Workplace Sexual Harassment
Workplace sexual harassment is still managed by many organisations as a conduct issue, handled once it is reported. Work health and safety law treats it as a psychosocial hazard, and that framing changes the work.
A conduct issue is managed through policy, investigation and discipline. A hazard is managed by identifying it, assessing the risk, controlling it at the source, and reviewing whether the controls worked.
Applied here, that means asking where the risk actually sits before anything happens. Isolated or lone work. Late shifts and skeleton staffing. Alcohol at work events. Steep power gradients combined with insecure employment. Client or patient contact. You then control those conditions directly, rather than relying on people to report afterwards and treating each report as a one-off.
Safe Work Australia covers psychosocial hazards and the duty attached to them. This is general information rather than legal advice.
See Sentrient’s sexual harassment course and psychological safety course.
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