Workers in inclusive teams are significantly less likely to experience sexual harassment. That matters

I remember the first time I was sexually harassed at work.

I was a young journalist on assignment in a regional town, away from home and knowing no-one except the colleague I was travelling with. I remember distressed, late-night calls to my family, trying to work out how I would manage until I headed home.

When I returned to the office, I didn’t make a formal complaint but quietly made it known. Senior women told me it had happened to them too. Senior men reassured me the behaviour wasn’t acceptable. Arrangements were made so my colleague no longer went on assignments with young women.

I’ve thought about that experience a lot lately. This week Diversity Council Australia launched a new report on sexual harassment prevention – our first launch since I began my tenure as CEO. The report, the Power of Inclusion: Preventing Workplace Sexual Harassment, offers compelling evidence for something many of us have long suspected: inclusion can play a significant role in preventing workplace sexual harassment.

I wouldn’t have used the language of inclusion then. But I remember what my colleagues did. They listened. They believed me. They rallied and made changes. It wasn’t perfect – and was a sign of the times – but it was both personal and structural.

This week, the ABC reported that the Australian Human Rights Commission received a record 759 complaints under the Sex Discrimination Act in the last financial year. That’s a 21% increase on the previous year and 51% over five years.

Sexual harassment has been unlawful in Australian workplaces since 1984. This means employers have spent four decades investing in policies, awareness raising and training to stop sexual harassment at work. These measures are important and necessary, but the continued prevalence of workplace sexual harassment means they are not enough on their own.

If sexual harassment continues to occur at significant rates despite decades of compliance measures, we have to ask a different question: what actually stops it from happening in the first place?

Our latest research offers a compelling answer. Drawing on data from 3,000 workers across Australia, DCA found workers in inclusive teams were three times less likely to experience sexual harassment than those in non-inclusive teams. Those with inclusive managers were 2.5 times less likely, while workers in inclusive organisational climates were two times less likely.

The research also revealed a strong link between exclusion and sexual harassment: workers who experienced discrimination were six times more likely to also experience sexual harassment. Those who reported everyday exclusionary behaviours, such as being stereotyped, ignored, or excluded from workplace social activities, were also significantly more likely to experience sexual harassment.

These are not marginal differences, they are significant.

Workplaces are where the boundaries of acceptable behaviour are reinforced – or eroded – every day. Sexual harassment does not emerge from a vacuum, it thrives in environments where disrespect is tolerated, where some people are treated as less valuable than others, stereotypes go unchecked, exclusion is normalised, and people do not feel they belong.

By contrast, inclusion helps reduce the power imbalances, isolation and silence that can enable harassment, and strengthens the social and cultural conditions that make harmful behaviour less likely to occur.

And the behaviours that make a difference are remarkably ordinary: treating colleagues respectfully, valuing difference, enabling contribution and recognising it, and creating connection.

Australia is entering a new era of responsibility for workplace sexual harassment. The positive duty introduced under federal law requires organisations to identify and address the workplace conditions that create risk, and to do that we must think differently about prevention.

A good place to start is by recognising diversity and inclusion work as an integral part of workplace health and safety. Just as organisations assess physical hazards and psychosocial risks, they should be examining the extent to which exclusion, discrimination and poor workplace cultures are creating conditions in which harassment can occur.

The business case has been made many times over; we know inclusion improves innovation, engagement, performance and retention. What our research adds is another powerful reason to act: inclusion can make workplaces safer.

Every worker deserves to feel safe, respected and treated with dignity at work. We will never achieve that goal by focusing solely on what happens after harassment occurs.

When organisations invest in inclusion, they are not only strengthening culture. They are helping build workplaces where people can feel safe, respected and able to do their best work. That is an outcome worth striving for.