POSH FAQ: How The Govt. Will Know Your Company Isn’t POSH Compliant

Written by: Avanti Deshpande

The POSH Act came into effect roughly seven years ago, and there’s a lot of progress still to be made when it comes to addressing sexual harassment at work, setting up the right structures to deal with sexual harassment complaints and ensuring that as an employer, you’re communicating to your employees that not only are you compliant with the POSH Act but they it’s safe for them to report complaints and expect rigorous investigations and impartial judgment. By all means, non compliance isn’t an option.

Getting these done could seem tedious but they’re not. If you consult with the right people who can help your company check all required things off the POSH checklist – this should be easy. You could avoid the penalties that come with non compliance of the POSH Act.

That said, it’s important for employers and HR teams to also be aware of the following two ways in which the government can find out that their company has not complied with the POSH Act.

Do You Have An IC? Have You Filed Your POSH Annual Report?

The Government is trying to increase vigilance by keeping a tab on the filing of Annual Compliance reports. As the Government wants to ensure that companies are actually establishing ICCs – in Maharashtra, the Government has asked for the Internal Committee (IC) to be registered as well.

The office of District Women and Child Development Officer in Mumbai State of Maharashtra has mandated the establishments/ organizations in Mumbai to constitute and register their ICCs with the Sub-Divisional Magistrate (SDM).

Other than that, when a complaint is filed by a woman with the District Officer that a company hasn’t constituted an IC, then too the Government will come to know about the non-compliance.

Surprise Inspections

Under Section 25 of the POSH Act, the appropriate Government when it is satisfied that it is in public interest to do so has the authority to:

1) Call upon any employer or District Officer to give (in writing) information relating to sexual harassment as may be required.

2) Authorise any officer to make an inspection of the records and workplace in relation to sexual harassment.

Such an officer will then submit a report of the inspection within the period specified in the order. Further, every employer and District Officer shall when demanded so, produce all information, records and other documents in their custody having an impact/influence on the subject matter of the inspection before the officer conducting the inspection.

About the author: Avanti Deshpande is a penultimate year law student at ILS Law College, Pune. Her main interest areas are human rights, gender laws and international law.

Hear, Here: If you haven’t started on POSH compliance procedures, do so today. Ungender will be able to not only guide you through the process of POSH compliance, they will help you set up the ICC, find an external member, train both your IC and workforce, and more. If you’d like to understand how this will work, just give us a call at  +91 9582630056.

Ungender Insights is the product of our learning from advisory work at Ungender. Our team specializes in advising workplaces on workplace diversity and inclusion. Write to us at contact@ungender.in to understand how we can partner with your organization to build a more inclusive workplace.