Avoid Name Sake Implementation of PoSH Act

This article is focused on implementation of prevention of sexual harassment in the private sector

This is subsequent to various articles published on the above subject of sexual harassment. 3 years since enforcement of the 2013 act on sexual harassment of women, sexual harassment persists and continues to be one of the critical issues in the private sector. Many complaints of such sexual harassment which has risen, demonstrate minimum attention given by employers for prevention and resolution of sexual harassment. It is argued that this situation has come up primary due to certain practices within the private sector with regard to implementation of the 2013 PoSH act.

 

This article highlights fundamentally miscued practices which will in turn reveal frivolous mindset of employers. These practices not only violate the spirit of 2013 PoSH act but also demonstrate how hollow the commitment by the private sector in dealing such an important issue

Sexual harassment at workplace invariably emerges from gender discriminatory attitudes, interplay of gender power, male chauvinistic attitude and the likes. Regular discussions on this prevention of sexual harassment aspects must be a starting point for a prevention initiative with employees by the employer. However large number of employees goes through mundane online content, without any emphasis on understanding the nature of the problem involved. Many employees go thru prevention of sexual harassment training casually. Majority are only seeing prevention of sexual harassment as a mandatory course during Induction.

Even though usage of online modules is justified and applied due to cost and accessibility for various Organizations. The negative effects of only online training were confirmed by a team from American equal employment opportunity commission which found out that training done over the last 30 years has not produced the expected results on preventing sexual harassment at workplaces.

 

Mere online training on prevention of sexual harassment has failed to produce tangible result because it was very symbolic, rather than focusing on the prevention of harassment

Section 19 of the 2013 act clearly mandates that awareness programs, regular workshops for employees needs to be organized by the employer in regular intervals. Online training is not to be conducted for the sake of protecting the management; it should be effective in educating employees on the need for preventing sexual harassment in their workplaces. In March 2017 the ministry of women and child development of Government of India published a detailed training module on its website making it clear that awareness generation has to be done through regular classroom sessions only.

Contradictory to this regular classroom sessions many employers in India simply choose online training module to generate the so-called awareness. While there is abysmal performance on the part of employers to create prevention of sexual harassment awareness any effort to create awareness should be by way of workshop or in house programs or outsourced with exemplary qualified organizations which conduct detailed awareness programs in person.

PoSH training in India becomes all the more important due to increase sexual harassment awareness amongst employees PoSH training, prevention of sexual harassment training is imperative so that employee is understand what is sexual harrassment and what can be constructed as sexual harassment