Write a one-page harassment policy, with a named channel for complaints, before you need it. On a farm without one, when a case comes up, nobody knows what counts as harassment there, who to take it to, how long an answer takes, or whether the complaint stays confidential. The person who needs help has nowhere to go, and the farm has no record of ever having offered anywhere. If a lawyer, a labor inspector or a court later asks what the farm’s channel was, the answer is that there was none.
The page has five parts. What counts as harassment on this farm, in plain words and with examples. The channel a person uses to report, and who receives the complaint. A second person to receive it, for the day the complaint is about the person who normally receives it. The number of days the farm commits to before it answers. And the confidentiality rule: who sees the complaint, and the promise that reporting in good faith costs the person nothing.
Is a written harassment policy the standard, or paperwork some places keep?
It is the international standard. The International Labour Organization’s Violence and Harassment Convention, a treaty from 2019, asks each country that ratifies it to require employers, so far as is reasonably practicable, to “adopt and implement, in consultation with workers and their representatives, a workplace policy on violence and harassment”. What it asks for is a policy, not a good intention.
Whether your country has ratified it, what its law counts as harassment and what it obliges your farm to keep are questions for an employment lawyer where you farm. Have one read your policy before it takes effect.
What goes on the page?
The five parts above, written with your own names and numbers. The ILO’s Violence and Harassment Recommendation, a non-binding guide that sits beside the convention, lists the same core: that harassment “will not be tolerated”, “complaint and investigation procedures”, “the right to privacy of individuals and confidentiality”, and protection “against victimization or retaliation”. The farm adds what no international text can: the names, the days and the words its own people will read.
What does the definition on the page have to do?
Define harassment once, in plain words, so that when a case comes the argument is about what happened, not about whether it was covered. In the United States, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the federal agency that enforces workplace discrimination law, tells employers a usable policy carries “an easy to understand description of prohibited conduct, including examples”. A person deciding whether to report reads the examples first: unwanted touching, comments about someone’s body, a threat to cut someone’s hours after they turn down an advance.
The definition is what makes the other four parts usable, because a channel is no use to someone who cannot tell whether their case belongs in it.
Who receives the complaint, when the person to report to is the problem?
Name one person to receive complaints, and a second person for the day the complaint is about the first one. On many farms this is the part that fails, because complaints go to the owner by default, and the case may be about the owner or a relative. The US commission’s guidance asks employers for “multiple avenues of complaint, if possible, including an avenue to report complaints regarding senior leaders”.
A channel that leads only to the owner fails on the day it is needed most. The second person can be someone trusted outside the family, or you can name instead the government office that takes workplace complaints where you farm. Write that name or office on the page.
How fast, and why write a number?
Write the number of days, because “prompt” with no number is a promise nobody can check. The US guidance asks that the policy state the employer “will provide a prompt, impartial, and thorough investigation”. The number is the farm’s to choose: the days to confirm a complaint arrived and the days to give an answer.
A person who reports and then hears nothing learns the channel was for show. A written time, even a modest one, is something the person can hold the farm to.
Does a written policy stop harassment on its own?
Not on its own. A 2022 review of studies from workplaces in general, not farms, found “limited evidence regarding the effectiveness of policies and training to prevent” harassment. With the page, the person has a path and the farm has a record.
That path is what many farmworkers lack. In a 2021 study in the Journal of Agricultural Safety and Health, Prado and colleagues surveyed farmworkers in California and in Michoacán, Mexico, and tied prevention to “support for efforts to facilitate reporting, protections against retaliation for workers, and promoting accountability for perpetrators”. In that survey almost no case ended in a consequence for the person responsible. Much farm work is done alone, the tractor driver in a back field or the milker on the early shift, with no witness nearby, so the person’s own complaint may be the only account the farm ever hears.
| Part of the page | What the person learns | What the farm gets |
|---|---|---|
| The definition, with examples | whether what happened is covered | one meaning of harassment, not one per person |
| The channel and who receives it | where to take it and who reads it | a path that exists before the case, not after |
| The second person | who else can receive it if the first person is the problem | a complaint that reaches someone able to act |
| The response time | how long until an answer | a deadline, and a record of whether it was met |
| The confidentiality rule | who will see the complaint | proof that confidentiality was promised in advance, not improvised |
If the farm already has a code of conduct each person signed, a page of rules for how people on the farm treat each other, keep the two pages together. The code holds the rule against harassment; the policy holds where to take a complaint when someone breaks it. Once a year, when you review the policy, check in the record that every complaint was handled the same way and within the farm’s own deadlines, because looking after people is part of farm management as much as looking after fields and livestock.
The policy is also one of the records that go into a first ESG report from what you already measure, the environmental, social and governance summary a buyer or a bank may ask a farm for. Other pieces on how a farm documents the way it treats its people are in the sustainability section.
Where to start
An afternoon for the page, ten minutes per person to hand it over and go through it together, and one line in the record whenever a case comes in. Paper is enough. One step depends on someone else’s schedule, the employment lawyer, and the policy waits for that reading before it takes effect.
The day a case arrives, a farm with the page argues about what happened. A farm without it argues first about whether there was ever anywhere to take it, and by then the person who complained may already have left the job.