Know your rights under the sexual harassment law

This law is introduced for your safety and well-being at workspace. While majority of us do not want to bother ourselves with knowledge of law as it is generally seen as a lawyers job; knowing your rights beforehand will save you a lot of trouble for preventive as well as responsive measures.

For example, you must know the duties of your employer under this law and the role and responsibilities of the Internal Complaints Committee (ICC) members. You must also be aware of certain procedural elements which can affect the validity of your complaint. You should know that you can file a complaint within 90 days of the occurrence of an incident.

You can file a complaint even after you have left the company as long as it is done within 90 days. It is also important for you to know that the ICC and the management are legally bound to ensure confidentiality on your matter and all processes concerned with it. You have the right to professional counselling during and after the incident and its investigation.

You are entitled to know the details of the proceedings and investigation under the complaint made by you. The ICC has 90 days to complete the inquiry and submit the report to the management within 10 days of its completion. Similarly, there are a lot of other important facets to this law and as long as you are associated with an organisation, even working from home, you must know about them.

If you as a woman want to not only simply know about these laws but would want to get involved in creating awareness and working with organisations to implement the sexual harassment laws, join in. National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata, a premier law school in India, has launched a three-month executive online certificate course on Workplace Diversity and Sexual Harassment Prevention to equip you with the knowledge and skills required to become an expert on these issues.

If after reading this write up you realise that your organisation is not compliant with this law, guide them to portals like CloudTrain to make the compliance process easy for them. These are your rights, and if you do not bother to know about them then no one is going to come and do it for you. Take charge and use these laws wisely. Educate yourself and then the world around you so no one ends up missing them - not even you.