The Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 — POSH — applies to every employer with 10 or more employees, and the compliance obligations go well beyond having a policy circulated once at induction. Companies growing past the 10-employee threshold, or scaling across multiple offices, often discover their POSH compliance hasn't kept pace with headcount or geography — and this is one of the areas where an ROC or labour inspection, or worse, an actual complaint, exposes gaps very publicly.
Internal Committee (IC) — Composition Requirements
Every applicable workplace must constitute an Internal Committee, with:
- A Presiding Officer — a senior woman employee at the workplace (if no senior woman employee is available at that location, one nominated from another office of the organization)
- At least two members from among employees, committed to the cause of women or with experience in social work or legal knowledge
- One external member from an NGO or association committed to the cause of women, or someone familiar with issues of sexual harassment — this external member requirement is frequently missed, particularly by smaller offices that constitute an IC entirely from internal staff
Common composition mistakes:
- No external member included, which invalidates the IC's composition even if internal members are otherwise well qualified
- A single IC for a multi-location company, when the law requires an IC (or at minimum, a properly delegated local committee structure) at each office location meeting the threshold, not one central committee covering geographically dispersed offices
- IC members not refreshed or reconstituted as employees leave the organization, leaving a committee that exists on paper but has vacant or departed members
Ongoing Compliance Obligations
1. POSH Policy. A written policy, communicated to all employees, covering the definition of sexual harassment, the complaint process, IC composition and contact details, and the timelines for inquiry and resolution.
2. Annual training. Regular awareness programs for employees and specific training for IC members on conducting inquiries — this needs to be genuinely delivered and documented (attendance records, training content), not just referenced as a policy commitment.
3. Annual Report. Every employer must include information on the number of complaints received, disposed of, and pending, along with the number of workshops/awareness programs conducted, in the company's annual report (for companies, this is disclosed as part of the Board's Report under the Companies Act) — a specific corporate secretarial filing requirement, distinct from the standalone POSH annual report some employers separately maintain.
4. District Officer reporting. The employer must also file an annual report with the local District Officer, a requirement separate from and in addition to the disclosure in the company's own annual report — this specific filing is frequently missed entirely, since it's less commonly known than the Board's Report disclosure.
5. Timely inquiry and resolution. The IC must complete an inquiry within 90 days of a complaint being filed, with the employer required to act on the IC's recommendations within 60 days of the report being submitted — timelines that need genuine process discipline to meet, since a delayed or improperly conducted inquiry is itself a compliance and legal risk independent of the underlying complaint's merits.
Checklist for Growing Companies
- Confirm IC composition includes a valid external member at every applicable location
- Reconstitute the IC promptly whenever a member leaves the organization
- Maintain a written POSH policy accessible to all employees, including at new office locations as the company expands
- Conduct and document annual awareness training for all employees, and separate inquiry-conduct training for IC members
- File the annual disclosure in the Board's Report accurately, reflecting actual complaint numbers (including zero, which still needs to be disclosed, not omitted)
- File the separate annual report with the local District Officer for each applicable location
- Maintain confidential, properly documented records of any complaints and inquiries, consistent with the confidentiality provisions the Act itself mandates
Where Companies Fall Short Most Often
- Assuming a headquarters-level IC covers all branch offices without setting up compliant committees (or valid local delegation) at each qualifying location
- Never filing the District Officer report, which is a distinct obligation from the company's own annual report disclosure
- Treating POSH training as a one-time induction topic rather than a recurring annual obligation with documented attendance
- Not reconstituting the IC when members exit, leaving the company technically non-compliant without realizing it until a complaint is filed and there's no functioning committee to receive it
POSH compliance is one of the areas where 'we have a policy' and 'we are actually compliant' are genuinely different statements — the IC's valid composition, the annual disclosures at both the company and District Officer level, and documented training are what regulators and courts actually look at, not the existence of a policy document alone.
Perfect Accounting reviews POSH Internal Committee composition, annual reporting obligations, and policy documentation as part of broader payroll and employment compliance support.