Workplace Sexual Harassment Inquiry Procedure Certification for Internal Committee Members and Human Resources Teams in IndiaAn inquiry is set aside for how it was run, not for what it found. Find out whether yours would stand.
Thirty-nine short exercises on the inquiry procedure under the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013: who sits and who steps aside, what a complaint has to be, conciliation and its limits, what each side must receive and when, the hearing, weighing evidence when there is rarely a witness, interim relief, the report and what may be recommended, confidentiality, and what may not be done to a complainant afterwards. Scored on a published cost matrix that counts a defect against the complainant and a defect against the respondent apart, and never averages them. Reported as the inquiry drawn as a spine down the page, your calls pinned to the stage where each was made. One payment covers the sitting and the report together. Not legal advice, and not a qualification.
A measurement of whether a committee member can run an inquiry that survives scrutiny, with both directions of procedural cost named
The Workplace Sexual Harassment Inquiry Procedure Certification is a thirty-five-minute knowledge-and-procedure instrument for Internal Committee members in India and the HR teams behind them. It measures whether a person knows what the statutory inquiry procedure requires at each of ten stages, and reports which direction their errors run in and what each would cost the inquiry.
Almost everything sold under this heading in India certifies attendance: a seat on a course, a morning in a room, a certificate at the end. Nothing in the category is a priced, repeatable measurement of whether one committee member can run an inquiry that stands, with a published cut, a reliability table, both directions of procedural cost named, and a written statement of what it does not warrant. This instrument is that measurement and nothing else. It teaches nothing; every exercise's rationale points to the section or rule it was keyed from.
Every exercise asks what the procedure requires in a described situation, never what you would do or feel. Fourteen fact patterns force one call each: a complaint that arrives in person, a member who reports to the respondent, a complaint four months old, an offer of money in conciliation, a settlement not kept, a respondent asking for a summary instead of the complaint, a witness who does not attend, a demand to cross-examine face to face, a complaint not proved and a demand for a malice finding, a quiet move to a back-office role a month after the report. Six ordering exercises walk the statutory sequence, six select-every-line exercises cover what each side must receive and what may be recommended, five true-or-false claims put a common committee belief against the Act, five matching exercises put situations against the step they trigger and defects against the direction they sit in, and three sliders ask for the timelines in days. Every fact pattern is written at the level of detail a procedural decision needs and no further, in neutral language, with role labels rather than names, and no exercise turns on whether any woman's account is believed.
The scoring is a decision-cost matrix, printed on the report above every figure because it is a value judgement and not a measurement. A defect that prejudices the complainant, conciliation pressed after she declined it, money treated as a settlement, her identity disclosed, retaliation left unaddressed, is priced at five. A defect that denies the respondent natural justice, no copy of the complaint, evidence taken behind his back, a finding without reasons, a recommendation beyond the committee's powers, is priced at four. The ratio is argued from the statute's own structure on the page, both counts are reported apart with their own cost sentence and a worked example from your own answers, and they are never netted into one figure, because a member who fails complainants and a member who fails respondents need different training and a single number would call them the same.
The headline is read against the ordinary respondent: a declared answer share on every option, line, pair, position and slider value, so that zero means answering the way people typically answer and one hundred means a clean sitting. The outcome is three-way against a printed cut and is assigned only when the whole 95 per cent band sits on one side of it: procedure sound, on the boundary, or refer for training before sitting on an inquiry. On the boundary is a refusal to decide at this length, printed where the decision would have gone, and it is never a fail. A part with too few answered exercises is printed not assessed, and the outcome is then held on the boundary rather than counted against you.
The report is the inquiry drawn as a spine down the page: complaint received, committee constituted and quorum, what must happen before an inquiry begins, conciliation if and only if she asks, notice and documents to both sides, the hearing, evidence weighed, interim relief, the report and its recommendations, confidentiality and non-retaliation after it. The correct path is a solid line with filled circles and yours is a dashed line with open squares, labelled in words so it survives a black-and-white print. Every stage carries what the statute requires, what you did, and, where they diverged, which direction the cost sits in and one sentence on what it would have cost the inquiry. A stage you did not answer is drawn empty rather than left out, because the shape of the trail is the finding. A stepped table beneath the drawing carries the same trail for print.
What you walk away with
Ten stages in statutory order drawn as a spine. Your path at each stage sits at the credit your calls earned there against the correct path, with what the statute requires, what you did, and the direction and cost of any divergence. Empty stages are drawn empty, and a stepped table beneath carries the trail for print.
How many exercises diverged in the direction that prejudices the complainant and how many in the direction that denies the respondent natural justice, each with its declared cost, its own cost sentence, a worked example from your own answers and its own fix. The two are never averaged, and the page says which you do more and what that habit costs at the printed ratio.
Procedure sound, on the boundary, or refer for training before sitting on an inquiry, assigned only when the whole 95 per cent band sits on one side of the cut. The bands are drawn and written out, the cut is stated, and the platform's own raw pass line is explained beside it so the two never disagree without saying why.
The committee and what precedes an inquiry, conciliation and its limits, notice and the hearing, evidence and interim relief, the report and what follows. Each carries its answered count, its omega, a figure or a placement word or a printed not-assessed, and one sentence in your own words on what the result does and does not let you say.
A single boxed sentence naming a specific situation at the stage where the ground was lost and a specific act that closes it, addressed to the direction you diverge in. The reliable-change threshold is printed with it, so a re-sitting inside measurement error is read as no change.
Before any figure, the report says in plain words that it measured procedural knowledge and is not legal advice, that it confers no authority and no qualification, that a real complaint needs the organisation's own counsel, and that where a state's rules or a court's ruling differ the statute and the ruling govern.
Inside your report
Illustrative sample — your report is generated from your own responses.
| Path | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Correct | ● 1 | ● 1 | ● 1 | ● 1 | ● 1 | ● 1 | ● 1 | ● 1 | ● 1 | ● 1 |
| You | ● 1 | □ 0.75 | ● 1 | □ 0.43 | □ 0.60 | ● 1 | □ 0.84 | ○ empty | □ 0.90 | ● 1 |
| Direction | — | her | — | her | him | — | him | none | her | — |
How to read it: each stage places your path at the mean credit your calls earned there on the printed cost matrix. A stage with nothing answered is drawn empty, never left out, because the shape of the trail is the finding. Marks: ● on the correct path, □ diverged, ○ empty.
| Class of call | Cost | Credit |
|---|---|---|
| The procedurally correct call | 0 | 1.0 |
| A defect that prejudices the complainant | 5 | 0.0 |
| A defect that denies the respondent natural justice | 4 | 0.2 |
| Direction | Exercises | Error mass | Cost each | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ■ Defects that prejudice the complainant | 9 of 39 | 6.4 | 5 | 32.0 |
| ▬ Defects that deny the respondent natural justice | 5 of 39 | 3.1 | 4 | 12.4 |
How to read it: you diverge more in the direction that prejudices the complainant, nine exercises against five, and at the printed ratio of five to four that habit costs 32.0 against 12.4. The two columns are never averaged into one figure; the index is read beside them, not instead of them.
Built for
- Presiding Officers, employee members and external members of an Internal Committee who want to know, before the next complaint, whether the inquiry they would run would stand
- Employers checking the committee they have already appointed, with the measurement error printed and both directions of procedural cost named per member
- HR and employee-relations teams that support an inquiry and need to know what each side must receive, when, and what the committee may and may not recommend
- Training providers who run committee-member programmes and want a measurement of what the room left with, rather than a record that the room was full
Find out whether the inquiry you would run would stand, and in which direction it would fall
39 exercises across six formats · about 35 minutes · one payment covers the sitting and the report together: the decision trail, both directions of cost counted apart, a three-way outcome against a printed cut, and every refusal printed where the figure would have been · ₹999 in India inclusive of GST, or US$9.99 elsewhere. Not legal advice, and not a qualification.
₹999 (incl. GST) · assessment and full report, nothing further to pay
Frequently asked questions
Neither. The all-staff prevention-awareness certification in this catalogue measures whether anybody in a workforce recognises harassment and knows the rights and duties the Act creates; the workplace investigation and evidence-weighing assessment measures interview conduct and evidence weighing in ordinary grievances. This instrument is for the committee itself, and its subject is the statutory inquiry procedure under the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 and the Rules of 2013, and the procedural fairness that keeps a finding standing: who sits, what each side must receive and when, conciliation and its limits, the hearing, the standard of proof, interim relief, the report, confidentiality and non-retaliation.
Every wrong route on every exercise is classed as a defect that prejudices the complainant or a defect that denies the respondent natural justice. The first is priced at five and the second at four, and the matrix is printed on the report above every figure because it is a value judgement. The ratio is argued from the statute's own structure: both classes of defect void an inquiry, so the difference is a quarter and not a multiple, and the Act attaches its own penalties to the complainant-side protections, a penalty for publishing identities or proceedings, a fine for failing to constitute a committee, and a proviso that an unproved complaint is not a malicious one, while it leaves the respondent's protections to natural justice and the appeal. The two counts are reported apart and never averaged.
The headline is a cost-weighted index read against a respondent answering every exercise at its declared marginal, so zero is the ordinary respondent and one hundred is a clean sitting. A cut is declared at 50, halfway between the two. The outcome is procedure sound when the lower end of the 95 per cent band is at or above the cut, refer for training before sitting on an inquiry when the upper end is under it, and on the boundary otherwise. On the boundary means the measurement could not settle the question at this length, or a part was not assessed; it is printed where the decision would have gone and it is never a fail. A re-sitting is the honest answer to it.
No, and the report says so before it prints any number, in the largest type on the page. It is a measurement of procedural knowledge on thirty-nine exercises on one day. It confers no authority and no qualification, it is not a certificate to sit on a committee, and it is not legal advice. A real complaint needs your organisation's own legal counsel on its own facts, and where a state's rules, a service rule or a court's ruling differ from an exercise, the statute and the ruling govern, not this report. No training provider, course or certification body is named or affiliated with it.
₹999 in India inclusive of GST, or US$9.99 elsewhere, and one payment covers the sitting and the report together. Thirty-nine exercises across six formats take about thirty-five minutes. Online certificates in this category start above that price per seat and certify attendance; this is the top of the applied-skill band and under the cheapest of them, because the buyer is usually an employer checking a committee it has already appointed. You can sit it again; the report prints the movement a re-sitting would have to show to count as real change rather than measurement error, and nothing on it ranks you against anybody or names a percentile.
Each one takes a single capability, puts you inside the situations where it is actually tested, and scores your choices against published evidence — with a report designed for that capability alone, not a template. They span hiring, compliance, education, operations and personal skill.
Browse the catalogue →Methodology: Thirty-nine original exercises across six formats: fourteen single-choice fact patterns that force one procedural call, six ordering exercises on the statutory sequence at the receipt of a complaint, in conciliation, in the exchange of documents, from evidence to finding, in interim relief and from finding to action, six select-every-line exercises with two, three or four keyed lines, five true-or-false claims putting a common committee belief against the Act, five matching exercises with two unused entries on the right, and three numeric estimates on a slider for the statutory timelines in days. DECLARED RESPONSE INSTRUCTION: one instruction for the whole instrument and it is a KNOWLEDGE-AND-PROCEDURE instruction. Every exercise asks what the inquiry procedure requires in a described situation; none asks what the respondent would do or prefer, and no self-report scale appears. CONSTRUCT STATEMENT: this measures whether a person sitting on, or supporting, an Internal Committee knows what the inquiry procedure under the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 and the Rules of 2013 requires at each stage, and the procedural fairness that keeps a finding standing. It does not measure whether a person recognises harassment, their attitudes, their empathy, their judgement of any woman's credibility, or their fitness to sit on a committee; it is not legal advice; it confers no authority and no qualification; and where a state's rules or a reported ruling differ from an exercise, the statute and the ruling govern. HOW IT DIFFERS FROM TWO LIVE PRODUCTS: the all-staff prevention-awareness certification in this catalogue measures whether anybody in a workforce recognises harassment and knows the rights and duties the Act creates; the workplace investigation and evidence-weighing instrument measures evidence weighing and interview conduct in ordinary grievances. This instrument's audience is the committee itself and its construct is the statutory inquiry procedure, which neither of those measures. SCORING DESIGN, C7, THE DECISION-COST MATRIX: every wrong route on every exercise is classed in one of two directions, a procedural defect that PREJUDICES THE COMPLAINANT (an inquiry begun without notice of the allegations, conciliation pressed after she declined it, a monetary settlement treated as conciliation, no interim relief where the statute allows it, her identity disclosed, retaliation left unaddressed) or a procedural defect that DENIES THE RESPONDENT NATURAL JUSTICE (no copy of the complaint, no opportunity to answer, evidence taken behind his back, no chance to put questions through the committee, a finding recorded without reasons, a recommendation beyond what the committee may recommend). The declared costs are 5 for the first direction and 4 for the second, a ratio of five to four, and the matrix is printed on the report above every figure because it is a value judgement and not a measurement. THE RATIO'S JUSTIFICATION FROM THE STATUTE'S OWN STRUCTURE: both classes of defect void an inquiry, so neither is cheap and the difference is a quarter, not a multiple. The statute attaches its own penalties to the protections on the complainant's side, a penalty for publishing identities or proceedings under sections 16 and 17 and the Rules, a fine for failing to constitute a committee under section 26, and a proviso in section 14 that an unproved complaint is not a malicious one, while it leaves the respondent's protections to the principles of natural justice named in the Rules and to the appeal in section 18. A defect of the first kind therefore defeats the Act's stated purpose and may be an offence in itself; a defect of the second kind defeats the inquiry. Per exercise, credit is one minus the cost of the chosen route divided by the larger declared cost, so a correct call earns 1, a defect denying the respondent natural justice earns 0.2 and a defect prejudicing the complainant earns 0; on partial-credit formats the error mass, one minus the platform's own rule score, is split between the two directions by the declared class of each mistake. Both error counts are reported separately with their own cost sentence and are never averaged into one figure. THE HEADLINE AND THE NULL: the index is the mean credit over answered exercises; the prior index is the same quantity for a respondent answering every exercise at its DECLARED marginals, authored on every option, line, pair, position and slider value and never a uniform draw; the headline is 100 times the difference divided by one minus the prior index, so that zero is the ordinary respondent, one hundred is a clean sitting, and a negative figure is worse than ordinary. Observed answer distributions replace the declared ones once live data exist. THE CUT AND THE OUTCOME: this is a certification, so a cut is declared at 50 on the corrected scale, halfway from the ordinary respondent to a clean sitting, and the platform's own pass line in settings is the raw-points percentage that cut corresponds to for a respondent at the declared marginals, aligned by construction and printed in the builder. The outcome is three-way and is assigned only when the whole 95 per cent band lies on one side of the cut: PROCEDURE SOUND when the lower end of the band is at or above it, REFER FOR TRAINING BEFORE SITTING ON AN INQUIRY when the upper end is under it, and ON THE BOUNDARY otherwise. A competency refused a figure or a placement is printed NOT ASSESSED and the outcome is then ON THE BOUNDARY, never a fail. RELIABILITY: omega is estimated from the answered count and an assumed average inter-item correlation of .25 and printed as an assumption; a competency under eight answered exercises or under omega .70 carries a three-way placement and no figure, and the refusal is printed in its row; every reported figure carries its standard error and its 68 and 95 per cent bands. REFUSALS: an unanswered exercise leaves the denominator; an empty sitting scores exactly zero and is not reportable; a sitting under 24 answered is not reportable; a stage with no answered exercises is drawn empty on the trail rather than omitted. SOURCES: the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 (Act 14 of 2013), in particular sections 4, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 and 19; the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Rules, 2013, in particular rules 6, 7, 8, 9 and 12; the Handbook on the Act published by the Ministry of Women and Child Development, Government of India (2015); Vishaka v. State of Rajasthan (1997) 6 SCC 241 and Medha Kotwal Lele v. Union of India (2013) 1 SCC 297, on the guidelines that preceded the Act and their implementation; Apparel Export Promotion Council v. A.K. Chopra (1999) 1 SCC 759, on the standard of proof in a domestic inquiry into harassment; Aureliano Fernandes v. State of Goa (2023), Supreme Court of India, on a committee inquiry set aside for a hurried process that denied the respondent a fair opportunity; Union of India v. Mudrika Singh (2021) and Union of India v. Dilip Paul (2023), Supreme Court of India, on procedural lapses that do and do not vitiate a committee's inquiry and on the balance of probabilities; Punjab and Sind Bank v. Durgesh Kuwar (2020), Supreme Court of India, on a transfer following a complaint; Ruchika Singh Chhabra v. Air France India (2018), Delhi High Court, on an inquiry set aside for a defectively constituted committee; Hira Nath Mishra v. Principal, Rajendra Medical College (1973) 1 SCC 805, on questioning without direct confrontation in an inquiry of this kind; Union of India v. T.R. Varma (1957), A.K. Kraipak v. Union of India (1969) 2 SCC 262, Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India (1978) 1 SCC 248 and Kuldeep Singh v. Commissioner of Police (1999) 2 SCC 10, on the principles of natural justice, the rule against bias and findings that must rest on some evidence; Roop Singh Negi v. Punjab National Bank (2009) 2 SCC 570, on evidence in a domestic inquiry; Thibaut and Walker (1975), Procedural Justice, and Lind and Tyler (1988), The Social Psychology of Procedural Justice, on why the fairness of a process is judged apart from its outcome; Haladyna, Downing and Rodriguez (2002) on item writing; McDonald (1999), Test Theory, on omega; the AERA, APA and NCME Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing (2014) on standard error and classification decisions; Gollwitzer and Sheeran (2006) on implementation intentions; and Jacobson and Truax (1991) on the reliable change index. All reported decisions are cited factually as public judgments. Every exercise is an original work written for this instrument; no question from any training course, handbook, client file or commercial instrument is reproduced, and no training provider, certificate, course or certification body is named or affiliated with it.