18 February 2025
The Work Health and Safety (Sexual Harassment) Amendment Regulation 2024 (Qld) (WHS Act) is to commence 1 March 2025. It will add to changes already in place requiring employers to manage psychosocial risks to workers.
A failure to observe the new regulation could result in significant penalties including a breach of the health and safety duties in the WHS Act itself. A worker's exposure to psychological injury can result in enforcement against a persons conducting business or undertaking (PCBU) in the same way a physical injury can bring prosecution or an improvement notice.
Read more on this topic below from McCabes Lawyers about the factors you need to consider when assessing the risk, the WHS documents you need to prepare and preventative plan requirements. *Sponsored content
What do I need to do?
All PCBUs, whether small or large, must identify and manage psychosocial risks associated with work, as part of the general duty under work health and safety laws across the country.
The new Queensland based changes from 1 March 2025 apply to all members and require that:
- a PCBU must now explicitly and proactively identify risks associated with sexual harassment or from sex or gender-based harassment (at work), as part of the duty to manage psychosocial risks; and
- if a sexual or gender-based harassment risk is identified then a PCBU must prepare and implement a written prevention plan to manage that risk.
Risk assessment principles will still apply to the new duty to assess the risk of sexual harassment or gender-based harassment, but, as ever, there will be potential issues if the risk assessment or control measures are inadequate.
In assessing the risk of sexual or gender-based harassment, an employer must assess a long list of factors such as:
- the duration, frequency or severity of exposure to psychosocial hazards
- the design of work, including job demands
- how psychosocial hazards may combine or interact, and
- generally workplace interactions or behaviours (eg at work based social occasions).
Performance management and/or disciplinary action procedures are affected by the duty to manage psychosocial risk. De-risking performance management is something many employers do informally already, but the obligation is now more acute and wider ranging than just a question of whether the employee might sue or be disaffected.
The PCBU must 'have regard to all relevant matters in relation to the risk of sexual harassment or sex or gender-based harassment, including':
- 'matters relating to characteristics of the workers', such as their age, gender, sex, sexual orientation or disability (eg a young apprentice with a group of diverse workers), and
- 'matters relating to characteristics of the workplace or work environment', such as whether the work environment may give rise to a workplace culture, or system of work, that permit unacceptable or inappropriate behaviour, or a lack of diversity in the workplace.
The aim of these changes is to require a shift from merely reacting to claims to requiring positive action to prevent harassment.
What WHS documents do I need to prepare?
Preventative plan requirements
If, a PCBU in Queensland identifies a risk associated with the risk of sexual harassment or sex or gender-based harassment, from 1 March 2025 that PCBU must prepare and implement a prevention plan.
A prevention plan must:
- be in writing, state each risk and the control measures to be implemented, to best manage each identified risk
- state the matters the PCBU considered in determining the best control measures
- set out the procedure for dealing with reports of sexual harassment or sex or gender-based harassment at work,
A PCBU must take reasonable steps to ensure that all workers are aware of the prevention plan and how to access it, and must review the plan:
- as soon as practicable after receiving:
- a report of sexual harassment or sex or gender-based harassment at work, or
- a request by a health and safety committee for the workplace or a worker's health and safety representative, and
- otherwise, at least once every three years.
What to do now
- Commence work ASAP to prepare your Prevention Plan for 1 March 2025, and
- Upgrade your officer due diligence reporting requirements to ensure sexual harassment and other similar unlawful conduct risks are catered for.
For those members operating in jurisdictions outside Queensland, the Queensland laws are currently the high-water mark and therefore we recommend taking an approach that meets the obligations in Queensland will satisfy the WHS regimes in other states and territories.
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