Rolling out Respect@Work

Ben Newton
Published on October 26, 2023

On Thursday 19 October 2023, Rely and Your Call hosted a webinar with AMP’s Chief People Officer, Rebecca Nash, and Your Call‘s Head of Advisory, Kirsty Harvison, to discuss:

Strategies for implementing Respect@Work laws
Practical action to shift the conversation to prevention
How AMP is transforming workplace culture and setting the bar high through renewed leadership commitment

Key Takeouts

Rebecca shared how AMP used the 7 standards set out in the AHRC’s Respect@Work 2020 report to develop a holistic management action plan and establish a proactive and systematic framework for prevention and response to workplace misconduct. The 7 standards are based on research about the causes of sexual harassment and what is required to prevent it from happening.

*Source: Adapted from https://www.respectatwork.gov.au/organisation*

Some of the key actions to drive and sustain this workplace change as highlighted by Rebecca included:

Undertaking a holistic cultural review to hear from employees about their experiences at work, identify root causes of poor workplace behaviours and where to prioritise efforts
Leadership commitment from the Board and Executive team to set the tone from the top and “walk the talk”
Adopting policies and processes for conduct matters that are more person-centred, moving away from the traditional legalistic and compliance driven approach
Addressing barriers to reporting and providing multiple ways for people to raise concerns (including anonymously)
Improving transparency in reporting conduct issues, both internally and externally. This includes publishing statistics and trends on conduct and consequence management to employees to encourage discussion and create opportunities for learning; regular reporting on conduct to the Board to monitor risk and drive improvement; and inclusion of statistics in annual reports.
Having a system in place to centralise and standardise data capture to make it easier to identify and report on trends.

Complying with Respect@Work is the minimum standard. Let’s go beyond compliance and create safe, inclusive and respectful workplaces. Cut It Out!, brought to you by Rely and Your Call, is a program to help leaders combat workplace sexual harassment and comply with Respect@Work. Download a brochure to learn more.