What Is Sexual Harassment In The Workplace
What is sexual harassment in the workplace, set against bullying, which it often arrives alongside? The difference that matters operationally is repetition.
Bullying requires repeated unreasonable behaviour creating a risk to health and safety. A single incident, however unpleasant, does not meet it.
Sexual harassment has no repetition requirement. One incident can be unlawful on its own.
That changes the employer’s response to a first report. Waiting to see whether a pattern develops is a defensible instinct with an interpersonal complaint and the wrong response here.
Two further differences. Reasonable management action can answer a bullying allegation and has no application to sexual harassment. And the positive duty applies to the second, so prevention is assessed regardless of whether anyone complained.
Where a complaint contains both, the harassment element sets the standard for the whole matter.
The Australian Human Rights Commission sets out the test. This is general information rather than legal advice, and obligations vary by state and territory.
See Sentrient’s sexual harassment course and incident reporting software.
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