From inappropriate emails to deepfakes: WHS strategies for controlling increasing online risks

Article from OHS Alert 21/8/24

The Office of the eSafety Commissioner has warned Comcare National Conference delegates that the scope of workplace technology-facilitated sexual harassment (WTFSH) is rapidly evolving and expanding, but explained, with case studies, that employers can deal with the issue through risk management and a safety-by-design approach.

The Commissioner's gender and tech manager, Carolyn Wilkes, told delegates that WTFSH covers unwanted sexual conduct that uses digital technologies and is perpetrated in a workplace context both in and beyond the physical location of the workplace, and during and after work hours.

She outlined two case studies to illustrate what this kind of harassment can look like:

1. "Kira", who works in a law firm, receives a direct message through social media from her colleague "Adam", asking her out for dinner. She declines the invitation and tells him she would prefer to maintain a professional relationship.

   Despite this, Adam continues to send Kira social media messages late at night, commenting on the clothes she wore that day, sending her sexually explicit or suggestive messages, emojis and memes, and making racially offensive comments, making Kira feel extremely uncomfortable.

2. "Penny" is a journalist who has experienced high levels of online harassment in response to articles she has written. At first, she is not particularly concerned by the messages, downplaying them as part of her job.

   Late one night while she is working alone at home, however, she receives a series of disturbing emails threatening sexual violence against her and implying she is being watched, causing her to suffer from fear and anxiety over the next few months.

Wilkes told the conference yesterday that WTFSH is usually an extension of pre-existing forms of sexual harassment, and is often "low-tech", using, for example, emails, text messages or offensive displays on computer screens.

But just "as technology is constantly evolving, so is the scope of" WTFSH, with advancing editing tools facilitating the fabrication of fake sexual images, or sexualised deepfakes, and the increasing accessibility of artificial intelligence technologies making the creation of deepfakes "easier and easier", she said.

WTFSH can be perpetrated maliciously, through negligence, accidentally or as a joke, but remains sexual harassment regardless of the intention of the perpetrator, she stressed.

She highlighted a recent major survey, conducted by Australia's National Research Organisation for Women's Safety (ANROWS), which found one in seven Australian workers (24 per cent of men, and seven per cent of women) admitted to using technology to sexually harass someone at work (see related article).

This conduct, Wilkes said, is more likely to be perpetrated against women, and can have a major impact on them, affecting their health and wellbeing, causing them to fear for their personal safety, and hindering their career progression by, for instance, discouraging them from seeking to move into more public roles.

What can employers do?

The Office of the eSafety Commissioner encourages workplaces to apply a risk management approach to detect and respond to the risks of WTFSH, Wilkes told the conference.

"Employers should: assess the nature of the risk in the workplace; identify the situations and channels through which online abuse might happen; assess how long, how often and how significantly workers are exposed to online or technology-facilitated abuse; and consider how different psychosocial hazards interact and combine, such as how online abuse may interact with high work demands, or low support and control," she said.  

The risk assessment process might identify the need to change the design of work or training processes, she suggested.

Employers need to apply any identified control measures, regularly check whether they're working, and, crucially, ensure they consult workers and elected health and safety representations at all stages.

Wilkes said eSafety Commissioner research shows workers want workplace policies that address WTFSH, with clauses: outlining the appropriate use of online platforms and other technologies; explaining how the workplace will prevent incidents (eg. by moderating content on online platforms) or respond to them; detailing the disciplinary actions that will be taken as a consequence of WTFSH; and communicating a zero-tolerance approach to sexual harassment, including through the use of technology.

"In addition, employers should make policies accessible on notice boards, digital platforms and [in] informal discussions with staff," she said.

Workers, Wilkes added, "want to see workplaces and technology companies adopt a safety-by-design approach – that means, detecting and eliminating harms before they occur by factoring safety into the design and implementation of any technology that's used in the workplace".

Simple safe design measures include moderating online content, blocking and removing abusive content, using generic de-identified social media accounts, avoiding sharing workers' contact details with members of the public, and not using workers' full names on name tags or similar documents, she said.

Returning to her case studies, Wilkes said Kira's employer can provide her a safer workplace by explicitly detailing conduct of the kind that Adam engaged in, in anti-harassment policies.

The policies should detail ways to report such conduct either formally or informally, and either internally or externally, and the law firm should carry out disciplinary measures for policy breaches.

Meanwhile, Penny's employer can improve safety by moderating the online content seen by its workers, protecting Penny's privacy by not sharing her work email address with the public, ensuring Penny and other workers are aware of WTFSH and ways to report it, and providing clear and appropriate referrals to support services.

Wilkes referred delegates to the eSafety Commissioner's social media self-defence training for women, and to workplace online abuse fact sheets for employers and workers that the Commissioner developed with Safe Work Australia (see related article).