Prevention of Sexual Harassment

This video covers the very first and very basic question of what is sexual harassment. The video covers the definition as per the Act and provides examples to understand the Act better.

The POSH Act recognizes sexual harassment as violation of fundamental rights of women! The Internal Complaints Committee is constituted in every organisation to protect this very fundamental right to equality. The POSH Act mandates every workplace to have an ICC in place. This video covers what is ICC, its members, and its responsibilities.

Handling complaint redressal with a fair and unbiased process to arrive at a judgment swiftly, is the foundation for protecting the right to a safe workplace for women. The POSH Act states guidelines and timelines for effective complaint redressal. At the same time, the Act empowers workplaces to define the corrective action based on severity of the action.

As Satya Nadella quotes - “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” To build a thriving culture, safe work environment is the foundation step. When every employee can truly work without fear, only then a business can succeed towards its goals! It is in management interest to nurture a safe workplace. This videos covers the management duties as defined by the POSH Act.

As team member of any organisation, each of us wants to enable a safe work environment and prevent sexual harassment at the workplace. The most common questions we receive from participants is “What are the actions that we can take to make it happen?” This video gives you a simple checklist, which will help you participate in creating a safe work environment.

Safe workplace is not just a policy but an experience, it has to be crafted in a same way we craft a user experience. This video has listed the most important milestones of a new employee’s journey in your organization and how you can craft a safe experience at each of these touch-points.

In Video #2 , we learnt the the key responsibilities of the Internal Complaints Committee defined by the law. They are: (1) Prevention, (2) Prohibition, and (3) Redressal. Video #7 shares a simple checklist of steps the ICC can take under each of these three action items to make them effective.

In the very first video, we had explained how sexual harassment is defined by the impact on the victim and not the intent of the perpetrator. We had further discussed that impact is contextual and often difficult to understand. This video explains how impact can be assessed by understanding two key factors:

1. POWER

2. FREQUENCY & ISOLATION

Famous researcher Dan Pink quotes an MIT study in his famous TED talk - “Reward and punishment don’t work to motivate people in today’s world, what works is autonomy, master and purpose. In other words, self direction works better than compliance”. To build a culture of self direction, eliminating fear and creating safe workplace is the first step.

This video unpacks how a safe workplace is a good for business goals and success, and not just for the sake of legal compliance.

A 2017 survey by the Indian National Bar Association of over 6,000 employees—the largest conducted so far in India—found that sexual harassment was pervasive in different job sectors, ranging from lewd comments to an outright demand for sexual favors. As per the survey, most women chose not to report sexual harassment to management because of stigma, fear of retribution, embarrassment, lack of awareness of reporting policies, or lack of confidence in the complaints mechanism.

Many misconceptions about the act of law and act of harassment make it difficult to talk about it. This video discusses four categories of misconceptions which exist widely.