Strengthen the capacity of Human Resource Manager and Sexual Harassment Prevention Committees on the understanding and implementing the Sexual Harassment Policy is the effective ways of preventing sexual harassment in the workplace and ensuring that the female workers feel safer to report, which is funded by the Australian Government.
Uth Sopheak, has been the Human Resource Manager at Spotext factory in Cambodia. Having been a partner with CARE since 2017, the Sexual Harassment Prevention Committee (SHC) and Sexual Harassment Policy (SHP) were established under her leadership and management. CARE is working with Human Resource Manager with the strong leadership and management such as Sopheak helps her team by encouraging and motivating the SHC to participate in the sexual harassment trainings package.
During these three-year, the sexual harassment concepts and report mechanism are disseminated and trained to new recruitment workers as same as the exiting workers to be refreshed. Sopheak set up special mechanism on sexual harassment reporting via mailbox and WOVO System. The mailbox is located in the rest rooms and many buildings where workers are accessible to write the reports and the mailbox is opened every week by the admin staff. The workers can report via WOVO system that can be kept the confidential and trustful for workers because the identity of reporters are not disclosed.
Being in the role of management, Sopheak would like to see all the workers are aware of sexual harassment and understand the concept of Sexual Harassment, so she took her time to observe the workers’ participation in the training to learn on what need to support her workers better. Now, Sopheak takes action and helps to improve the workers understanding better by developing the Sexual Harassment Prevention Policy booklet which is available in Khmer and English languages. It is not only available but also accessible at the offices, packing areas, and dining areas.
Sopheak said that “the Sexual Harassment Prevention Policy booklet can help workers to be unforgettable. They can follow the factory’s internal regulation. The policy booklet is brought to review and read by workers themselves when the workers in the gathering or meetings.”
Sopheak noted that the workers respect and give value to each other which lead them feel confident and comfortable to talk about the sexual harassment issue and respond immediately to the sexual harassment. As a woman leader, Sopheak is proud of herself to seeing that the workers were happy and they can increase productivity because they feel refreshed and good in the workplace.
To ensure the Sexual Harassment Committees and Sexual Harassment Prevention policy functioning, Sopheak will continue to implementing a Sexual Harassment Prevention Policy and make sure workers and business can get a positive impact from this.
In the future if there is a new update of policy, she will encourage the workers to participate with CARE’s project in order to increase understand of sexual harassment and prevent the issue in the workplace. “Other factories who haven’t been being a partner with CARE must join with CARE because workers can be aware of the meaning of sexual harassment definition, can report about it and can prevent it from the workplace” “Sopheak said.
Sopheak believes that implementing the Sexual Harassment Prevention Policy, build capacity to Sexual Harassment Prevention Committees and work closely with Human Resource Managers are very important things to end sexual harassment as the serious problem for women.
CARE keep supporting and continuing the project and disseminating knowledge on this issue in her factory and other factories. This is very important to intervene and help workers to end sexual harassment.
CARE also work with many other leaders at the garment factory and support many of them like Sopheak with support from Australian Government.
CARE’s work on the Gender Based Violence and Dignified Works is supported by the Australian Government and many other private donors.
Learn more at Enhancing Women's Voice to Stop Sexual Harassment>