The PoSH Inquiry Just Started. Does Your IC Know What to Do Next?

A complaint has been filed. The Internal Committee is convened. The first meeting is scheduled. And then someone in the room asks the question no one wants to admit they are thinking:

“What exactly are we supposed to do now?”

This is a more common moment than most organizations admit. The PoSH Act 2013 mandates that every company with 10 or more employees must have a functioning Internal Committee. But mandating its existence and preparing its members to actually run an inquiry are two very different things.

The inquiry process under the PoSH Act is quasi-judicial in nature. It carries real consequences for both the complainant and the respondent. It must be conducted within 90 days. It must be confidential. It must be fair. And it must result in a written report.

If your IC members are figuring it out as they go, that is not compliance. That is liability.

Why the Inquiry Stage Is Where Most ICs Struggle

Most organizations invest in PoSH awareness training for employees. Some go further and train their IC members on what constitutes sexual harassment and how to receive a complaint. Far fewer prepare the IC for what happens after the complaint is received.

This is the gap that causes the most harm. Not during awareness sessions, but during live inquiries, when real people are involved, time is running, and every procedural misstep can compromise the entire process.

The inquiry process is where the Act places its heaviest procedural burden on the IC. It is also where untrained committees most frequently make errors: notifying the wrong parties, skipping written acknowledgements, conducting informal interviews instead of structured examinations, failing to maintain confidentiality, or missing the 90-day timeline altogether.

The 90-Day Clock: What the Act Actually Requires

Under the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act 2013, the IC is required to complete its inquiry within 90 days of receiving the complaint. This is not a soft guideline. Failure to adhere to the timeline is a procedural violation that can be raised during any appeal or legal challenge.

Within those 90 days, the IC must:

1. Acknowledge the complaint in writing and send a copy to the respondent within seven working days of receiving it.
2. Give the respondent an opportunity to respond in writing within 10 working days.
3. Conduct structured hearings with both parties, separately and in a manner that does not create a hostile or adversarial environment.
4. Examine witnesses with the consent of the parties concerned, maintaining strict confidentiality throughout.
5. Prepare and submit a written report with findings and recommendations to the employer within 10 days of completing the inquiry.
6. Recommend interim measures if necessary, such as a transfer or leave grant, to protect the complainant during the inquiry period.

Each of these steps requires not just awareness of what the law says, but active preparation: the right documentation templates, a clear understanding of natural justice principles, and the composure to manage a sensitive, emotionally charged process.

Five Things Untrained ICs Get Wrong During Inquiry

1. Treating the inquiry like an HR investigation

A PoSH inquiry is quasi-judicial, not managerial. IC members must understand the principles of natural justice: every party must be heard, no one should be both judge and witness, and conclusions must be evidence-based. Running it like a performance improvement discussion is a fundamental error.

2. Breaching confidentiality without realising it

The Act mandates strict confidentiality at every stage. Sharing the name of the complainant with witnesses, copying HR on all IC communications by default, or discussing the case in a common chat group are all confidentiality breaches, even if they feel procedurally normal. These can invalidate findings and expose the organisation to legal risk.

3. Missing the written record

Every step of the inquiry must be documented. Verbal notices, informal conversations, undocumented hearings: these are not just bad practice, they are procedurally invalid. If the inquiry report is ever challenged, the only defence is the written record. IC members need to know exactly what to document and how.

4. Allowing power dynamics to skew the process

When the respondent is a senior leader, IC members often struggle to maintain objectivity. They may unconsciously give more credence to the respondent’s version, minimise the complainant’s account, or avoid escalating findings that could be politically inconvenient. Training on unconscious bias and inquiry ethics is not optional. It is what separates a functional IC from a compromised one.

5. Confusing conciliation with inquiry

The Act allows for conciliation before inquiry, but only at the complainant’s written request, and only in cases that do not involve monetary settlement. Many ICs attempt conciliation by default, which is a procedural violation. Others attempt it even in cases where it is clearly inappropriate, prioritising convenience over the complainant’s welfare.

What Kelp’s September ILA Webinar Addresses: Mental Health, Retaliation and Procedural Fairness

On 24th September 2026, Kelp’s ILA webinar series https://bit.ly/3SR346f addresses one of the most under-discussed aspects of the PoSH inquiry: the mental health of everyone involved, the risk of retaliation, and what procedural fairness actually demands from an IC.

Retaliation is more common than reported. It does not always look overt. It shows up as the complainant being excluded from work meetings after filing a complaint. It shows up as the respondent’s manager subtly shifting the team’s workload. It shows up as IC members themselves being sidelined after recommending action against a powerful respondent.

The Act explicitly prohibits retaliation against complainants, witnesses, or any person who provides information during the inquiry. But prohibition without monitoring is meaningless. The IC needs to actively watch for it and report it.

The mental health dimension is equally important. An IC that handles an inquiry with procedural rigidity but no empathy creates secondary trauma. Complainants who feel interrogated rather than heard, or respondents who are presumed guilty before findings are issued, are both signs of a committee that has the law but not the judgment.

This is exactly the territory that IC Certification from Kelp is designed to cover.

IC Certification from Kelp: Beyond Awareness, Into Readiness

Kelp’s IC Certification Programme is not a one-day awareness session. It is a structured, credentialled programme designed specifically for Internal Committee members who need to be inquiry-ready, not just policy-aware.

The programme covers:

1. The full inquiry lifecycle under the PoSH Act, from complaint receipt to final report submission
2. Natural justice principles and how they apply at each stage of the inquiry
3. Confidentiality protocols, documentation standards, and record-keeping requirements
4. Managing retaliation: how to identify it, how to document it, how to report it
5. Trauma-informed and gender-sensitive approaches to hearing both parties
6. Handling cases involving senior leadership, remote workers, contractual staff, and third-party respondents
7. The IC’s role in interim relief: when to recommend a transfer, leave, or other protective measure
8. Producing a compliant, defensible inquiry report

Participants who complete the programme receive individual IC Member Certification from Kelp, recognised across 1,000+ client organization’s spanning Fortune 500 companies, funded startups, BFSI institutions, and manufacturing firms.

The programme has trained 43,860 IC members across India and 53 countries, across 15 languages. The organizations that have invested in it consistently report fewer procedural errors, faster inquiry closure, and significantly lower risk of inquiry outcomes being challenged.

Is Your IC Inquiry-Ready? A Practical Self-Check

Before your IC receives the next complaint, run through these questions:

1. Do all IC members understand the 90-day inquiry timeline and the milestones within it?
2. Does your IC have documented templates for complaint acknowledgement, respondent notice, witness summons, and the inquiry report?
3. Have IC members been trained on confidentiality obligations, not just told about them?
4. Does your IC know the difference between conciliation and inquiry, and when each applies?
5. Is there a clear protocol for identifying and reporting retaliation during an active inquiry?
6. Has your IC received any training in the past 12 months? (The Act requires training “at regular intervals.”)
7. Is your IC’s external member actively engaged, or a name on paper?

If your answer to two or more of these is “no” or “not sure”, your IC needs structured preparation before the next complaint arrives. Waiting until a complaint is live to discover the gaps is too late.

The Inquiry Is the Test. Certification Is the Preparation.

The PoSH Act was not written to create paperwork. It was written to ensure that when a woman comes forward with a complaint of sexual harassment, she faces a process that is fair, confidential, and genuinely designed to deliver justice.

That requires an IC that knows what it is doing. Not an IC that means well.

If your committee is formed but not trained, present but not prepared, the inquiry stage is where that gap will show. And by then, the damage to both parties, and to your organisation’s credibility, will already have begun.

Kelp’s IC Certification Programme is open for enrolment. Certify your IC before the inquiry arrives, not after.

Get Your IC Certified

Reach out to Kelp today to enrol your IC members in our IC Certification Programme.

For more details on the next cohort, write in to info@kelphr.com, call +91-9500129652