Human Rights Week in your workplace
There are lots of ways your organisation or agency can get involved in celebrating Human Rights Week.
Building a human rights culture starts with community, but there are actions each of us can take as individuals to help build a Queensland where human rights flourish.
1. Spread the word about Human Rights Week
Share Human Rights Week information with your team, broader organisation, and/or your clients and the people you support - our resources page has social media tiles for you to share, website and intranet banners, and posters for your workplace which you can download and print to help get the word out.
2. Do some human rights training
Most public entities have provided training of some kind or other as part of their implementation of the Human Rights Act, but maybe it's time for a refresher.
We're offering some free sessions during Human Rights Week this year, including some for advocates on how to use the Act to improve outcomes for clients. Interested? You can find details on our website, where we'll also publish details of some free Human Rights Week webinars soon.
Our online learning modules are available all year round, and include a free introduction to the Human Rights Act module. You can find out more here.
We're not running a Speaker Series this year, but 2019's Human Rights Month Speaker Series sessions were recorded - you can watch the videos of experts on aspects of the Human Rights Act or download the transcripts and slides from our Videos page.
State government employee? The Department of Justice and Attorney-General’s Human Rights Unit is running a one-hour ‘Human rights 101 for public sector employees’ webinar – find out more or register on the forgov website.
3. Find some resources
Not sure if you’re a public entity or not under the Act? Read our fact sheet online or download the pdf (PDF File, 304.6 KB) .
Our Public Entity Toolkit has been developed especially for public entities, to help you understand your obligations under the Act. It includes information on each of the rights protected by the Act, how to apply them in your work, handling complaints under the Act, policy triggers for consideration, and lessons from other jurisdictions. You can download your copy from our website (PDF File, 6.0 MB) .
Download your poster guide to acting compatibly with human rights (PDF File, 2.2 MB) and your poster about the rights protected by the Act (PDF File, 881.1 KB) from our website.
Specific to the public sector, the Queensland Government’s Human Rights Portal contains information for the public service on understanding and applying human rights, as well as training specifically for the public service.
4. Work through some scenarios
Organisations often tell us that working through real-world scenarios is the most effective way their teams familiarise themselves with the Act and what it means for them.
One way of doing this is to ask each team member to contribute a scenario from their everyday work - either one where the Human Rights Act applies to your own decision-making or where you have had to assist a client or someone else in their dealings with a public entity - which you can work through as a team.
There are guides for public entities on our website, including a step by step flowchart to see if your decision (or the decision of the public entity) was compatible with the Act, and our toolkit for public entities might also provide some additional guidance about which rights might be engaged by particular types of decisions.
5. Lead a workplace conversation about human rights
One of the indicators of a strong human rights culture is the ongoing education and capacity building of staff in organisations and agencies. Frank and inclusive conversations, at team or whole-of-organisation level, can help to build a more robust human rights culture and ensure the actions your workplace is taking to protect human rights are as inclusive as possible.
Some suggestions for conversation starters you could use this Human Rights Week in your organisation include:
- How can/do we support our community to understand the Human Rights Act and how to use it?
- Does our human rights work support people as equally as possible? Are there communities we could be working harder with to help grow their understanding of their rights?
- How can/do we incorporate human rights into our everyday work? How can we ensure this stays front of mind in the face of competing priorities?
- Do we actively promote the human rights of our clients or the people we support? How do we do this, and is there anything else we could do in this area?
- Does our internal complaints process assess for possible limitations of human rights? How is this assessment undertaken and what have we learned from complaints about how we can better protect the rights of our clients or the people we support?
- How can/do we respect and promote the human rights of our staff? Think about cultural rights, the right to equality and non-discrimination, the right to privacy, and any other rights which may be relevant for your staff or your workplace.
