How Can an Employer Prevent Discrimination in the Workplace

To prevent discrimination in the workplace you have to design it out of your decisions, not just prohibit it in a policy. The decisions that carry the most risk are the routine ones.

• Write selection criteria before you see the applications, and score against them
• Use more than one person on a shortlist, so one person’s assumptions do not decide it
• Check pay and promotion outcomes by group at least annually, not just individual cases
• Give the reason for a decision in writing at the time it is made
• Train everyone, refresh it, and keep a record of who completed what

Since December 2023 the positive duty under the Sex Discrimination Act has expected employers to take reasonable and proportionate measures to prevent this conduct rather than wait for a complaint. What counts as reasonable scales with your size, resources and risk. The Australian Human Rights Commission sets out what it expects in practice. This is general information rather than legal advice.

See Sentrient’s equal employment opportunity course and the full workplace compliance courses range, or how the workplace compliance system keeps the completion records behind all of it.