Results released by the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) have highlighted the initiatives that employers have been implementing since the introduction of the positive duty to provide a safe workplace for all employees. More than 7000 medium and large employers, covering more than five million Australian employees, reported new information to WGEA about prevention and response to sexual harassment in 2024.
This implements Recommendation 42 of the Respect@Work Report, which indicated that a policy-based approach should be considered a ‘minimum’ and ‘reactive’ benchmark, and that further data was needed to understand the actions and progress in workplaces. The WGEA results reveal many employers have implemented pathways to respond to work-related sexual harassment or sex discrimination, but there is more work to be done. An area for focus includes ensuring company leaders understand and promote expectations of a safe, respectful and inclusive workplace.
While nearly 99% of employers have a formal policy on work-related sexual harassment and discrimination, WGEA’s data shows that 28% of employers are not monitoring how prevalent it is. WGEA CEO Mary Wooldridge said the employer’s positive duty means taking effective action should begin, but not end, with high-quality workplace policy.
Wooldridge said that long-term culture change within organisations requires employees and company leaders to know the policy, understand what’s in it and the part they play in its implementation. “One of the insights from the Respect@Work Report is that proactive engagement by leadership is critical for long-term change. WGEA’s new results show that most CEOs are highly engaged in reviewing, signing off on and then communicating these policies (85%); however, just over half (55%) of their Boards are similarly involved,” Wooldridge said.
WGEA’s results also offer an insight into how these policies are being implemented; while there are comprehensive processes to disclose sexual harassment to HR or designated staff (98%), anonymous disclosure processes are less available (68%). The ability to protect a reporter’s identity with anonymous disclosure is important, given the widespread under-reporting of these issues.
The results also found that 88% of employers reported offering training to their workforce, but they are most likely to provide training to all groups at induction and/or annually. Wooldridge noted that while employers are training employees with the knowledge and understanding to respond to complaints, employers also have a responsibility to stop sexual harassment before it starts.
“Our results indicate CEOs and Boards can play more of a role in proactively enabling a safe and respectful culture by communicating the employer’s expectations more regularly to all employees. Overall, we are seeing positive progress in relation to the prevention and responses to sexual harassment but there’s more to be done. Future WGEA reporting will be able to monitor progress on this,” Wooldridge said.
