Harassment is any unwelcome behaviour that a reasonable person would consider to be offensive, embarrassing, intimidating, threatening or humiliating.
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.
Harassment can happen at any stage, from hiring or engaging a worker, during the period of work, through to decisions about ending work. Unlike workplace bullying, a single incident can be harassment.
Workplace harassment can create a risk to workers’ psychological safety. Workplaces have a legal obligation to take reasonable action to prevent harassment from happening, including a positive duty to prevent sexual and sex-based harassment.
What the law says
Protection against harassment comes from a range of different laws:
Work health and safety laws
Workplace health and safety (WHS) laws say that workplaces must take reasonable action to keep workers safe.
Workplace harassment can create a risk to workers’ psychological safety, which means that employers must take reasonable action to prevent it from happening.
WHS laws protect all kinds of workers including those engaging in paid work, board and committee membership, volunteering, unpaid internships and other forms of formal unpaid work.
Learn more about managing risks and hazards and psychosocial risks.
Discrimination 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, and racial hatred.
These types of harassment are also considered discrimination.
Everyone in Australia is protected by the Commonwealth anti-discrimination laws. You do not have to be an Australian citizen, permanent resident or on a particular type of visa to be protected. There are also national Fair Work laws that that deal with discrimination. Individual states and territories also have their own laws.
Learn more about discrimination.
Workplace sexual harassment laws
The Fair Work Act is a national law that prohibits sexual harassment in the workplace.
The Fair Work Commission can order workplace sexual harassment to stop. Sexual harassment can also be considered serious misconduct and therefore be reasonable grounds for firing an employee.
Some states and territories also have their own laws.
Learn more about sexual harassment.
Workplace bullying laws
Harassment that is repeated may be bullying. Workplace bullying is against the law.
Learn more about workplace bullying.
What is harassment
Harassment is any unwelcome behaviour that a reasonable person would consider to be offensive, embarrassing, intimidating, threatening or humiliating.
There are different types of harassment.
Unlike workplace bullying, a single incident can be harassment.
Workplace harassment can happen at work, offsite at work events, online on social media or in digital workspaces, and even outside of work hours.
Examples of workplace harassment could include:
- Rita — Rita’s boss Janice calls her into to her office to yell at her because of a simple typo she made in an event flyer.
- Paul — When setting up the sound for a music festival one afternoon, Paul trips over a microphone stands and falls down. Several members of the crew laugh at him.
- Lee — Lee is rushing to send out an email about an upcoming gallery exhibition and is tapping her foot nervously. Her co-worker Les calls out, ‘I swear Lee, if you don’t stop tapping your foot I’m going to come over there and cut it off.’
- Ali — Ali’s shift working as a waiter runs over time and he doesn’t have time to change before rehearsal. When he walks into the rehearsal room, the director Sam points at him says, ‘Look everyone, the butler’s here’, embarrassing Ali.
Different types of harassment
Sexual and sex-based harassment
What is sexual harassment?
Sexual harassment is any unwanted or unwelcome sexual behaviour where a reasonable person would have anticipated the possibility that the person harassed would feel offended, humiliated or intimidated. It has nothing to do with mutual attraction or consensual behaviour.
Sexual harassment includes:
- staring, leering or unwelcome touching
- suggestive comments or jokes
- unwanted invitations to go out on dates or requests for sex
- intrusive questions about a person's private life or body
- unnecessary familiarity, such as deliberately brushing up against a person
- emailing pornography or rude jokes
- displaying images of a sexual nature around the workplace
- communicating content of a sexual nature through social media or text messages, including through the use of emojis.
Workplace sexual harassment is any sexual harassment that has any connection with the workplace or people you know from the workplace.
It does not need to occur at work or a work-related event for it to be considered workplace sexual harassment.
For example, if a person sexually harasses a co-worker at an event on the weekend, it may still be considered workplace sexual harassment if there is a sufficient connection with the workplace.
Examples of workplace sexual harassment could include:
- Reese — Reese is the only male dance instructor at a ballet studio. He overhears the studio’s owner, Susie say to another instructor, I really should hire more male instructors. They look so damn good in tights.’
- Kris — Kris is packing up the puppet theatre after a show in a park. Laurie wolf whistles at them and yells out, ‘Looking good Kris, bend over again for me will ya?’
- Maya — Maya’s about to send off an email when she notices that Josh is leaning against the wall opposite her desk again, and staring at her. He whispers, ‘You know how I love to watch you work Maya.’
- Freya — Freya is out with her friends at a nightclub one weekend when she runs into her co-worker Jak. Jak grabs her by the waist, pulls her towards him and starts dancing provocatively.
Workplace sexual harassment against the law.
There is information at the bottom of this page about how to deal with harassment in the workplace and where to go for help.
Keep learning:
What is sex-based harassment?
Sex-based harassment is unwelcome behaviour that demeans a person because of their sex, where a reasonable person would have anticipated the possibility that the person harassed would feel offended, humiliated, or intimidated. It is essentially sexist behaviour.
Sex-based harassment includes:
- asking intrusive personal questions based on a person's sex
- making inappropriate comments and jokes to a person based on their sex
- making sexist remarks about a specific person
- displaying images or materials that are sexist
- requesting a person to engage in degrading conduct based on their sex.
Workplace sex-based harassment is any sex-based harassment that has any connection with the workplace or people you know from the workplace.
It does not need to occur at work or a work-related event for it to be considered workplace sex-based harassment.
For example, if a person harasses a co-worker at a supermarket after work, it may still be considered workplace sex-based harassment if there is a sufficient connection with the workplace.
Examples of workplace sex-based harassment could include:
- Helen — Helen is the only female board member at a regional art gallery. Just as the board meeting’s about to start, the chair of the board calls out, ‘Be a good woman Helen and go get us lads some coffee would you.’
- Lionel — Lionel has an intersex variation and identifies as male. Sally is attending a festival one weekend and notices that Lionel is volunteering at a booth for a local Intersex advocacy group. The next week, Sally comes up to Lionel and says, 'So, which parts of you are male and which are female?'
- Siobhan — Siobhan is a curator at an art gallery. She notices that it is feeling warmer than usual in the gallery one day and asks her colleagues if they’ve noticed anything. Jon says, ‘Don’t worry Siobhan, there’s nothing wrong with the A/C, it’s just your hot flashes’ and then laughs.
- Will — Will is walking past the kitchen one day when Jen calls out to him, ‘Will, come here and take out the rubbish will you? It’s a man’s job. There’s a good boy.’
Workplace sex-based harassment is against the law
There is information at the bottom of this page about how to deal with harassment in the workplace and where to go for help.
Behaviour that creates a hostile work environment based on sex
A hostile workplace environment based on sex is one which is:
- offensive, intimidating or humiliating to a person of a particular sex, and
- which a reasonable person would have anticipated the possibility of the workplace being offensive, intimidating or humiliating to a person of that sex.
Sexual harassment and sex-based harassment are more likely to happen in hostile work environments.
Behaviours that could create a hostile work environment based on sex include:
- displaying or sharing pornographic or sexist materials
- engaging in behaviour based on gendered stereotypes
- general sexual banter and offensive jokes
- making sexist remarks about people of a particular sex
- making derogatory comments about people of a particular sex
- refusing to work with people of a particular sex
- excluding people from workplace activities because of their sex
- using emojis with sexual connotations in messages.
Examples of behaviour that creates a hostile environment based on sex could include:
- Josie — Josie feels uncomfortable about Keith’s screensaver, which shows a photo of a young women in a bikini lying on a car
- Craig — Craig asks Lou to take down the ‘sexy firefighter’ calendar in the break room. He tells her that it makes him feel worried that his co-workers might be objectifying him.
- Alexa — Alexa is offended by the sexist memes that several of her co-workers have recently been sharing in their WhatsApp group.
- Kirk and Stan — Kirk and Stan are the only male costume artists working on a touring opera production. They start to suspect that they are being excluded from meetings. When they asked their manager, she says, ‘Look boys, if we want your opinion, we’ll ask for it.’
Behaviour that creates a hostile work environment based on sex is against the law.
The positive duty to prevent sexual and sex-based harassment
Employers have a legal obligation to take reasonable action to prevent sexual harassment or sex-based harassment from happening. It is not enough to respond if you are made aware of it happening. You must take steps to prevent it from happening in the first place.
This is called a positive duty.
Learn more about the positive duty to prevent sexual and sex-based harassment.
Keep learning:
Disability harassment
Disability harassment is doing or saying something that is intimidating, insulting or humiliating to a person because of their disability.
Workplace disability harassment includes:
- a colleague making jokes in the workplace about someone’s disability, such as wheelchair usage or speech patterns
- creating a humiliating environment for the person with disability.
Examples of disability harassment could include:
- Lila — Lila is a tour guide for an interactive art exhibition. She uses crutches to help her walk more easily. Lila lets her colleague Mary know that she mispronounced an artist’s name while giving a tour earlier this morning. Mary replies, ‘I don’t need a cripple correcting me.’
- Con — Con has a mild intellectual disability. He’s been hired on a short-term contract by a local arts organisation to digitise their contact list. On his first day, Denise is explaining the work to him. He asks her a question, and she sighs and says, ‘Honestly, I don’t know why they hired you. Someone else could do it so much faster.’
- Gary — Gary is a lighting technician for a company that designs large interactive artworks for public spaces. He’s recently started seeing a psychologist to try to better manage his anxiety and leaves early on Wednesdays to attend his appointments. Charles says, ‘We all have problems. Most of us just deal with it ourselves, like grown-ups. It’s not fair that Gary gets to leave early because he can’t sort himself out.’
- Elaine — Elaine is an usher at a theatre. She has recently torn a muscle in her leg and finds it difficult to stand for longer than a few minutes. Her manager suggested that she can still do her duties if they place a chair by the theatre doors for her. Elaine overhears her colleagues making fun of her for being the only usher who does their job ‘sitting down’.
Workplace disability harassment is against the law.
There is information at the bottom of this page about how to deal with harassment in the workplace and where to go for help.
Racial hatred
Racial hatred is doing or saying something in public, including in the workplace, which is likely to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate based on the race, colour, national or ethnic origin of a person or group of people.
Workplace racial hatred includes:
- making racist comments on workplace messaging boards
- displaying racist posters or cartoons in the workplace
- calling people racist names in the workplace.
Examples of racial hatred could include:
- Benoit — Benoit, who is Sudanese Australian, has recently started working as a photography teacher at a community centre. In the staff room, John indicates towards Benoit with his head and loudly says to Greg, ‘Make sure you lock up all your equipment. His kind can’t be trusted.’
- Radha — Radha is a third generation Indian-Australian dancer. While performing at a festival, she hears someone yell, ‘If you don’t want to be Australian, just go back to where you came from.’
- Thu — Thu’s parents migrated to Australia from Vietnam before she was born. Someone posts racist cartoons depicting Asian women in the bathrooms in her workplace.
- Saul — When Saul, who is Jewish, goes to open his gallery one morning, he is shocked to find that someone has spray painted swastikas on the front windows.
Workplace racial hatred is against the law.
There is information at the bottom of this page about how to deal with harassment in the workplace and where to go for help.
It is not harassment if —
If it’s reasonable management action
A worker may feel upset or stressed when an employer takes performance or disciplinary action – but if is reasonable management action carried out in a reasonable way, it’s not harassment.
You can take action if a worker is not doing their job well:
- to help the worker improve their work
- to address poor performance or behaviour.
You also need to take the action in a reasonable way.
The Fair Work Commission’s website has useful examples of what counts as ‘reasonable management action’.
Before taking any management action, it can be helpful to ask yourself:
- Have I been open and clear about what I expect from this worker?
- Am I applying these work standards consistently across all workers?
- If there are policies about this kind of thing at my workplace, am I following them?
- Will this action educate and inform the worker so they can improve or change? Or is it more likely to embarrass them or feel threatening?
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You’re using the wrong tape, you idiot |
You’re using the wrong tape (and it’s not safe) |
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Greg stands at the foot of Clive’s ladder with a roll of gaffer and waves it at him while shouting up at him. “Clive, are you dim? You’re using the wrong tape. The red cloth tape is for marking the cables, not the black gaffer. It’s a serious safety issue dude and there are plenty of other people lining up who’d be happy to take your job.” This may be harassment. Greg has sought to embarrass Clive in front of other workers. His approach serves to threaten Clive rather than support him to improve. Greg’s frustration is not an excuse for his behaviour. |
Greg walks across the stage to where Clive is working. He stands at the foot of Clive’s ladder and calls up to him. “Clive, have you got a minute?” Clive comes down the ladder and the two step into the wings where no one else is working. Greg says, “I can see you’re using the black gaffer to mark the cables. Please make sure you use the red cloth tape. It’s a serious safety issue. If you forget which tape to use for what, just ask me.” This is not harassment. Greg is giving reasonable instructions in a clear and professional way. His approach is aimed at improving Clive’s work. He has the conversation away from other workers so as not to embarrass him unnecessarily. |
If it’s not unwelcome
In order to be harassment, behaviour must be unwelcome. Jokes, comments and flirting are ok so long as they are not unwelcome. Just because behaviour was welcome in the past, does not mean it will always be welcome in the future.
Mutual attraction or consensual behaviour is not unwelcome and is therefore not harassment.
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Why won’t you go out with me again |
That’s ok, let’s just be friends |
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Callie and Greg have been working together in the Big City Orchestra for years. Callie plays the viola; Greg plays the bassoon. A few months ago, Callie and Greg went out on a few dates. Callie realised that she wasn’t romantically interested in Greg and told him that she just wanted to be friends. Initially, Greg was embarrassed by Callie’s rejection and she noticed that he started leaving straight after rehearsals, rather than hanging around to chat like he used to. But more recently, Greg has started asking her out again. He’s sent text messages and messages to her social media accounts. After rehearsal this afternoon, he came up to Callie and said, ‘Come on, let’s just try one more date! We had a good time before, let’s give it another go. You know you want to.’ Callie said she still wasn’t interested and that she had plans and had to go. Callie updates her friend on the situation with Greg over dinner that night and her friend tells her that it may be sexual harassment. Repeated, unwelcome requests to go out on dates can be sexual harassment. Callie has told Greg many times that she’s not interested but he keeps asking her out. |
Callie and Greg have been working together in the Big City Orchestra for years. Callie plays the viola; Greg plays the bassoon. Just before she went on annual leave last month, Callie and Greg went out on a date. Callie had fun but she doesn’t think she’s interested in Greg romantically. After rehearsal this afternoon, Greg hangs around to chat with Callie. He asks about her holiday and how she’s feeling about being back at work. Then he says, “Hey Callie, I had such a great time on our date last month. Would you like to do it again sometime?” Callie replies, “I had a great time too Greg. I had so much fun chatting with you. But I think you should know that I’ve realised I’m not interested in you romantically. Is it ok if we just stay friends?” Greg says, “Yeah of course Callie. I totally get it. Sometimes you just know. But yeah, let’s stay friends.” This is probably not sexual harassment. Though she rejected Greg’s invitation, Callie does not seem uncomfortable about him asking her out again. It is probably not unwelcome or unreasonable behaviour, and therefore not sexual harassment. |
Workplace complaints and victimisation
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.
Victimisation related to bullying, discrimination and certain kinds of harassment is against the law.
Learn more about victimisation.
How to deal with harassment in the workplace
Sometimes it’s not immediately clear what to do or who to speak to in your workplace if you think you, or someone else, has been harassed. It can be especially hard if you are a freelancer or self-employed or if you are working in a collaboration with other artists.
We have information about:
- what to do if you think you’ve been harassed
- what to do if you see, or hear about, someone being harassed
- what to do if it is your role to respond to workplace harassed.
Visit our page on how to deal with unacceptable workplace behaviour.
Where to go for help
If you think you have been harassed — 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 harassment you’ve experienced, and what you want the outcome to be.
Find out about where to get help with unacceptable workplace behaviour.
If you’re not sure which action to take, there are organisations that can help you decide. Find out where to find support.
If you need help responding to harassment — There are various organisations that offer help and advice. Find out where to find support.
More in this section:
Unacceptable workplace behaviours
Bullying, harassment and discrimination are unacceptable in the workplace. Everyone deserves a workplace that is safe and respectful. There is help available when they are not.
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 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.
