Personal Harassment

What Are Examples Of Personal Harassment In The Workplace

Wraps up in 7 Minutes

Author: Gavin Altus

Published On March 25, 2024

Quick Answer:

Examples of personal harassment in the workplace include name-calling and insults, mocking someone’s appearance or private life, spreading rumours, deliberately leaving someone out, repeated unwanted messages, humiliating criticism in front of others and threatening behaviour. It can happen face to face, online or outside work hours. Reasonable management action, such as fair feedback on performance, is not harassment.

In this guide

What personal harassment is
More examples at work
What is not harassment
Your rights and what to do
FAQs

The Australian workplace is built on the principles of respect, safety, and fairness. However, sometimes these principles are tested by personal harassment, a behaviour that can create a hostile, intimidating, or offensive work environment. As an Australian employee, understanding what constitutes personal harassment matters for your wellbeing and for fostering a positive work culture.

What Is Personal Harassment? Common Examples

Personal harassment is any unwelcome conduct directed at an individual or group. It can be subtle or overt and can manifest in various ways. Let’s look at some specific examples relevant to the Australian workplace:

Verbal Abuse: This includes name-calling, insults, threats, or mocking comments. Imagine a colleague consistently making fun of your accent or making derogatory jokes about your background. This falls under verbal harassment.
Sexual Harassment: This is a serious issue that includes unwanted sexual advances, comments, gestures, or physical touching. The Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) found in its 2022 survey that 33% of people who have been in the workforce in the past five years have experienced sexual harassment at work. This highlights the importance of recognising and reporting such behaviour.
Stalking: This involves following or repeatedly contacting another person in a way that causes them to feel uncomfortable or fearful. This can also extend to the digital realm, such as excessive and unwanted online messaging or monitoring.
Bullying: Under the Fair Work Act, bullying is when someone repeatedly behaves unreasonably towards a worker or group of workers and it creates a risk to health and safety. It can intimidate, degrade or humiliate the person targeted. An example could be a manager constantly belittling an employee’s work in front of others or a colleague intentionally spreading false rumours to damage someone’s reputation.
Discrimination: In Australia, it is against the law to treat someone differently based on a protected characteristic, such as their race, gender, age, sexual orientation, religion, or disability. The Fair Work Act 2009 and various state and territory anti-discrimination laws protect employees from this type of harassment.
Social Exclusion: This can be a more subtle form of harassment, involving the deliberate isolation of an individual. This might include being consistently left out of team meetings, social events, or even important email chains, which can hinder career progression and create a sense of alienation.

It’s important to remember that personal harassment can extend beyond the physical workplace, occurring through electronic communication, social media, or work-related events outside of business hours.

Strictly speaking, personal harassment usually means harassment that is not linked to a protected attribute such as race, sex or disability. Sexual harassment and discriminatory harassment are covered by separate laws, but they often overlap with personal harassment in practice. Our guide on how to identify, prevent and respond to personal harassment explains the difference and which legal routes apply.

More Examples of Personal Harassment at Work

Personal harassment often looks ordinary at first. These scenarios show how it can play out day to day:

Example	What it can look like
Public humiliation	A manager regularly tears apart someone’s work in team meetings, rather than giving feedback privately
Mocking appearance or private life	Repeated jokes about someone’s weight, clothes, relationship or family
Spreading rumours	A colleague tells others that a co-worker is about to be sacked or is having an affair
Humiliating nicknames	A team uses a nickname the person has asked them to stop using
Withholding information	Someone is deliberately left off emails or given the wrong meeting time so they look unprepared
Sabotaging work	A co-worker hides files, deletes work or takes credit for someone else’s ideas
Unwanted contact after hours	Repeated hostile or personal messages late at night through work or personal apps
Intimidating behaviour	Yelling, slamming doors, standing over someone or making veiled threats

What Is Not Personal Harassment?

Not every unpleasant moment at work is harassment. Under the Fair Work Act, reasonable management action carried out in a reasonable way is not bullying. This includes:

fair feedback about performance, given respectfully
reasonable directions about how work should be done
a performance or disciplinary process run fairly and consistently
a one-off disagreement that is resolved respectfully

The line is crossed when the behaviour is unreasonable, humiliating or repeated, or when it creates a risk to someone’s health and safety.

Your Rights and What to Do About Personal Harassment

Australian employers have a legal obligation to provide a safe and healthy work environment. This includes having a clear policy on harassment and discrimination and making sure all employees are aware that such behaviour will not be tolerated.

If you believe you or a colleague has been subjected to personal harassment, it’s important to act. Here’s what you can do:

Document Everything: Keep a detailed record of the incidents, including dates, times, locations, and any witnesses.
Speak Up: If you feel comfortable, you can address the behaviour directly with the person involved. Sometimes, people are unaware of the impact of their actions.
Report It: Your first point of contact should be your supervisor, a human resources representative, or a designated harassment contact person within your organisation.
Seek External Advice: If the issue is not resolved internally or if you feel your employer is not taking your concerns seriously, you can seek advice from an external body like the Fair Work Commission, the AHRC, or a legal professional.
Ask for a Stop Order: if the behaviour is repeated, unreasonable and creates a risk to your health and safety, you can apply to the Fair Work Commission for an order to stop bullying while you still work there.

The impact is real. Safe Work Australia’s Key Work Health and Safety Statistics 2026 shows harassment and workplace bullying was the most common cause of serious mental stress claims in 2024-25, at 31.6%.

By understanding what personal harassment is and knowing your rights, you can contribute to a respectful and inclusive workplace for all Australians.

Frequently Asked Questions About Personal Harassment Examples

1. What are common examples of personal harassment at work?

Common examples include name-calling and insults, mocking someone’s appearance or private life, spreading rumours, deliberately leaving someone out of meetings or emails, sabotaging their work, humiliating them in front of others and repeated hostile messages.

2. Can personal harassment happen online or outside work hours?

Yes. Harassment through email, chat apps or social media, and at work events or after hours, can still be connected to work. Employers should treat it the same way as harassment in the office.

3. Is spreading rumours about a colleague personal harassment?

It can be. Deliberately spreading false or hurtful rumours to damage someone’s reputation is a common form of personal harassment, especially when it is repeated or leaves the person isolated or distressed.

4. Can a manager’s feedback be personal harassment?

Fair feedback given respectfully is reasonable management action, not harassment. Feedback can cross the line when it is humiliating, delivered in public to embarrass someone, focused on personal traits rather than work, or used repeatedly to single someone out.

5. What should I do if I see a colleague being harassed?

If it is safe, interrupt the behaviour or check in with your colleague privately afterwards. Offer support, note what you saw, and encourage them to report it. With their permission, you can also report it to a manager or HR.