Personal Safety
Harassment at work
Written for the person it is happening to, not for the employer.
Write it down today, before anything else.
Date, time, what was said or done, who else was present. Memory of a specific incident fades within days, and a contemporaneous note is treated very differently from one written months later.
What to do
- 1Keep the record somewhere they cannot reachNot the work laptop, not the work email, not a shared drive. Your own phone or a personal account. Access can be revoked the day a complaint is made.
- 2Know that the Internal Committee must existUnder the PoSH Act 2013, any workplace with ten or more employees must have an Internal Committee, and its members must be named and reachable. If nobody can tell you who is on it, that is itself a failure by the employer.
- 3A complaint can be made in writing, and has a time limitThe Act allows three months from the incident, extendable by a further three at the Committee’s discretion. Knowing the clock exists matters more than starting it today.
- 4You may bring someone with youYou do not have to attend a Committee meeting alone, and you are entitled to be told the process before it starts.
- 5Where there is no CommitteeComplaints go to the Local Committee at the district level, through the District Officer. Being a contractor, an intern or on probation does not exclude you.
Do not
- Do not delete the messages, however much you want to.
- Do not accept a verbal assurance instead of a written acknowledgement.
- Do not let it be moved into an informal chat with no record.
Write this down while it is fresh
A note made the same day is treated very differently from one written months later. Keep it yourself — we do not store any of this.
- Screenshots with the date and sender visible, not cropped to the text.
- Names of anyone who saw or heard it.
- Any change to your work after you objected — shifts, appraisal, access.