The Maharashtra State Commission for Women (MSCW) and SAF India Academy under the (People united against sexual harassment) PUSH movement has introduced a POSH certification course on Prevention of sexual harassment at workplace to identify sexual harassment behaviors in the work environment and ways to report, deal with and prevent it.

As per the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition, and Redressal), Act, 2013 every organisation must sensitise employees and have an Internal Complaints Committee which is also trained.

Having a legislation to address an issue is not enough. You can only gauge the effectiveness of a legislation through its implementation.  A recent survey shows that awareness about POSH laws remains low. The POSH law is yet not implemented in its true spirit. Therefore, to bridge the gap the MSCW has launched a high-quality POSH certifcation programme using an online methodology to train every stakeholder – the employer, the internal complaints committee member and employees.

To create workplaces free of sexual harassment this eight-hour POSH certification course is designed to assist individuals to clearly distinguish between what constitutes and what does not constitute sexual harassment at the workplace and analyse several ways to prevent such behaviour.

The course was launched on August 14 and so far 300 people have registered. A commission member said they hope that corporate companies will introduce the course in their orientation program for every employee. “While we have been training government offices about this Act, it is difficult to reach out to the vast private sector. The online training course is aimed to cover them,” an official from the commission said.

The role of a qualified POSH Advisor (internal or external to a Committee) is crucial in the accurate ground-level implementation of the Act and its desired objectives in workplaces. Ungender’s POSH certification program intends to provide a platform for focused discussion and exchange of knowledge and experience between different fields of professionals who are eligible to be an ICC member and a POSH Advisor.