It is a short online course an organisation assigns to its people team so the people who take reports and advise managers know what sexual harassment is, what the positive duty expects of the organisation, and how to respond when something is raised, with each person’s completion on record. Sexual harassment training for HR professionals is legally endorsed and takes about fifteen minutes.
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Sexual Harassment Training For HR Professionals
Legally endorsed sexual harassment training for HR professionals, for Australian and New Zealand organisations whose people team must know the law, respond well and train everyone else. Fifteen minutes online, current in every state and territory, through Sentrient, your LMS or HRIS. Book a demo.
What Is Sexual Harassment Training For HR Professionals?
Australia and New Zealand
Sexual harassment training for HR professionals is a short online course an organisation assigns to its people team, so those who write the policy, take reports and advise managers know the law, respond well, and roll the sexual harassment prevention course out to everyone else. The Sex Discrimination Act puts a positive duty on the organisation to eliminate the conduct as far as possible, and the Human Rights Commission’s guidelines expect workforce knowledge, support for anyone affected and a reporting process people trust. HR usually builds all three, and the course helps it do so with a record behind it. The organisation remains responsible for the duty.
Sexual Harassment Facts Every HR Team Should Know
- Half of all incidents are repeated and, of those, half go on for more than a year, the Human Rights Commission’s Time for Respect survey (2022) found. A report that reaches HR is rarely the first time.
- Only a third of Australian workers think their organisation is doing enough about it, the same survey found.
- Of the seven standards in the Commission’s positive duty guidelines, the three a people team most often owns are knowledge, support, and reporting and response.
Why HR Sexual Harassment Training Comes Before The First Complaint
When a report is handled badly it is usually inexperience, not malice: a promise of confidentiality that could not be kept, notes never taken, a manager left to deal with it alone. The person who raised it stops trusting the process, and the organisation’s account of itself falls apart. HR sexual harassment training gives the people team the law, the response steps and the language first. The positive duty in the Sex Discrimination Act asks the organisation to eliminate, as far as possible:
- Sexual harassment in the workplace.
- Sex-based harassment in the workplace.
- Conduct that contributes to a hostile workplace on the grounds of sex.
- Discrimination on the grounds of sex.
- Related acts of victimisation on the grounds of sex.
How Sexual Harassment Training For HR Professionals Supports The Positive Duty
The positive duty under the Sex Discrimination Act asks the organisation for reasonable and proportionate steps against sexual harassment and related conduct, and the Commission’s Guidelines for Complying with the Positive Duty name seven standards: leadership, culture, knowledge, risk management, support, reporting and response, and monitoring, evaluation and transparency. Three of them land on the people team’s desk. Since March 2023 the Fair Work Commission can also deal with workplace sexual harassment disputes, so HR’s first response is tested more often.
For a people team, reasonable steps look like this. Every HR professional completes current, legally endorsed training on the law and on responding to a report, and the organisation records it. HR assigns the workforce course to every employee and chases completion. There is a policy, a trusted reporting channel and support explained at the first conversation. And HR can show the executive and the board what was done, with dates.
Sexual harassment training for HR professionals supports those steps. It gives the people team a plain-English grasp of the law, the conduct it covers and the response expected of leaders, and it leaves each person’s completion on record. It does not make the organisation compliant, does not replace the policy or the investigation process, and does not turn HR into investigators. Your organisation remains responsible for the duty.
What HR Professionals Learn, And Which Course They Take
The people team takes Sentrient’s sexual harassment training for managers and supervisors, written for those who lead, oversee and respond, and its audience list names HR professionals. Its topics are the definitions of sexual harassment, sex-based harassment and a hostile workplace based on sex, the positive duty to eliminate them, responding to an incident, what an investigation of a complaint involves, and leaders’ obligation to contribute to a safe, inclusive and respectful workplace. HR then assigns the companion sexual harassment prevention course to every employee from the same compliance course library, and tracks who has finished.
The moments it speaks to are the ones HR faces. A disclosure in a one-on-one that begins with “please don’t do anything about this”. A manager on the phone asking what they are allowed to say. A pattern of comments about one team that surfaces in an engagement survey. A contractor reporting a client’s behaviour. The course gives the people team the duty and the language behind each of those moments, so the first response is consistent whoever takes the call.
Time To Complete The Sexual Harassment Course For HR Professionals
The sexual harassment course for HR professionals takes about fifteen minutes online, so a people team finishes it the week it launches the workforce course, before the first question arrives.
What The Course Is Like For HR Professionals
Simple navigation, plain language and audio options mean the course fits between interviews or at the end of a payroll run. Short case studies put the learner in the responder’s seat: a report made in confidence, a complaint about a senior person, behaviour laughed off for months. Understanding is checked between sections, and a learning check and declaration close the course. Each person’s completion is recorded by name and date in Sentrient’s learning management system, the same place HR watches the workforce course roll out, so the people team’s own record sits beside everyone else’s.
What HR Professionals Will Be Able To Do
On completing the course, an HR professional will be able to:
- Define sexual harassment, sex-based harassment and a hostile workplace based on sex as the law does.
- Describe the positive duty, its standards and the people team’s part in them.
- Recognise the behaviour in a complaint, a survey comment, an exit interview or an offhand remark.
- Respond to a report so the person is protected, a record is kept and nothing is promised that cannot be kept.
- Advise a manager on a first response and on when a matter needs escalating or investigating.
- Model the respectful conduct the organisation expects of everyone, in HR’s own dealings too.
Business Outcomes When HR Professionals Are Trained
Once the people team has completed the course and rolled the workforce course out, an organisation can expect to:
- Get a consistent first response to every report, whichever HR professional takes it and whatever day it arrives.
- Hold a dated completion record for the people team and the workforce in one place, ready for an executive, a board or a regulator.
- Give managers one source of advice on what to do, instead of the answer depending on who they asked.
- Lower the organisation’s exposure to legal liability for sexual harassment and sex-based harassment.
- Protect its reputation from the damage a mishandled report causes, inside and outside the business.
- Put the people team in a position to lead on respect at work, as the organisations in Sentrient’s case studies have done.
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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Find answers to common questions about sexual harassment training for HR professionals.
Yes. The content tracks the law in each Australian state and territory and in New Zealand, with the Respect at Work reforms built in. Mills Oakley Lawyers (Australia) and Simpson Grierson Lawyers (New Zealand) collaborate on it, so a people team that supports staff in both countries trains on one course and keeps one record.
Most organisations send one HR professional to a professional body’s short course, rely on a law firm briefing after a reform, or assume the people team learns on the job. Sentrient gives the organisation online sexual harassment training for HR professionals the whole team completes, recorded. Worth reading alongside: who needs sexual harassment training and preventing and responding to sexual harassment as a leader.
An organisation assigns this legally endorsed awareness course to its people team, and that is all it is. It is not accredited or nationally recognised training, not an investigator or HR qualification, not legal advice, and not a facilitated workshop. The people team’s wider program is on our Compliance Training For HR Professionals page, and the whole workforce is covered by the base course page.
Under the Sex Discrimination Act the organisation must take reasonable and proportionate steps to eliminate sexual harassment and related conduct, and the Human Rights Commission’s guidelines describe seven standards for doing so. That positive duty sits with the organisation, not with HR professionals as individuals. The organisation remains responsible for the duty and for how its people team acts on it.
Every HR professional who writes policy, takes reports or advises managers: the HR manager, business partners, advisers and the people and culture lead. Sexual harassment training for HR managers and their teams is the sexual harassment training for managers and supervisors course, whose audience list includes HR professionals. Payroll and admin staff complete the workforce version.
The Fair Work Commission’s online learning portal offers a free resource on workplace sexual harassment, and the Human Rights Commission runs its own e-learning for a small administration fee. Each trains one person and leaves nothing on the organisation’s file. Sentrient gives the organisation one course across the whole people team and the workforce, current in every state and territory, with a dated completion record HR can produce.
About fifteen minutes, on a laptop or a phone, in one go or in parts. Most people teams complete it in the same week they launch the workforce course, so every HR professional has finished before the first employee question arrives. A new HR hire completes it in their first week, before they take a report.
Most Australian organisations refresh it every year, and again when legislation changes or a new HR professional joins. At fifteen minutes, an annual refresh for the whole people team fits inside the workforce refresh HR already runs. The organisation decides the cycle, and the completion record shows when each person last finished.
Sentrient prepares the course with Mills Oakley Lawyers in Australia and with Simpson Grierson Lawyers in New Zealand, aligned to Respect at Work guidance, and that is what legally endorsed means on this page. The endorsement covers this course and its workforce companion only. It does not turn the course into legal advice, and it is no substitute for advice on a particular complaint.
Sentrient keeps the content aligned with the law in each Australian state and territory and in New Zealand, including the Respect at Work changes to the Sex Discrimination Act, to the Fair Work Act and to the Australian Human Rights Commission Act. The people team does not have to track those changes. A team that refreshes annually always trains on the current version.
Listen, take it seriously, explain the options and the support available, keep a dated note, and say only what the organisation can stand behind about confidentiality. Then decide with the right people whether interim measures and an investigation are needed and who should run it. The course for managers and supervisors covers responding and how an investigation works. The organisation remains responsible for how each report is handled.
Yes. The course runs on the Sentrient platform or inside the learning management system or HR management system your organisation already uses. Whichever route you choose, each person’s completion is recorded by name and date, so the people team keeps one record for itself and for the workforce.
You enrol each HR professional and each employee in the Sentrient learning management system with a due date. Automated notifications and alerts then tell each person what to do and by when, and nudge anyone who has forgotten. The people team watches completion across the organisation from one screen instead of chasing people by email.
A report listing every learner, the course, the completion date and the closing declaration, for the people team and the workforce, alongside the current version of the policy. That record backs the organisation’s account of the reasonable steps it took. It shows training happened, which is not the same as proving compliance, and the organisation remains responsible for the duty.
It is one course in the program HR runs. Our Compliance Training For HR Professionals page sets out the courses a people team usually completes together, and the Sexual Harassment Training For Board Members page covers the directors HR reports to. Employer and small business pages in this series will be added here when they go live.
Yes. The course explains the duty and the policy sets the organisation’s own rules, so most people teams launch both together. Sentrient’s policy management software records each person’s sign-off against the policy version, so when a complaint is tested HR can show the training and the policy the organisation adopted.
Yes. It opens in a browser on any laptop, tablet or phone, with nothing to install, so a business partner completes it from a client site, a regional office or home. Completion lands in the same record whether the person is in Brisbane or Auckland, which suits people teams spread across sites and time zones.
Yes. One course covers the law in every Australian state and territory and in New Zealand, so a people team that supports both assigns it to itself and to every employee. Each entity still answers to its own local law, and the organisation remains responsible for meeting those obligations.
Sentrient records a learner’s name, completion date and learning check against their profile, and the organisation decides who in the people team may view it. The Privacy Act and the Australian Privacy Principles govern how that personal information is handled. Your organisation remains responsible for the way it collects and uses learner information.
Because HR sexual harassment training from Sentrient is legally endorsed, prepared with Mills Oakley and Simpson Grierson, current in both countries, and sits in the same system HR uses to train everyone else. One record covers the people team and the workforce, and Sentrient has delivered online sexual harassment training for HR professionals and staff across Australia and New Zealand.
Any organisation with a people team that takes reports and runs training: companies, professional services firms, health and research bodies, and not-for-profits. Sentrient’s clients include DWS Group, Pental Limited, The George Institute for Global Health and Roche Diabetes Care Australia. Read how DWS Group runs its compliance training through Sentrient.
Pricing is per user. The quote depends on the number of HR professionals and employees you train and on whether you take this course alone or with the wider library, so no figure appears on this page. Ask for a tailored quote for your organisation during the demo and it will reflect those numbers.
Yes, in a free 20-minute demo. You will see the course as an HR professional sees it, then the assignment, reminders and completion report the people team runs for the executive. Bring the HR manager and whoever administers your LMS, because their questions are the practical ones. Request your free demo and we will fit it around your next rollout.
