The real hangover: Why ‘safe party’ policies fail, and how a consent culture saves workplace boundaries

Consent culture is built in the daily decisions to listen fully, respect personal boundaries, and check in before making an assumption about someone’s comfort, writes Mel Brush.

It’s the morning after your end-of-year work celebration. Which one are you? The one who went home early, smug in your decision? Or are you still in bed, hiding under the doona, riddled with anxiety about what you said or did? Maybe you’re the one left feeling uncomfortable by an interaction you couldn’t opt out of?

There’s no question that end-of-year celebrations can be fraught. After a long year, that office break-up provides a much-needed opportunity for staff to let loose. It’s a time to relax, to celebrate with a few drinks, and get to know colleagues a little better. Yet I’m sure we’ve all experienced how quickly things can get a little too loose, with boundaries crossed and professionalism thrown out the window. The fact that our annual office parties so reliably lead to discomfort reveals a critical flaw in our default work culture.

This Sunday (30 November) is the International Day of Consent, and as we look ahead to December’s holiday parties, we have a clear choice: treat consent as a cultural checkbox – or begin working to embed it as a fundamental, practised value.

WorkSafe Victoria makes it clear that an employer’s duty to maintain a safe working environment extends to end-of-year functions like the office Christmas party. We can’t ignore the high prevalence of sexual harassment in Australian workplaces. The Fifth National Survey on Sexual Harassment in Australian Workplaces (Australian Human Rights Commission, 2022) found that one in three Australians has been sexually harassed at work in the last five years. Workplaces have a positive duty to prevent sexual harassment and eliminate psychosocial hazards – even during work-related functions and events that take place outside of work hours.

In order to meet this duty, Safe Party policies are commonly enacted, with measures taken such as reminding staff of appropriate conduct before the event, limits on the provision of alcohol, ensuring adequate supervision onsite, and providing safe transport options home. While these are all positive steps to tick the compliance box, too often they simply aren’t enough.

Policies and compliance alone can’t create the cultural shift we need to keep everyone safe. Sure, we all read that Slack message about appropriate Christmas party conduct, but how many staff give that a second thought once inhibitions are lifted? How effective is telling people what not to do, at the one time of year when Australians are least likely to be paying attention to the rules?

To keep everyone safe at end-of-year celebrations and beyond, we need more than safe party policies. Compliance culture – created through policies and codes of conduct – makes employees think about behaviour in terms of the consequences for themselves. It’s the “I shouldn’t do this because I’ll get in trouble” mentality. But when you’re intoxicated, that fear is quickly forgotten. For more care to be taken, we need a cultural shift.

Consent culture is a culture that moves the focus towards thinking about others and how they might feel about your behaviour. Grounded in empathy, it’s about considering other people’s comfort levels and having the communication skills to recognise and navigate moments where someone might feel uncomfortable.

If compliance culture asks, “Did I break a rule?”, consent culture asks, “Did I check in?”. At the office party, this shift changes the very nature of interaction. It means moving beyond the passive assumption that silence is acceptance. It’s about being actively responsible for the comfort of the people around you. This might look like avoiding physical contact – even a seemingly innocent hand on someone’s back or shoulder – unless you have a pre-existing, non-professional relationship that clearly permits it. Or it might mean noticing that you’ve touched someone gently on the back to prevent them getting bumped, realising that might have caused discomfort, and checking in with a “sorry, was that touch OK?”

A culture of consent is one that involves reading cues before leaning in to tell a joke, and accepting a “no thanks” on another drink or a dance without persistent persuasion. Crucially, staff are equipped with the language to politely, but firmly, check on their colleagues and articulate their own boundaries, ensuring that everyone is practising the enthusiastic, freely-given, reversible, and informed (EFRI) principles, even when the music is loud and the lights are low.

Consent isn’t just about sexual interaction; at a work function, it’s about respecting professional boundaries. A colleague operating within a consent culture understands that inviting themselves into a private conversation, demanding personal details, or pressuring a junior employee to “network” with a senior leader is a boundary violation.

Safe, respectful workplaces understand that when inhibitions are lowered, the professional power dynamics between a CEO and an intern, or a manager and a direct report, are amplified – not erased. Therefore, a true consent culture mandates a higher standard of care and caution from those in positions of power, recognising that the ability to say “no” is drastically diminished when your career prospects are involved. Power and pressure play into our social interactions, especially at a celebration where professional boundaries are likely to be lowered, so we need to take care to think about others and the way our behaviour may impact them. This focus ensures that the psychological safety of every employee remains paramount, even when the setting is more social.

Ultimately, the end-of-year celebration serves as a high-contrast mirror reflecting the quality of your organisation’s daily culture. When staff have the emotional intelligence and communication skills to navigate comfort levels around discussing non-work topics, accepting a polite redirection away from personal questions without pushing, and respecting the personal space of others in casual settings every day, the risk of boundaries being disrespected at a party is greatly reduced.

Consent culture is built in the daily decisions to listen fully, respect personal boundaries, and check in before making an assumption about someone’s comfort. By investing in training and leadership that fosters this empathetic mindset year-round, organisations can stop treating the annual party as a compliance risk to be mitigated, and instead allow it to be what it should be: a genuine, relaxed celebration of hard work, free from the shadow of the morning-after anxiety.

Mel Brush is the managing director of operations at Let’s Talk About X.