POSH Compliances: Mandatory Requirement in India

With the growth of the concept of Gender Equality and Women Empowerment at workplace, the cases of sexual harassment have also increased manifold over a period of time. Besides implementation of various measures to prevent such acts, there’s no halt for this growing nuisance in the society.

As you must be aware in 2013 the Government of India came up with the above Act which mandated each organization in India to have a policy on prevention, prohibition, and redressal of sexual harassment at workplace for women. It also spelled out the responsibilities of the employer to provide a safe work environment by following the mandatory compliances of the Act.  

Prevention of sexual Harassment (POSH) have been introduced as a major tool for creating awareness among employees and co-workers at workplace aiming to provide a healthy work environment that is safe, empowering and satisfying.

Workplace Harassment

As an employer, the safety of the employees working under you is your responsibility. Be it at any level- a manager or a trainee, each employee deserves respect and should not feel the pressure of any kind of sexual harassment.

We help you to keep a check on the compliance of the guidelines for the prevention of sexual harassment in your organization. We provide various facilities related to this. But before discussing those, let us understand what sexual harassment is.

Sexual Harassment

Sexual harassment is any kind of unwelcome sexual advance or conduct that is done with an objective of intimidating any employee or colleague and creates an offensive working environment.

The harasser can be a co-worker – senior or colleague. Even a non-employee such as a vendor/customer can also be responsible for it.

Similarly, the victim can either be male or female and can even be forced on the same sex. But the majority of the cases see women as the victim and men as the harasser.

Sexual harassment is generally done under the pretext of:

1. The promise of giving employment

2. The threat of employment status in future

3. The promise of perquisites or promotions

4. The threats of demotions or humiliating behaviour/insult (personal or public)

Sexual Harassment Actions

If an employee faces any of the following acts by any persons related to the organization, it can be considered as sexual harassment:

1. A deliberate uncomfortable physical contact

2. A demand of sexual favours

3. Sexual comments or double meaning talks

4.Sending or showing sexual photographs or porn

Any organization with 10 or more employees is required to have an Internal Complaint Committee for the safety of their employees at all the administrative units. The committee should comprise of minimum 4 members and half of them should be females. 

               Tags: Commercial Law Firms, Legal compliances

               

    

Anjali Suri

Company Secretary

Global Jurix LLP

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