Modern Slavery And Human Rights Awareness Training Course

A modern slavery and human rights awareness training course teaches staff to recognise severe labour exploitation and understand the rights it breaches. The two subjects are taught together for a practical reason. Modern slavery sits at the extreme end of a much longer range of conduct, and people who are only shown the extreme end tend to miss everything before it.

That is the most common weakness in awareness training. A course built around trafficking and forced labour leaves a payroll officer with no idea that repeated deductions for accommodation matter, or a site supervisor unsure why a contractor holding workers’ passports is worth reporting. Framing the topic as rights first gives people a reason to notice the earlier signals.

A course worth running usually does four things:

• Anchors the content in Australian law and the organisation’s own reporting route, not general international material
• Separates what different roles need. Procurement, payroll, site supervisors and directors are looking at different evidence
• Ends with an action rather than a definition. The test is whether someone knows who to tell and what happens next
• Records completion, because the reasonable steps an organisation took are what gets examined later

Awareness training is a foundation and not a control on its own. The Australian Human Rights Commission, which has delivered human rights education for over three decades and builds its packages from its experience investigating and conciliating real discrimination complaints, offers free introductory e-learning that pairs well with workplace-specific training. Requirements differ by sector and change over time, so treat this as general information rather than legal advice.

Posts tagged here look at why organisations run this training and what it changes. See Sentrient’s modern slavery course and human rights course, more writing in the human rights category, and the full compliance training courses library.