Preventing Employee Harassment: Australian Employer Legal Guide

A respectful, safe workplace isn’t just good culture-it’s a legal requirement in Australia.

If you employ staff, you need to actively prevent harassment, respond quickly and fairly to concerns, and keep psychosocial risks under control. Getting this right protects your people, reduces legal risk, and builds a stronger business.

In this guide, we explain what counts as harassment under Australian law, your duties as an employer (including the positive duty to prevent sexual harassment), and the practical steps to build a harassment-resistant workplace. We also outline a fair complaints process and the key documents that make day-to-day compliance easier.

Why Preventing Harassment Matters (Legal And Practical)

Harassment hurts individuals and businesses. It damages wellbeing, productivity and retention, and can lead to costly legal claims, regulatory scrutiny and brand damage.

Legally, employers must provide a safe workplace and manage psychosocial risks like bullying and harassment. That means you can’t wait for a complaint-you’re expected to be proactive.

From a business perspective, clear standards, confident managers and a fair complaints pathway create trust. When people feel safe to speak up, small issues get resolved before they spiral.

What Counts As Workplace Harassment In Australia?

Harassment is unwelcome conduct that offends, humiliates or intimidates someone, where a reasonable person would anticipate that effect. It can be a single incident or repeated behaviour, and it can happen in person, online, over the phone, in messages or on social media.

Common types include:

• Bullying: Repeated unreasonable behaviour creating a risk to health and safety (e.g. belittling comments, aggressive outbursts, deliberate exclusion, or setting someone up to fail).
• Sexual harassment: Unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favours, or other conduct of a sexual nature that is offensive, humiliating or intimidating.
• Discrimination-based harassment: Harassment connected to protected attributes (such as sex, race, disability, age, religion and more), which is unlawful under anti-discrimination legislation.
• Third‑party harassment: Harassment from customers, clients or suppliers in connection with work. Employers should still take reasonable steps to prevent and address it.

Harassment is a psychosocial hazard. Under work health and safety duties, psychosocial risks must be identified and controlled just like physical risks-so prevention is essential, not optional.

Your Legal Duties As An Employer

Several overlapping laws set out your obligations to prevent and manage harassment. Together, they point to the same outcome: a safe, respectful workplace.

• Work Health and Safety (WHS) duty of care: You must provide a work environment without risks to health and safety, so far as reasonably practicable, including psychosocial risks like bullying and harassment. This is a proactive, ongoing obligation. A plain-English overview of an employer’s duty of care can help you frame your approach across policies, supervision and controls.
• Sex Discrimination Act positive duty: Employers now have a positive duty to take reasonable and proportionate measures to eliminate, as far as possible, sexual harassment, sex discrimination and hostile work environments. This goes beyond reacting to complaints-it requires proactive steps across culture, policies, training and leadership.
• Fair Work Act “stop bullying” jurisdiction: The Fair Work Commission can make orders to stop bullying where a worker has been bullied at work and there is a risk it will continue. While the Act doesn’t impose a separate “general duty” to ensure no bullying occurs, failing to manage bullying risks can lead to orders and flow-on issues across WHS and employment law.
• Contracts and policies: Your Employment Contract and workplace policies establish standards, reporting options and consequences for breaches. Clear, consistent documents make it easier to take lawful action when issues arise.

Small businesses aren’t exempt. Whether your team is onsite, hybrid or fully remote, these obligations apply.

Practical Steps To Build A Harassment-Resistant Workplace

A prevention-first approach is the best protection-legally and culturally. Here’s a practical roadmap you can implement now.

1) Set Clear Standards With Policies And Handbooks

Capture your behavioural standards and processes in a central Workplace Policy and a user-friendly Staff Handbook. Cover bullying, harassment and discrimination, acceptable conduct (including online and remote work), complaints handling, confidentiality and disciplinary outcomes.

• Use plain English and make them easy to find.
• Make them apply to everyone who performs work for you-employees, casuals, contractors, labour‑hire workers and volunteers where relevant.
• Include multiple reporting options (e.g. line manager, HR or a designated contact outside the reporting line).
• Explain anti‑victimisation expectations and how you’ll manage confidentiality.

2) Train Regularly And Lead By Example

Induct new starters and refresh training annually. Use realistic scenarios and practical bystander techniques. Managers need extra training on early intervention, how to triage complaints and when to escalate.

Leaders set the tone. If “small” issues are ignored, standards slip. Recognise respectful behaviour and act early on concerns.

3) Encourage Reporting And Make It Safe

Offer multiple, accessible ways to speak up, including a contact outside the person’s team. For sensitive or systemic issues, consider anonymous options and provide access to support where possible.

Make it clear that good‑faith reports won’t lead to retaliation. Reinforce this message in training and during team updates.

4) Manage Psychosocial Risks Proactively

Include harassment risks in your WHS risk assessments. Look for drivers like unclear roles, poor workload control, isolated work, or roles exposed to customer aggression.

Implement controls such as clearer job design, better rostering, supervision, de‑escalation training and safe customer service processes.

5) Extend Standards To Remote, Hybrid And Social Settings

Harassment can occur on chat tools, video calls, direct messages, offsite work, conferences or work‑related social events. Spell this out in your policy and training and set expectations for conduct on client sites and with third parties.

6) Get Your Documents In Order

Strong documents make expectations clear and support consistent action. At a minimum, ensure you have a well‑drafted Employment Contract for each role and a current Workplace Policy that aligns with your processes.

If you collect, use or store personal information as part of complaints handling, have a clear Privacy Policy and secure record‑keeping practices (more on privacy, and the small business and employee records exemptions, below).

Handling Complaints Lawfully And Fairly

When a report lands, move quickly, act consistently and keep people safe. A clear, fair process protects everyone involved-and your legal position.

Step 1: Acknowledge And Assess Immediate Risk

Thank the reporter, explain next steps and consider whether you need interim measures (for example, altering shifts, separating parties, or temporary remote work) to manage safety and wellbeing.

Be careful with terminology here: “stand down” has a specific, very limited meaning in the Fair Work Act (usually used when an employee can’t be usefully employed due to a stoppage of work, or similar). It typically isn’t available for misconduct allegations. If you need to separate parties during an investigation, consider a paid suspension under your contract or policy rather than a statutory stand down. If you’re unsure, seek advice-missteps here can create unfair dismissal risk.

Step 2: Choose The Appropriate Pathway

Decide whether to try informal resolution (e.g. facilitated discussion) or proceed to a formal investigation. Consider the seriousness of the allegations, the wishes of the affected person, and broader workplace risk.

Step 3: Run A Fair, Impartial Investigation

• Appoint an unbiased investigator (internal or external depending on complexity and seniority).
• Follow your policy and any enterprise agreement requirements.
• Collect evidence sensitively, keep confidentiality on a need‑to‑know basis, and support all parties (EAP or comparable support where available).

Step 4: Ensure Procedural Fairness

Give the respondent sufficient detail of the allegations and a reasonable opportunity to respond. Where disciplinary action might follow, provide a clear written invitation to respond-often via a show cause letter that outlines the concerns and potential outcomes.

Step 5: Decide On The Balance Of Probabilities And Act Consistently

Base your findings on the evidence. Outcomes might include training or coaching, a formal warning, changing reporting lines, or termination for serious misconduct (ensure alignment with your Employment Contract and policies, and follow a fair process to manage unfair dismissal risks).

If an allegation isn’t substantiated, still consider whether you’ve identified team dynamics, process gaps or risk controls that need attention.

Step 6: Keep Records And Manage Privacy Properly

Maintain accurate records of the complaint, steps taken, findings and reasons. Secure your records and limit disclosure to those who genuinely need to know.

Privacy tip for employers: many small businesses under the $3 million annual turnover threshold aren’t covered by the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) unless a specific condition applies, and there’s an “employee records” exemption for certain personal information handled in the context of current and former employees. These exemptions are narrow and evolving. Even if an exemption applies, good privacy practice-clear processes, secure storage and a transparent Privacy Policy-reduces risk and builds trust.

Step 7: Follow Up And Watch For Victimisation

Check that interim controls are working, ensure there’s no victimisation, and consider broader communication to reinforce standards (without sharing confidential details).

Managing Misconduct And Culture After Findings

If allegations are substantiated, choose a proportionate, well‑documented response:

• Coaching and training: Helpful where conduct was low‑level or stems from misunderstandings.
• Formal warnings: Set out the conduct, expected standards, support and consequences for recurrence.
• Role or reporting changes: Adjust to reduce risk and rebuild trust.
• Termination for serious misconduct: Use a fair process and check the contract, policy and risks before deciding.

Finally, look at root causes-workload, role clarity, team norms-and keep investing in prevention. Where necessary, separate the parties during the process using a paid suspension consistent with your policies; avoid relying on a statutory stand down unless the legal criteria are clearly met.

Key Takeaways

• Harassment is a psychosocial hazard. Employers must take proactive, reasonable steps to prevent it and respond quickly when concerns arise.
• The law now imposes a positive duty to eliminate, as far as possible, sexual harassment, sex discrimination and hostile work environments-so focus on culture, training and leadership, not just reacting to complaints.
• The Fair Work Commission can make “stop bullying” orders; managing bullying and harassment risks is part of your WHS duty and everyday people leadership.
• Set clear standards through a Workplace Policy and Staff Handbook, and back them up with strong, role‑appropriate Employment Contracts.
• Handle complaints with a fair, confidential process: assess risk, choose the right pathway, ensure procedural fairness and document your decisions.
• Understand the difference between a limited statutory stand down and a paid suspension under contract or policy when separating parties during investigations.
• Be mindful of Privacy Act small business and employee records exemptions, but maintain secure, respectful information handling and a clear Privacy Policy.

If you’d like a consultation on preventing employee harassment and setting up robust policies and processes for your workplace, you can reach us at 1800 730 617 or team@sprintlaw.com.au for a free, no-obligations chat.