work Act protects employees from adverse action taken because of: race, colour, sex, sexual orientation, age, physical or mental disability, marital status, family or carer’s responsibilities, pregnancy, religion, political opinion, national extraction, social origin, breastfeeding, gender identity, intersex status, and experiencing family and domestic violence.

Four federal discrimination Acts sit alongside it and cover the same ground from a different angle:

• Racial Discrimination Act 1975
• Sex Discrimination Act 1984
• Disability Discrimination Act 1992
• Age Discrimination Act 2004

If you are trying to work out which category your situation falls into, the breakdown of the common types of workplace discrimination covers them individually. Every state and territory then has its own law, and these often protect more than the federal ones do: the Discrimination Act 1991 in the ACT, the Anti-Discrimination Act 1977 in New South Wales, the Anti-Discrimination Act 1992 in the Northern Territory, the Anti-Discrimination Act 1991 in Queensland, the Equal Opportunity Act 1984 in South Australia, the Anti-Discrimination Act 1998 in Tasmania, the Equal Opportunity Act 2010 in Victoria, and the Equal Opportunity Act 1984 in Western Australia.

Queensland is worth singling out. From 1 July 2025 its law added protection for attributes including physical appearance, homelessness, an irrelevant criminal record, an irrelevant medical record, an expunged conviction, and being subjected to domestic or family violence. It also recognises discrimination based on a combination of two or more attributes, which matters if your experience does not fit neatly into one box.

Discrimination, Bullying and Being Treated Badly Are Not the Same Thing

Knowing how to deal with discrimination in the workplace starts with naming it correctly, because this distinction decides which door you knock on.

Discrimination is tied to a protected attribute. Bullying is repeated unreasonable behaviour that creates a risk to health and safety, and it does not need to be connected to any attribute at all. A manager who humiliates every member of the team equally may well be bullying, but is not discriminating. Harassment is unwelcome conduct related to an attribute, and sexual harassment has its own separate pathway and its own definition.

Plenty of situations are two of these at once. A supervisor who singles out the one older worker on the team for repeated public criticism is arguably bullying and discriminating. You do not have to pick a label correctly before you complain, but naming the attribute clearly in your complaint is what moves it into discrimination territory.

Step One: Build the Record Before You Do Anything Else

The single biggest weakness in employee discrimination complaints is not the law. It is that the events happened over a year and were never written down, so what remains is an impression rather than evidence.

Start a contemporaneous log, kept somewhere your employer cannot access. For each incident record the date and time, who was present, what was said or done in as close to the actual words as you can manage, and the effect it had, including any shift, pay or duty change that followed. Keep the dull material too. Rosters, timesheets, performance reviews, position descriptions and the email where you were told a decision had been made are usually more persuasive than the remark that upset you, because they show a pattern over time rather than one bad day.

Two practical cautions. Do not take documents you are not entitled to have, because that creates a separate problem that can overshadow your complaint. And check your state or territory law before recording a conversation, since the rules on recording without consent differ across Australia and getting it wrong can make the recording unusable.

Step Two: Raise It Internally

Most external bodies will ask what you did internally first, and in many cases an internal complaint resolves the matter faster than any external process will.

Find your employer’s discrimination, bullying or grievance policy. It should name who to report to, what happens next, and the timeframe. If your direct manager is the problem, the policy almost always offers an alternative, usually HR, a more senior manager or a contact officer. Put the complaint in writing even if you raise it verbally first, and keep a copy outside work systems.

Say what happened, name the attribute you believe it relates to, and state what outcome you want. “I want the rostering decision reviewed and the comments to stop” is actionable. A general statement that you feel undervalued is not. Where there is a union, an employee representative or an employee assistance program, use them. You are not obliged to handle this alone.

Step Three: Choose the Right Complaint Path

There are three external routes and they are not interchangeable. If you are handling a complaint on behalf of an organisation rather than experiencing one, the employer and manager guides cover those duties instead.

You generally cannot run the same complaint in two places at once, and lodging in one forum can close another off. If your situation involves a dismissal and your state law covers an attribute the federal Acts do not, that is the point to get advice rather than guess.

The Deadlines That Decide Your Options

Time limits do more to determine outcomes than the strength of the underlying facts, because a late complaint can be refused regardless of merit.

If you were dismissed and want to bring a general protections claim, you have 21 days starting from the day after the dismissal took effect. That is the hard one. It runs over Christmas, over the period you spend deciding whether to make a fuss, and over the weeks you spend looking for another job.

For complaints to the Australian Human Rights Commission under the Sex Discrimination Act, Disability Discrimination Act, Racial Discrimination Act or Age Discrimination Act, the President may terminate a complaint lodged more than 24 months after the conduct occurred. That outer limit replaced a 6-month timeframe and has applied to termination decisions made since 13 December 2022.

State and territory time limits are set separately and are generally shorter than 24 months, so check the body in your jurisdiction rather than assuming the federal position applies.

What Happens After You Lodge

Expect a process measured in months, not weeks, and plan for that.

A complaint is assessed, your employer is notified and invited to respond, and most matters are then directed into conciliation, a confidential discussion aimed at resolving the complaint without a hearing. Conciliation resolves a substantial share of complaints, and the outcome is whatever the parties agree to: a reference, a payment, a policy change, a written apology, an adjustment to your role. If it does not resolve, you are issued with documentation that lets you take the matter further, generally to a court or tribunal, which is the point at which legal representation becomes close to important.

Be realistic about timing. The Australian Human Rights Commission has publicly acknowledged that complaint volumes have grown and that resolution times have lengthened with them, and recent reporting put the average wait for a complaint to be allocated to a case officer at close to seven months. That is not a reason to skip the process. It is a reason to lodge early and keep working while it runs.

If You Are Punished for Speaking Up

Being treated badly because you made a complaint is a separate breach in its own right, not part of the original one.

Victimisation is unlawful under the federal discrimination Acts, and taking adverse action against an employee for exercising a workplace right is prohibited under the general protections provisions of the Fair Work Act 2009. In practice it looks like a sudden performance management process, a roster cut, exclusion from meetings or a transfer that arrives shortly after the complaint does.

If that happens, log it the same way you logged the original conduct, and note the dates alongside the complaint date. The sequence is what makes the connection visible. Raise it as a fresh issue rather than folding it into the existing complaint, and get advice promptly, because the dismissal-related deadline applies here too.

The Law Now Expects Your Employer to Act First

Since December 2022 employers and other duty holders have carried a positive duty under the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 to take reasonable and proportionate measures to eliminate, as far as possible, sexual harassment, sex discrimination and related conduct. The Australian Human Rights Commission’s powers to monitor and enforce that duty commenced in December 2023. Queensland went further from 1 July 2025, extending its own positive duty across all protected attributes rather than sex alone.

What that obligation requires of an organisation is covered in the manager guide. For you as an employee, the practical significance is this: the obligation does not wait for a complaint. An employer who had no policy, no training and no reporting channel has a harder position to defend than one who can show it took active steps. It is worth noting in your complaint if your employer had no visible policy, never provided training, or had a reporting channel that led nowhere.

What the Complaint Data Shows

Two things stand out in the current numbers, and both should encourage rather than discourage you.

Volumes are rising sharply. Recent reporting indicates the Australian Human Rights Commission received a record 759 complaints under the Sex Discrimination Act in the most recent financial year, up 21% on the year before and 51% across five years, with 460 sexual harassment complaints of which 95% related to employment. At state level, the Queensland Human Rights Commission reported 1,529 complaints received in 2024-25, with 42% of accepted discrimination complaints arising in the workplace or while seeking work.

Resolution times are the trade-off. The same reporting indicates 49% of workplace sexual harassment matters took longer than a year to resolve, against a target of finalising 85% of complaints within 12 months, and performance varies considerably between jurisdictions. The reasonable conclusion is not that the system does not work. It is that complaining is now common rather than exceptional, and that starting early matters more than it used to.

Where to Start

If you are working out how to deal with discrimination in the workplace right now, do these four things this week.

1. Write down every incident you can recall, with dates, and store it outside your work accounts.
2. Find your employer’s policy and identify who you can report to other than the person involved.
3. Work out whether a dismissal or other employment decision is involved, because that determines whether the 21-day clock is running.
4. Get advice from your union, a community legal centre or an employment lawyer before you lodge anything external.

If you are reading this as someone who runs a workplace rather than as an employee affected by one, the companion guides on handling discrimination as an employer and as a manager cover the obligations from the other side. Sentrient’s workplace compliance system and online compliance courses help organisations put the policies, training and reporting channels in place that the positive duty now expects.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Do I have to complain internally before going to an external body?
Not as a strict legal precondition in most cases, but external bodies will usually ask what steps you took internally, and an unexplained failure to raise it at all can weaken your position. If raising it internally is unsafe or futile, say so and explain why.

2. Can I be sacked for making a discrimination complaint?
Taking adverse action against an employee for exercising a workplace right is prohibited under the general protections provisions of the Fair Work Act 2009, and victimisation is unlawful under the federal discrimination Acts. If it happens, treat it as a separate complaint and get advice quickly.

3. How long do I have to make a complaint?
If you were dismissed, 21 days from the day after the dismissal for a general protections application to the Fair Work Commission. For federal discrimination complaints, the President of the Australian Human Rights Commission may terminate a complaint lodged more than 24 months after the conduct. State and territory limits are set separately and are often shorter.

4. What evidence do I actually need?
A dated log of incidents written at the time, and also the ordinary employment records that show the pattern: rosters, timesheets, performance reviews, position descriptions and emails recording decisions. Documents showing what changed and when usually carry more weight than recollections of what was said.

5. Is it discrimination if my manager treats everyone badly?
Probably not discrimination, because discrimination requires the unfavourable treatment to be connected to a protected attribute. It may well be bullying, which has its own pathway and does not require any attribute to be involved.

6. Does it cost anything to complain?
Lodging with the Australian Human Rights Commission or a state or territory anti-discrimination body does not usually require a fee, and conciliation is designed to work without lawyers. Applications to the Fair Work Commission can attract a fee, with waiver available in cases of financial hardship. Court proceedings are a different matter and carry real cost risk.

7. Can I complain about something that happened at a work function?
Conduct connected to work is generally not confined to the physical workplace or to ordinary hours. Work functions, work-related travel and work communication channels can all fall within scope.

8. What if the discrimination relates to an attribute the federal Acts do not cover?
Your state or territory law may cover it. Queensland’s protections, for example, extend to attributes including physical appearance, homelessness and an irrelevant criminal record following changes that commenced on 1 July 2025. This is a good reason to check your own jurisdiction rather than stopping at the federal position.

Sources

Fair Work Ombudsman, Protection from discrimination at work

Australian Human Rights Commission, Federal discrimination Acts

Fair Work Commission, General protections and harmful adverse action

Australian Human Rights Commission, Termination decisions made since 13 December 2022

Last reviewed: October 2026

Read More About Discrimination In The Workplace:

• How To Deal With Discrimination In The Workplace As An Employer
• How To Deal With Discrimination In The Workplace As A Manager
• How To Deal With Disability Discrimination In The Workplace
• What Are Examples Of Age Discrimination In The Workplace?
• How To Handle Religious Discrimination In The Workplace