Modern Slavery Course

A modern slavery course is workplace training on recognising serious labour exploitation and knowing what to do about it. The useful ones do three things. They name the practices the law actually covers, they teach people the escalation route inside their own organisation, and they leave a record the business can point to later. Courses that stop at awareness rarely change anything.

Start by asking who the course is for. The Attorney-General’s Department organises its own modern slavery resources by audience, with separate sets for frontline workers, community, business and government, and it points to courses run by specialist organisations rather than publishing one course for everyone. A board member interrogating a modern slavery statement, a procurement officer reading a contract price and a site supervisor noticing that a worker has no access to their own wages all need different material at different depth.

Four things worth checking before you buy one or build one:

• Does it name the practices in the statutory definition, including forced labour, servitude, debt bondage and deceptive recruiting, rather than treating modern slavery as one undefined thing
• Does it tell a person what to do next and who to tell, rather than stopping at recognition
• Is it differentiated by role, or the same forty minutes for everyone from the board down
• Does completion leave a record you would be comfortable describing in a statement or an audit

Australian context matters as well. A course built around UK or Californian disclosure law will miss how the Commonwealth Act works and what Australian reporting entities are actually asked to describe. The Attorney-General’s Department guidance and training resources are a sound place to start. Obligations differ by sector and change over time, so treat this as general information rather than legal advice.

Posts tagged here sit alongside wider compliance training and human rights writing. Sentrient’s modern slavery course sits inside the wider compliance training courses library.