Watch this timely conversation about cultivating workplaces in which people thrive – and the constellation of legal obligations requiring practices to do so! Merilyn Speiser of Catalina Consultants, Sonia Sarangi of Andever and ArchiTeam, and Alex Small of Cox Architecture – in conversation with Jess Murphy and Justine Clark.

Merilyn Speiser outlines obligations in relation to the positive duty of care.

It’s been more than a year since the prohibition of sexual harassment in the workplace was enshrined in the Fair Work Act. This connects to an amendment to the Sex Discrimination Act in December 2022, which places a positive duty of care on employers to prevent workplace sexual harassment, sex discrimination and victimisation. Some state-based legislation also includes a positive duty – for example, under the Victoria Equal Opportunity Act 2010, organisations have a positive duty to eliminate discrimination as well as sexual harassment and victimisation.

These positive duties operate concurrently with work health and safety (WHS) laws at federal, state and territory levels, which include a duty to ensure the psychological health and safety of employees and eliminate or manage psychosocial risks in the workplace.

All of this means that employers must take proactive, positive action to prevent unlawful behaviours, rather than simply responding to complaints after something has happened. This means a focus on developing workplace cultures in which harassment, discrimination and bullying cannot gain a foothold.

So, how are things going? What impact has this strengthened legislation had on workplace reform and culture? How have practices responded and what changes have they made to policies and procedures? How are policies shared and is training available? What does all of this mean for workplace cultures? What can we learn from each other?

This session is part of Parlour’s ongoing work to address significant issues affecting architecture around Australia. We are in the midst of working on a significant new initiative to better understand the problem. This will generate robust new data about the extent and impact of harassment and bullying in the built environment professions and gather fine-grained knowledge about specific experiences. This knowledge is essential for making positive change.

Watch the full recording

Purchase access to the full video via our Vimeo on demand channel or click the top right corner of the video above to purchase access. Note: ticket prices are per person.

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  • $50 General
  • $11 Concession (students and anyone else who needs it – use the promo code CONC at the Vimeo checkout.)

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CPD

One hour of formal CPD on completion of the CPD questions. See here for the Learning Objectives for the series as a whole.

Once the questions are completed, you will receive an email from Google forms with your responses. Please keep this – it provides the evidence of attendance and completion. Please note, separate CPD certificates will not be issued. If you can’t find the email, remember to check your spam folder and whitelist parlour@parlour.org.au in your email system.

Stepping This session was recorded live on 24 September, 2024. Stepping Up is a collaboration between Parlour, the Champions of Change Architecture Group and the Association of Consulting Architects.