How Should Alberta Employers Handle Sexual Harassment Complaints?

Confirm the legal duty applies before treating it as optional

Alberta employers do not have discretion about whether to address sexual harassment: it is a statutory duty. The Occupational Health and Safety Act defines harassment broadly enough to include “any single incident or repeated incidents of objectionable or unwelcome conduct… that the person knows or ought reasonably to know will or would cause offence or humiliation to a worker, or adversely affects the worker’s health and safety.” That means a single serious incident is enough to trigger the duty; a pattern is not required.

Under section 3(1)(c) of the OHS Act, employers must ensure that none of their workers are subjected to or participate in harassment at the work site. That duty is qualified: employers must act “as far as reasonably practicable,” a standard that weighs what is feasible given the circumstances rather than demanding a guarantee against every incident.

Step 1: Put a written violence and harassment prevention plan in place

The Occupational Health and Safety Code requires Alberta employers to develop and implement a written plan that includes measures to eliminate or control harassment hazards and procedures to inform workers of the nature and extent of those hazards, under section 390(1)(a)-(c) of the OHS Code. This plan is not a one-time document filed away after creation; it is meant to be an operating tool that workers can point to when a concern arises.

Step 2: Build confidentiality protections into the plan

The same OHS Code provisions require the plan to include provisions protecting the confidentiality of everyone involved in a complaint or incident, except where disclosure is necessary, per section 390(1)(f). This balances a complainant’s and respondent’s privacy against the practical need to share information with investigators, witnesses, or decision-makers.

Step 3: Consult workers when building or reviewing the plan

Employers must consult with affected workers, or with the health and safety committee or representative where one exists, when developing, implementing, or reviewing the plan, and must revise the plan as needed following a required review under OHS Code sections 390(3)-(4). A plan drafted without any worker input is more likely to miss risks specific to that workplace and may not meet this consultation requirement.

Step 4: Investigate promptly and document the outcome

When an incident occurs, Alberta employers must prepare an investigation report outlining the circumstances and any corrective action taken to prevent a recurrence, and retain that report for at least two years, making it available to Alberta OHS on request, under the OHS Code’s investigation report requirement. This documentation matters for two reasons: it satisfies a legal retention obligation, and it is the record an OHS officer or human rights tribunal will look to if the handling of the complaint is later questioned.

Step 5: Protect the complainant from retaliation throughout the process

It is against the law for an Alberta employer to take action against an employee for making a harassment complaint, under the Alberta Human Rights Act’s anti-reprisal provision. This protection operates independently of whether the underlying harassment complaint is ultimately substantiated; retaliating against someone for raising it is its own basis for liability.

Step 6: Know who can enforce the duty if internal steps fail

Two separate enforcement paths exist in Alberta. Alberta OHS officers carry out inspections and investigations and can take enforcement action if they believe a work site is unhealthy or unsafe, including for harassment violations. Separately, if an employee has reported harassment and it continues, that employee can file a complaint with the Alberta Human Rights Commission within one year of the event. Provincially regulated Alberta employers fall within the Alberta Human Rights Commission’s complaint jurisdiction for this purpose. An employer can also face liability where a supervisor’s apparent authority over the complainant was used to harass them, a principle set out by the Supreme Court of Canada in Janzen v Platy Enterprises, which applies across Canada including Alberta.

What happens when a prevention plan fails at scale

The consequences of an inadequate response are not only individual. In Steele v Leduc (City), an Alberta municipal employer faced a class action and settlement over systemic workplace sexual misconduct, with the settlement requiring an external review over several years to assess the employer’s progress toward a workplace free of discrimination, sexual misconduct, and sexual assault. This illustrates that the written plan, the investigation and documentation duties, and the anti-retaliation protection are not paperwork exercises: where they are not followed in substance, the exposure can extend well beyond a single complaint.

Before you start: this duty applies regardless of company size or a formal HR function

Nothing in the OHS Act or OHS Code provisions above ties the prevention-plan duty to a minimum number of employees. A small Alberta employer without a dedicated HR department still carries the same statutory duty under section 3(1)(c) of the OHS Act and the OHS Code’s Part 27 requirements as a large one; the “reasonably practicable” standard adjusts what is feasible, not whether the duty exists at all.