Everyone deserves a workplace that is safe, respectful and inclusive. Employers have a responsibility to do what they reasonably can to make sure workers are safe at work.
Unfortunately, unacceptable workplace behaviours like bullying, harassment and discrimination can happen in creative workplaces. People can be subjected to more than one type of unacceptable workplace behaviour at the same time.
There are also laws that protect people from being victimised for making a complaint or raising a concern about bullying, discrimination and some types of harassment.
What is bullying?
Bullying is repeated and unreasonable behaviour that creates a risk to health and safety.
Bullying includes verbal or physical abuse, such as yelling, offensive language or physically intimidating someone (for example, by pushing them or cornering them).
It also includes more subtle psychological abuse, such as assigning employees impossible tasks, or deliberately changing work rosters to inconvenience an employee.
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What is harassment?
Harassment is any unwelcome behaviour that a reasonable person would consider to be offensive, embarrassing, intimidating, threatening or humiliating. Unlike bullying, a single incident can be harassment.
Harassment includes things like:
- making inappropriate comments or jokes about a person
- threatening comments
- making fun of someone in front of others
- laughing when someone makes a simple mistake
- intimidating body language that makes another person uncomfortable.
Workplace harassment can create a risk to workers’ psychological safety, which means that employers must take reasonable action to prevent it from happening. Learn more about psychosocial hazards under work health and safety laws.
In Australia, there are extra protections for certain types of workplace harassment including:
- sexual harassment
- sex-based harassment
- harassment based on a person’s disability
- racial hatred.
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What is discrimination?
Discrimination happens when a person is treated unfairly, or less favourably, because of their age, race, disability, religion, sex, sexual orientation, political belief, or another attribute that is protected under the law.
Discrimination can be direct or indirect.
Discrimination includes things like:
- not hiring a person because of their race
- only offering training to workers below a certain age
- only considering men for promotions
- holding rehearsals in inaccessible spaces that some workers cannot access.
Workplace discrimination is against the law.
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The key differences
Sometimes it can be hard to tell which of these behaviours is happening – and this can make it hard to know what to do.
|
Bullying |
Harassment |
Discrimination |
|---|---|---|
|
Repeated and unreasonable behaviour that creates a risk to health and safety. It has to be repeated. |
Any unwelcome behaviour that a reasonable person would consider to be offensive, embarrassing, intimidating, threatening or humiliating It only has to happen once. |
Treated unfairly or less favourably because of a protected attribute. It only has to happen once. |
It can be more than one type of behaviour
People can be subjected to more than one type of unacceptable workplace behaviour at the same time – and they often are.
This means that there is probably more than one option for getting help to try and resolve it.
It will be up to you to decide what course of action is the best one for you. What you choose to do will depend on where you are, what type of behaviour you’ve experienced, and what you want the outcome to be.
We have information about where to get help with unacceptable workplace behaviour to help you compare your options.
In practice:
Marie doesn’t get the job
Marie attends a casting call for a crowd scene in a movie. She is visibly pregnant.
At the audition, the casting director winks at her and says, ‘I can think of a more enjoyable way to spend three and half minutes – looks like you did too.’ Marie thinks this is sexual harassment — she thinks a reasonable person would have found this offensive.
When her agent later tells her she didn’t get the role, he says the director decided not to cast her because he thought she would be unreliable because she probably has too many medical appointments to go to. Marie thinks this is discrimination — she thinks she has been treated unfairly or less favourably because of her pregnancy.
Dhruv is sent out for the coffees – again
Dhruv is a game developer. He migrated from India last year. He runs a small creative team and is often part of client meetings.
Ahead of each meeting, the creative director asks Dhruv to go down to the café and collect the coffees, despite there being more junior and more administrative workers available. Dhruv thinks this could be discrimination — he is the only South Asian worker in the organisation.
‘Ah look, it’s the Chai wallah!’ the creative director laughs every time Dhruv returns with a tray of coffees. “Chai, chai, chai”, the creative director chants as Dhruv places the coffees on the board table. Dhruv finds this embarrassing and demeaning. He thinks it could be bullying — it is repeated and unreasonable behaviour that is negatively affecting his mental wellbeing.
Victimisation and workplace complaints
Victimisation is subjecting, or threatening to subject, another person to a detriment on the basis that the person has made, or proposes to make, a workplace complaint.
It can be thought of as:
- unfairly treating or retaliating against a person
- because they made a complaint, or raised concerns
- about unacceptable workplace behaviour.
Examples of victimisation include:
- firing a worker because they made a sexual harassment complaint
- demoting a worker because they raised concerns about racism in the workplace
- rescinding an employment offer because a person made a complaint about being asked the question, are you planning to have kids soon, in the interview
- changing a worker’s shifts, to their disadvantage, because they talked to HR about their manager’s inappropriate comments about their colleague’s sexuality
- ending a contract, or refusing to renew a contract, with contractor, because they raised concerns about racist remarks made by the contract manager.
Victimisation related to bullying, discrimination and certain kinds of harassment is against the law.
Learn more:
More in this section:
Workplace bullying
There are laws in Australia that protect people from bullying at work. There are laws that apply to both paid and unpaid workers. It doesn’t have to be intentional – and it can do harm.
Workplace harassment
There are laws in Australia that protect paid and unpaid workers from workplace harassment. There are extra protections against sexual and sex-based harassment, disability harassment and racial hatred.
Workplace discrimination
There are laws in Australia that protect people from discrimination in the workplace. There are anti-discrimination laws that apply to both paid and unpaid workers.
How to deal with unacceptable behaviour at work
This page sets out key steps for dealing with bullying, harassment or discrimination in creative workplaces. There is information for anyone who has experienced, seen or heard, or is responsible for responding to unacceptable behaviour at work.
Where to get help with unacceptable workplace behaviour
If you don’t feel safe asking for help in your workplace, or if you have gone through your workplace process but it hasn’t helped, there are a range of government agencies that can help with resolving the issue.
