Employees at Genpact’s Hyderabad office recently made allegations of gender bias, harassment and excessive work hours, and the company has now started an independent review. HR teams should study how the complaints surfaced. They didn’t surface through a hotline or an exit interview. A recording of a September meeting with the employee relations representative was posted on LinkedIn and then spread widely on social media.
These are allegations. Genpact says the review is underway and hasn’t commented on individual complaints. Whatever it finds, the case is a useful stress test for how your company handles workplace harassment complaints.
What was alleged, and what wasn’t proven
HR Katha reports that employees accused a senior manager of remarks about women on the team, close monitoring of toilet breaks, dismissiveness about medical emergencies and threats of termination. The same report cites Moneycontrol, which said staff were expected to work 13 to 14 hours a day and that concerns reached senior leadership as early as July.
That timeline matters. If it holds, the gap between “raised with leadership” and “public video” is about two months. Two months is long enough for a complaint to become a crisis.
If you’re quoting this story, keep the wording tied to the sources: “alleged,” “according to employees,” “the company said.” None of it has been established yet.
How should HR handle a workplace harassment complaint?
Acknowledge the complaint in writing within a day or two. If it involves sexual harassment, send it to the Internal Committee. Protect the complainant from retaliation. Investigate through someone who doesn’t report to the person accused. Tell the complainant what happened at the end. Employees go to a camera when they hear nothing back.
Here’s the longer version, with what usually goes wrong at each step.
- Acknowledge it fast: A short written reply is enough: we’ve received this, here’s who owns it, here’s roughly when you’ll hear from us. What goes wrong: HR waits until it has “something to say,” and the complainant reads silence as a no.
- Sort the complaint before you route it: One complaint can contain several issues. A remark about women and menstrual leave may fall under the POSH Act. Sixteen-hour days are a management and labour-compliance problem. What goes wrong: everything goes into one bucket, and the wrong process handles it.
- Take the accused out of the information flow: The manager shouldn’t know who complained before the committee decides he or she should. What goes wrong: the complainant’s team lead learns about it, and the “retaliation” story starts.
- Investigate independently: The investigator shouldn’t share a reporting line, a promotion committee or a Friday lunch group with the accused. This is where Genpact’s decision to commission an independent review is a sound instinct, though it came after the video, not before.
- Close the loop: Even when you can’t share the findings, tell the complainant that the process finished and what category of outcome it was. Nobody expects a verdict in public. They expect to not be ignored.
POSH covers some of this, not all of it
Indian employers sometimes treat “HR complaint” and “POSH complaint” as the same thing. They aren’t.
The Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace Act, 2013 requires every employer with ten or more employees to set up an Internal Committee. The committee needs at least four members, with half of them women. Employers must also circulate a written policy, run awareness programmes, train committee members and file annual reports. Penalties for non-compliance start at ₹50,000 under Section 26 and double for repeat offences, so this isn’t paperwork you can postpone. (For a plain-language summary of employer duties, see this POSH compliance note.)
But the POSH Act doesn’t regulate how many hours a manager can demand, or whether he’s allowed to laugh at someone mid-panic attack. Those complaints need a separate path: a grievance policy, a skip-level channel, and someone senior enough to act on it. Without that second path, employees file everything under harassment because it’s the only door that opens.
Why a viral video beats your grievance portal
Think about it from the employee’s side. You’ve raised it with your manager’s manager in July. You’ve written to employee relations. Nothing visible has changed. You have a phone, and one meeting you could record.
A video can’t be reassigned, delayed or softly closed. It also isn’t fair to anyone involved, because the accused gets judged by clips, and the company’s side takes a day to assemble. HR teams that think of this as a PR risk miss the point. It’s a trust failure that happened long before the post.
You can’t prevent employees from using social media. You can make it the worse option, by making your internal channel faster, safer and visibly responsive.
A short audit to run this week
- Can an employee name the people on your Internal Committee without looking them up? If not, the notice board isn’t doing its job.
- When was the last time a complaint against a senior person was upheld? If never, ask why, and don’t accept “because nobody deserved it” as the whole answer.
- Do complainants hear back within a fixed number of days?
- Does anyone outside the accused’s reporting chain review overtime and leave-denial patterns?
Four questions, and most mid-sized companies can’t answer two of them.
Frequently asked questions
Is an Internal Committee mandatory for every company in India?
It’s mandatory for every workplace with ten or more employees. Smaller establishments fall under a district-level Local Committee for complaints.
Are excessive working hours a harassment issue?
Not under the POSH Act. They’re a labour-compliance and management-conduct issue, though sustained pressure combined with threats can feed a separate grievance. Treat them on their own track so they don’t get lost.
What counts as retaliation?
Anything that makes the complainant’s working life measurably worse after complaining: sudden shift changes, exclusion from projects, a drop in appraisal scores. Document the complainant’s baseline before the investigation starts, so you can compare.
What this means for your workplace
Genpact’s review will finish eventually. Your own version of this story hasn’t started yet, which is the useful part. Fixing complaint handling is cheaper before a recording exists.
At Amazing Workplaces, our work is built on a 9-Pillar Framework of people management, and we’ve surveyed more than 60,000 employees across India and other markets. If you want an outside read on how your people practices hold up, you can start the certification process here.
