Sexual Harassment Policy & POSH ICC Training For Employees

EC Specializes in creating Awareness on Sexual Harassment at workplace with clients spread across India. We are located in Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad and Bangalore with clients all over India. We have Professional lawyer on board with 20+ years of experience in handling issues such as prevention of sexual harassment, cyber law, education and literacy and laws relating to women. Our panel is also retainers to several national and multinational companies and banks on their policy and compliance areas.

Every organisation wants to create a safe and healthy working environment that enables employees to work without fear of prejudice, gender bias and sexual harassment.

There is an increased need for awareness on workplace harassment particularly related to gender issues. A clear understanding of best practices will give HR professionals and Internal Committee (ICC) the tools to make their workplace a safe and motivated place for all employees to work.

Consulting

Our Expert panel will help in reviewing the Sexual harassment policy of any organisation, Policy Revision and Amendments and will assist with the required guidelines to implement POSH in the organisation with necessary changes that needs to be made by the employee as a part of compliance like Constitution of Internal Complaints Committee (ICC), Preventive Policies, Organizational Best Practices and Conduct and Service Rules.

Employee Awareness Programmes

Our Employee Awareness Program helps in educating all the employees about what sexual harassment really is, the difference between sexual harassment and other types of inappropriate behaviour, how to deal with sexual harassment, whom should they approach to register a complaint, confidentiality, punishment for harassment & false complaints. This workshop will help the employees to be aware of all the aspects of India’s laws on workplace harassment.

Qualifying ICC Members to handle POSH

This program helps to equip the ICC members with the right knowledge on the subject to prevent sexual harassment and also develop in them professional competence for implementation of the statute i.e. the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013.

This program will prepare HR and ICC to handle queries like: How should you handle anonymous complaints? What do you do when there is no evidence for a complaint? Can you penalize a witness for not speaking up during an investigation? How does the government track compliance? etc and build their capacity in order to execute their roles in the most responsible manner. It also enables them to know the preventive measures, complaints handling process, ICC powers and redressal mechanism. All HR Heads, ICC Members, Fact Finders, HR, Legal Team, etc should attend this program.

Sexual harassment – a bane in workplace culture

In any organization, maintaining a healthy equation between all the employees is a prerequisite. It becomes necessary for the company management to look after the physical and mental well-being of the workforce- regardless of the sector. Apart from offering facilities to the employees like insurance, subsidized meals, stress-busting measures – the managements need to look for clandestine exploitations. In several organizations, stringent policies are made to prevent occurrences of sexual exploitation.

Sexual harassment issues at the workplace have become commonplace, and many organizations have faced the brunt of the same. In support of the Prevention of Sexual Harassment (POSH), a new act was passed in India in 2013 by the name of “Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal).” Today, POSH has become mandatory training in all organizations. We at EC offer comprehensive POSH training for creating awareness regarding sexual harassment at the workplace so that your organization remains safe and motivated.

Sexual harassment incidents can prove to be detrimental to any company. Such untoward developments can lead to the following problems:

Tarnishing of brand image-Such incidents, may get blown out of proportion by media coverage and cause loss of face to your company.
Lack of confidence among the workforce- leading to a higher rate of attrition- when one employee accuses the company management or senior staff for sexual misconduct, it drives distrust among the peers. You may face enhanced attrition as a result.
Legal hassles- In some instances, the accusing employee can take the legal route, and the company may get mired in a lawsuit.

That explains why a lot of businesses opt for well-defined sexual harassment policy these days.

The need to have a clearly defined sexual harassment policy in a company

To evade sexual harassment-related problems tarnishing your brand image and affecting the workforce negatively, having a well-defined policy makes sense. When your company has a well prepared sexual harassment policy, you obtain certain advantages:

The victim is given assistance and advice to lodge grievance through the apt channels.
The management knows what steps have to be taken in such situations.
Effective measures can be taken to neutralize the impact on the entire workforce.
Proper legal measures can be initiated to stop the issue from getting inflated.
Investigation can be carried out in an unbiased, neutral manner.
Ultimately, a feasible solution to the issue can be reached.

Overall, having a well-crafted policy on sexual harassment incidents in the organization helps your company evade the chaos and confusion that often accompanies such cases. It ensures the productivity and reputation of the organization do not get affected adversely after such incidents.

How can professional Posh ICC training providers help?

Having a policy for the prevention of sexual harassment (POSH) in your organization is helpful, but it is not a cakewalk! When you delve into making such a policy on this sensitive issue, you have to deal with several nuances. Probing the matter and allegations with a neutral perspective can be too tedious for any company management without proper training and awareness. The expertise and assistance of a professional agency offering training and workshops in POSH at the workplace can be very helpful.

That is where we step in. At EC, we offer comprehensive and cutting edge Posh ICC training for organizations across various demographics and sectors. We strive to come up with client-specific POSH training services that sync with the specific needs of the organizations.

The services we offer to the clients

At EC, we offer cutting edge and effective Posh ICC training for the client entities. We ensure the clients seeking our services receive the most effective training.

Listed below are our service offerings:

Posh Policy framing- We have to deal with a lot of clients that do not yet have any clear cut and well defined Posh Policy. In such instances, we develop a suitable POSH policy from scratch.

The steps that we undertake to frame a new POSH policy include:

At first, we study the client organization well. We analyze its sector, company background, and image, etc. in detail. The type of work culture, employee interaction needs is also analyzed in depth.
Based on the analysis, we delve into the process of POSH policy forming.
Once the policy draft is made, we try to find out clauses and areas that may need improvement. Comparisons and analysis with entities in the same sector are drawn. Case studies are also involved for this purpose.
Our legal experts examine the POSH policy, and they ensure the policy adheres to the law of the land.

Once we are done with the policy framing, the client is updated. Our experts explain every nuance of the policy to the client company. After the final approval, we finalize it for implementation and training.

Revamping existing POSH policy – We also come across clients that have a POSH policy in place, but that is flawed/ineffective. In such situations, we offer POSH policy revamping services to the clients.

The steps we undertake to revamp an existing POSH policy include:

First of all, our team analyzes the existing POSH policy of the client company in detail. We figure out the existing loopholes or flaws in the existing policy and mark these. If the existing policy is majorly flawed, we suggest the client opt for a fresh replacement instead of a revision.
Next, we replace the flawed clauses and parts of the existing POSH policy with apt and effective norms.
Our team examines the policy to figure out where more clauses and sections can be augmented.
Our legal experts examine the revised policy to ensure it does not deviate from a legal standpoint at all.

The prepared and revamped policy is presented to the client at the end. After getting approval, we proceed to the training and deployment stage.

POSH Training preparation (Breaking the ice)

In many companies, especially in countries like India, talking about sexual harassment at the workplace is almost a taboo! This can be more evident in the organizations where a majority of the workforce comprises of women. Just offering posh training for employees will not cut much ice in such cases. At EC, we understand the reality, and so we offer well-crafted and tailor-made POSH training sensitization programs. We analyze the work culture, employee mindset, and company image before imparting any training.

Such programs help the employees overcome the taboo and stigma related to the topic of sexual harassment. They become more comfortable in discussing such issues, and undergoing the training also becomes easier.

POSH training module development- Every company has a certain work culture and ambiance. So, there can be no ‘one size fits all’ POSH training modules. At EC, we do understand this, and so we focus on making client specific POSH training modules.

• For some client companies, we offer online POSH training modules, and for the others, face to face training in groups is more feasible.

Why and how we differ from typical POSH training entities?

We are not like any typical POSH training entity. And we will show you how:

We have a pre-test where we ask various kinds of questions regarding sexual harassment. After knowing the results and the answers to the questions, we devise a plan for training the employees as we identify the areas on which training is needed.
We believe in practical training, and hence we explain to employees different kinds of harassment that can take place at the workplace. And for this, we seek help from silhouettes as real images might have a drastic impact on the mind of many people. We convey the message directly so that the employees become more aware.
During POSH training, we emphasize the involvement of senior management of the organization. This helps the employees in understanding the real importance of this training, and it also helps in creating a positive impact on the minds of employees that the management is taking the responsibility regarding workplace safety and security.
Once the POSH training is complete, we test how much employees have learnt. But the testing is done not through any examination. It is done via an interesting quiz game. Questions are based on different aspects of the training and will help us in understanding how much employees have grasped from the training module.

We have an expert panel, which is continuously working on this matter to make our POSH training better. We also have legal advisors in our team.

Get in touch for details

You may have more queries for POSH policy framing for your organization. You may want to know about the details of our posh training for employees or the charges. We will be more than happy to resolve your queries on our POSH services. Our offices are located at Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad and Bangalore. Just give us a call at +91 9820303787 or you may write to us at vb@ecrossings.in.