Sexual Harassment in the Hospitality Industry

Health
occupational
Management
Running Head: Health Occupational Management
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Health Occupational Management 1
Introduction
For every organization, employees are an important asset and an organization is required
to take care of the same. During the performance of the job, an employee faces many issues that
can be related to various factors. Health and safety are one such factor. A worker may face many
safety and health hazards during the performance of his/her job. Both of these terms seem to be
interchangeable but this is not true and in actuality, there is a huge difference in both of them.
Workplace safety hazards are quick incidents such as fire or cut by a knife while working but
risk hazards have slow and long-term impact on the health of employees of the organization. The
main difference between workplace safety hazard and risk hazard is that the risk hazard affects
different employee in a different manner. In comparison to a safety hazard, risk hazards get less
attraction of organizations but the situation should not be like this. Employers are required to
understand that health hazards also affect mental as well as physical health of employees and are
even more dangerous than safety hazards. For the purpose of preparation of this report, the
sexual harassment in the hospitality industry of Australia is selected as a workplace risk hazard.
The report will present the legislative requirement to deal with this issue in addition to the
standard practices adopted by the subjective industry to deal with the selected issue.
Sexual Harassment in the Hospitality Industry
Sexual Harassment refers to an unwelcome and unwilling sexual behavior that is
humiliating and offensive for the victim. There is not a universally accepted definition and
inclusive factors for sexual harassment. According to the Australian Human Rights Commission,
Sexual harassment includes the following factors but not limited to:-
 Staring

Health Occupational Management 2
 Leering
 Making taunts of sexual nature
 Making a request for sex
 Showing pornography
 Cracking sexual jokes or making sexual comments
 Behavior that may be counted as an offense under criminal law, for instance, sexual
assault, physical assault, stalking, indecent exposure, or obscene communications
(Humanrights.gov.au, 2019).
Employees of many of the industry are facing this issue but in Australia, the rate of
sexual harassment is high in the hospitality industry in comparison to other industry. Sexual
harassment present in many forms in the hotel industry and there are many reasons behind the
same. First of all the shift timings of workers in this industry creates a problem for them. They
have to work in late night shifts, which enhance the chances of sexual harassment. Another
reason is that they have to deal with drunk clients more often that are not in their sense and
behave abusively. It is not like that worker only faces sexual harassment from the side of clients,
but managers and other colleagues also involve in the same. While discussing the data, this is
important to mention that out of total workers who have experienced the sexual harassment in
the hospitality industry, around 56.3% of workers have faced the issue from the side of a member
of the public whereas rest 22.7% of workers been targeted by their managers (Topping, 2019). It
has been noted that many of the employers failed to protect their staff from regular abuse. The
significance of this risk is necessary to understand here. Incidents of sexual harassment affect the
mental health of employees. Physical and mental health of a person is closely connected to each
other and this is the reason that when an employee faces sexual harassment it also influence