Ideal Role of POSH External Consultant

POSH external Consultant role is a very complicated role as it hasn't been defined anywhere and there are no proper guidelines to what are the services one can expect from a POSH external consultant.

Being in POSH for past 4 years, I often get lots of questions regarding the role of POSH external consultant from organizations and trainers of my community. I thought if I pen this as a newsletter in LinkedIn, this would be beneficial to many of the HR's who are looking to recruit a new external consultant for their organization and also to the professionals who are going to offer their services as a POSH external consultant. So here it goes:

Law mandates few things as part of POSH:

1. Creation of POSH Policy
2. Conducting POSH employee awareness program
3. Conducting IC capacity building workshop
4. Quarterly IC review meetings
5. Case enquiries if any
6. Annual report submission

• Now, Policy creation can either be done by POSH external consultant or even HR if they have the knowledge of policy.
• Employee awareness can be conducted by POSH trainers or HR's if they are good at this topic. Few companies would have internal trainers and even they take up this task of training all the employees on POSH. Few companies would have e-modules but only if it covers all the 5 types of sexual harassment, it would be effective, else i suggest, kindly go for physical training. POSH is a very sensitive topic and it must definitely reach all the employees from top management till domestic workers, in a language that they understand better.
• IC capacity building workshop must be done every year and please hire a POSH trainer who conducts this training.
• External consultant must conduct one IC review meeting per quarter.
• POSH case enquiry must be done by the external consultant only. Individuals cannot handle the case as they are not a part of IC team. Thus, an organization cannot hire a person standalone for case enquiries.
• POSH annual report submission must be done by the IC team in the company letter head to the Nodal officer. Different state follows different procedures. For instance, in Tamil Nadu, we send the report via courier or speed post. In Delhi, its submitted online.

So, a POSH external consultant must form/review posh policy, conduct posh enquiries, quarterly review meetings and support in annual report submission.

A POSH trainer can conduct employee awareness and IC capacity building training.

POSH consultants like me takes up all the above mentioned services and offer end to end POSH implementation.

Reach out to me if you still need any clarity on the role of POSH external consultant.