Physical Harassment at Work: How to Identify, Prevent and Respond

What Physical Harassment Is

Physical harassment is unwanted physical contact, physical gestures, or the use of physical presence to intimidate a person at work.

It covers behaviour that makes contact and behaviour that only threatens to.

That second half is the part organisations underrate. A raised fist that never lands, a colleague who stands too close during every disagreement, a manager who blocks a doorway to finish an argument, someone who repeatedly moves or damages a worker’s belongings. None of these leave a mark.

All of them are physical harassment, and all of them create a risk to health and safety that your organisation has a duty to control.

Physical harassment does not require an injury, and it does not require the person doing it to have intended harm.

The question is whether the conduct was unwanted and whether a reasonable person would expect it to intimidate, humiliate or offend.

Physical Harassment and Occupational Violence: Where the Line Sits

These two overlap and they are managed differently, so it is worth being precise.

The same worker can face both in one shift. A nurse struck by a patient in the morning and shoulder-barged by a colleague in the afternoon has experienced occupational violence and then physical harassment, and each needs a different response.

This article covers the colleague side. For aggression from clients, patients and the public, see our guide to occupational violence and aggression in the workplace and the occupational violence and aggression risk assessment checklist.

How to Identify Physical Harassment at Work

Physical harassment rarely starts at the serious end. It escalates, and the early forms are the ones people talk themselves out of reporting.

Unwanted Contact

• Touching, grabbing, hugging or holding someone who has not invited it
• Shoving, tripping, pushing past, or “playful” hitting and punching
• Throwing objects at or near a person, including as a joke
• Spitting, or deliberately breathing or coughing on someone

Threatening Conduct Without Contact

• Raised fists, mock punches, mimed violence
• Standing over someone, invading personal space during disagreements
• Punching walls, slamming doors, throwing equipment in the room
• Following a worker around the site, or waiting for them at their vehicle

Using Space and Objects to Intimidate

• Blocking a doorway, corridor or exit so a worker cannot leave
• Cornering someone in a store room, cool room or vehicle
• Interfering with, hiding or damaging tools, PPE or personal belongings
• Tampering with a worker’s equipment or vehicle
• Deliberately unsafe conduct near a colleague, such as driving plant too close

The Escalation Pattern

Almost every serious physical harassment case has a history. Banter becomes mock violence, mock violence becomes contact, contact becomes injury.

Each step is treated as slightly worse than the last but still within the team’s normal range, which is exactly how a workplace ends up with an assault that nobody can quite explain.

The Law: Which Duties Apply

Australia has no standalone physical harassment offence in employment law. Four frameworks catch it, and more than one usually applies at once.

Two practical points follow from that table.

1. A single incident still counts

The Fair Work bullying route needs repeated behaviour, and reasonable management action carried out in a reasonable manner is excluded from the definition. But your WHS duty and the criminal law both bite on one incident. Do not let “it only happened once” become a reason to take no action.

2. The Fair Work Commission cannot award compensation on a stop bullying application

It can make orders it considers appropriate to prevent the worker being bullied, and it will not make an order where there is no ongoing risk, for example because the person has left. Workers who want compensation use a different route, which is why a poorly handled physical harassment complaint often ends up as a general protections or discrimination claim instead.

When Physical Harassment Is Also a Crime

The line between a workplace matter and a police matter is crossed more often than most managers realise.

In most Australian jurisdictions assault covers not only unlawful contact but also causing another person to fear immediate unlawful contact.

A shove, a spit, a grab, or a raised fist that puts someone in fear can each meet that description. No injury is required.

What this means in practice is straightforward. If a worker is assaulted at work, they are entitled to contact the police, and your organisation must not discourage that.

An internal investigation and a police matter can run at the same time, though you should take advice on sequencing so the internal process does not compromise the criminal one. Preserve CCTV, keep the site notes, and do not tidy up the area.

Serious injuries are also likely to be notifiable incidents under your WHS Act, which means immediate notification to the regulator and preserving the incident site. Check the threshold that applies in your jurisdiction rather than assuming.

When Physical Harassment Is Also Sexual Harassment

A great deal of physical harassment is sexual in nature. Unwelcome touching, hugging, cornering and kissing are among the most commonly reported forms of workplace sexual harassment in Australia, and they are physical harassment and sexual harassment at the same time.

That matters because a different and stronger duty applies.

Under section 47C of the Sex Discrimination Act, organisations have a positive duty 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 Australian Human Rights Commission has had powers to enforce that duty since 12 December 2023, including inquiries, compliance notices, enforceable undertakings and applications to the federal courts.

The positive duty is proactive. It does not wait for a complaint. If your physical harassment controls only activate once someone reports something, they do not meet it.

The Commission’s guidelines set out seven standards: leadership, culture, knowledge, risk management, support, reporting and response, and monitoring, evaluation and transparency.

They are a reasonable framework for handling physical harassment generally, not only its sexual forms.

What the Claims Data Shows

Physical harassment and its psychological aftermath are not a small line item in Australian workers compensation.

Read rows two and three together. Nearly half of Australia’s mental stress claims come from harassment, bullying, or exposure to violence and harassment.

Those are not accidents. They are conduct, and conduct is controllable.

Then read the last row. If 18% of incidents get formally reported, your internal numbers are showing you roughly a fifth of what is happening.

Why Physical Harassment Gets Tolerated

• It is coded as culture: On sites where physical banter is the norm, objecting marks a worker as an outsider before it marks the conduct as a problem.
• No injury, no incident: Organisations whose reporting systems are built around injuries never capture the intimidation that precedes them.
• Seniority: When the person doing it is the supervisor, the crew leader or the highest biller, the informal cost of reporting rises sharply.
• Fear of escalation: Workers reasonably worry that reporting physical harassment will make the physical situation worse, not better.
• The bar is set at assault: If your policy only names violence, workers will assume blocked doorways and thrown objects do not count.

How to Prevent Physical Harassment

1. Name the Low-Level Conduct in Your Policy

Your behaviour policy should list mock violence, throwing objects, blocking exits, invading personal space and interfering with belongings alongside assault. If the policy jumps straight to violence, everything below it reads as permitted.

2. Train Workers and Managers Separately

Workers need to recognise physical harassment early and know how to report it. Managers need to know how to intervene in the moment, how to separate people safely, and what to do in the first hour.

Sentrient’s workplace bullying course and the version for managers and supervisors cover both levels, and respect at work training sets the behavioural baseline.

3. Put It on the Psychosocial Risk Register

Safe Work Australia names bullying, harassment, discrimination, aggression and violence among the psychosocial hazards a PCBU must manage.

That makes physical harassment a hazard with an owner, controls and a review date, not a HR matter that surfaces only on complaint. Our guide to psychosocial risk management walks through that process.

4. Fix the Conditions That Produce It

Physical harassment clusters where pressure is high, supervision is thin and crews are isolated. Night shifts, remote sites, understaffed wards and jobs behind schedule all raise the risk. Work design is a control here, not a separate topic.

5. Make Reporting Possible Without a Confrontation

Offer a channel that does not require the worker to raise it with the person involved or with a supervisor who is friendly with them. Say what happens next and how fast.

6. Have Leaders Interrupt It in the Moment

A supervisor who says “we don’t do that here” the first time someone mimes a punch prevents most of what would otherwise follow. This is the highest value control available and it costs nothing.

How to Respond to an Incident

1. Make people safe first: Separate the parties immediately. Move the respondent, not the person who was harmed. Get first aid if there is any injury at all.
2. Decide whether it is a police matter: If there was contact or a threat of immediate contact, tell the affected worker they can contact the police and support them if they do. Never discourage it.
3. Check your notification duty: A serious injury is likely notifiable to your WHS regulator immediately, with the site preserved. Confirm the threshold in your jurisdiction.
4. Preserve the evidence: CCTV, access logs, messages, damaged equipment, and witness details, gathered the same day.
5. Consider standing the respondent down: Where there is a continuing risk, do it on pay while the matter is investigated, and follow your own procedure.
6. Investigate impartially: Use someone with no stake in the outcome, put the allegations to the respondent, and decide on the balance of probabilities.
7. Support the affected worker: EAP access, time, and a check-in after the process ends rather than only during it.
8. Fix the conditions: Ask what allowed it. If the answer involves staffing, supervision or a culture of horseplay, the control is not a warning letter.

A Physical Harassment Prevention Checklist

• Your behaviour policy names physical harassment and includes conduct that makes no contact
• The policy states that a single incident is enough to act on
• There is a reporting path that avoids the line manager
• Workers and managers have completed training and you hold the records
• Physical harassment sits on your psychosocial risk register with controls and an owner
• Supervisors know they are expected to interrupt low-level conduct
• You know your jurisdiction’s notifiable incident threshold and who notifies
• Managers know that workers may go to the police and that they must not discourage it
• Near misses and non-injury conduct can be recorded in your incident system
• Isolated, night and understaffed work has been assessed for this risk specifically
• Victimisation protections are written down and checked after every complaint

The ninth item is the one most systems fail. If your incident form requires an injury, physical harassment will stay invisible until it produces one.

Where to Start

Open your incident reporting form and check whether a worker could record being shoved, or having a tool thrown near them, without ticking a box that asks about an injury. If they could not, that is the first fix.

Then ask supervisors what they would do if they saw someone mime a punch on the floor tomorrow. The consistency of the answers tells you how much of this you are currently carrying.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What Is Physical Harassment in the Workplace?

Physical harassment is unwanted physical contact, threatening physical gestures, or the use of physical presence to intimidate a worker. It includes pushing, grabbing, throwing objects, mock violence, blocking exits and interfering with a person’s belongings.

2. Is Physical Harassment Illegal in Australia?

There is no single physical harassment statute, but it is caught by several laws at once: your work health and safety duty to manage violence and aggression as psychosocial hazards, the Fair Work Act where the behaviour is repeated, anti-discrimination law where it targets a protected attribute, and the criminal law where it amounts to assault.

3. Does Physical Harassment Have to Cause an Injury?

No. Physical harassment does not require injury or even contact. Conduct that causes a person to fear immediate unlawful contact can amount to assault in most Australian jurisdictions, and conduct that creates a risk to health and safety engages your WHS duty regardless of outcome.

4. What Is the Difference Between Physical Harassment and Occupational Violence?

Physical harassment usually involves a colleague, supervisor or manager and is managed through behaviour standards, complaints handling and discipline. Occupational violence and aggression usually involves patients, clients, customers or the public and is managed through work design, environment, staffing and de-escalation training.

5. Should We Call the Police About Physical Harassment at Work?

That is the affected worker’s decision and they are entitled to make it. If there was contact or a threat of immediate contact, tell them the option exists and support them if they take it. An internal investigation can run alongside a police matter, though it is worth taking advice on sequencing.

6. Can the Fair Work Commission Award Compensation for Physical Harassment?

Not on a stop bullying application. The Commission can make orders it considers appropriate to prevent the worker being bullied, but it cannot award compensation, and it will not make an order where there is no ongoing risk. Workers seeking compensation use other avenues such as general protections, discrimination claims or workers compensation.

7. Is Horseplay Physical Harassment?

It can be, and calling it horseplay does not change what it is. Mock violence, “playful” hitting and throwing objects are unwanted physical conduct that creates a risk to health and safety. Intent is not the test, and a workplace that treats this as normal has an established pattern that makes its position harder to defend later.

8. Is Unwanted Touching Physical Harassment or Sexual Harassment?

Often both. Unwelcome touching, hugging, cornering and kissing are among the most commonly reported forms of workplace sexual harassment in Australia. Where the conduct is sexual, the positive duty under section 47C of the Sex Discrimination Act applies, which requires proactive prevention rather than a response after a complaint.

Read More About Workplace Harassment:

• The 12 most common types of workplace harassment in Australia
• How to identify, prevent and respond to psychological harassment in the workplace
• How to prevent common types of occupational violence and aggression in the workplace
• How to deal with verbal abuse in the workplace
• Work-related violence: how leadership and culture reduce the risk
• Psychosocial risk management: treating mental health risks like any other workplace risk