Modern Slavery Act Training

Modern Slavery Act training is training an organisation runs because of the Commonwealth Modern Slavery Act 2018. The Act itself mandates no training. What it requires is a statement describing the modern slavery risks in your operations and supply chains, the actions taken to assess and address them, and how you assess whether those actions worked. Training is one of the actions most reporting entities describe.

That distinction should change how you treat it. Training stops being only a capability exercise and becomes a disclosure. The statement is approved by the board and signed by a director, so a claim about who was trained, and on what, is something a director has put their name to.

Guidance for directors from the Australian Institute of Company Directors names three risk exposures on these statements: omitting or understating material risk areas, saying things that are untrue or exaggerated, and aspirational commitments that are not delivered in practice. Training claims land in the third category more often than any other. “We will roll out modern slavery training across the business” is easy to write in March and hard to evidence in November.

In practice that means:

• Describe what was actually delivered, to which roles and in which parts of the business, rather than a single headline completion figure.
• Keep records that would survive a question from the board or an auditor, showing who completed what and when.
• Say what changed as a result. The Act asks you to assess effectiveness, and a completion rate is not an effectiveness measure.
• Do not commit in a statement to training that has not been funded or scheduled.

Posts tagged here sit alongside wider compliance training and governance, risk and compliance coverage. Whether you must report depends on your entity type and revenue, and the framework has been under statutory review, so treat this as general information rather than legal advice.

Sentrient’s modern slavery course sits within the wider compliance training courses.