Restaurant Kitchen Harassment Policy: Template and Legal Duties

A kitchen harassment policy needs kitchen-specific examples, two reporting routes with one that bypasses the head chef, and consequences that apply to a star chef the same as a porter. A ready model policy in English and Japanese is below: adopt it, fill in the names, and give it to every employee. Confirmed legal duties exist in the US, UK, Australia and Japan; we could not confirm a current statutory duty for Singapore, and say so rather than guess.

1. Why kitchens need their own policy

Kitchens are hot, loud, cramped and hierarchical. Service is fast, tempers run short, and senior chefs hold real power over juniors' careers. Those conditions make harassment more likely and harder to report. Generic office policies miss what actually happens in restaurants:

• Shouting and personal insults during service, excused as "kitchen culture".
• Physical contact in tight spaces, and "jokes" about it.
• Harassment from guests toward front of house staff, and sometimes toward chefs at an open counter.
• After-work drinking where the hierarchy continues but the rules seem not to.
• Comments about accent, nationality or religion in a mixed team.
• Staff living in employer housing, where work and private life overlap.

Name these situations in the policy so nobody can claim they did not know they were covered.

2. What the law requires: verified examples

These examples were checked against official sources in September 2026. Four jurisdictions have a confirmed statutory duty below; this is not a complete statement of the law anywhere, and other countries are not covered here.

United States

• Federal law. The EEOC says harassment is unlawful when based on race, color, religion, sex (including sexual orientation, transgender status or pregnancy), national origin, age (40+), disability or genetic information, once it is a condition of employment or severe or pervasive enough to create a hostile work environment. Private employers are covered at 15+ employees (20+ for age); state and city laws often cover smaller ones.
• California. Government Code section 12950.1 requires employers with five or more employees to give two hours of sexual harassment prevention training to supervisors and one hour to other staff every two years, within six months of hire or promotion. The Civil Rights Department offers free online courses.
• New York State. Its law applies to every employer in the state, any size. Employers must give a written policy at hiring and each annual training, and train every employee at least once a year, interactively. The state's model materials have been in Japanese since 31 May 2023.

United Kingdom

• Duty to prevent sexual harassment. Section 40A of the Equality Act 2010, in force since 26 October 2024, requires an employer to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment of its employees in the course of their employment, enforceable by the Equality and Human Rights Commission and through a compensation uplift in tribunal cases.
• Changes not yet in force. The Employment Rights Act 2025 amends these provisions, including new duties on harassment by third parties such as customers. As of 22 September 2026, legislation.gov.uk lists these amendments as not yet in force. Watch for commencement.

Australia

• The Sex Discrimination Act 1984 contains, in Part IIA section 47C, a federal "duty to eliminate unlawful sex discrimination etc." that applies to employers, with guidance published by the Australian Human Rights Commission. Several states separately regulate psychosocial hazards, which safety regulators treat as including bullying and harassment, under work health and safety law; the Commonwealth's own version, for employers under Comcare, has applied since 21 September 2023. State commencement dates differ, so check the WHS regulator for the state your restaurant is in rather than assume the federal date applies there.

Japan

• Japanese law applies to employment in Japan, not to your restaurant abroad, but it shapes what chefs and head offices from Japan expect. Employers in Japan have had a legal duty to take measures against power harassment (パワーハラスメント) since 1 June 2020 for large companies and 1 April 2022 for small and medium ones. An amendment promulgated on 11 June 2025 makes measures against customer harassment (カスタマーハラスメント) and sexual harassment of job seekers mandatory from 1 October 2026, according to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare.

Singapore and other countries

Singapore's Workplace Fairness Act, passed in January 2025, will require employers to run a written grievance process (inquiring into complaints, giving written outcomes, keeping records, and not retaliating), but the Tripartite Alliance for Fair and Progressive Employment Practices (TAFEP) states it is slated to take effect only at the end of 2027 and is not yet in force. Until then there is no equivalent statutory harassment duty confirmed for Singapore, and TAFEP's own guidance is the operative advice for employers now. For any other country, check with the labour ministry or equality body before finalising your policy.

3. A model policy, in English and Japanese

Adopt this directly for a single-site restaurant: fill in the brackets, post it where staff can read it, and give a signed copy to every new hire.

4. Kitchen situations to cover explicitly

• Correcting during service. Short, work related instructions are fine. Insults, throwing things, and comments about a person's intelligence, body, nationality or accent are not. See cross-cultural kitchen management for feedback rules.
• Physical contact. Say "behind" and "corner", not a hand on the back. No contact beyond what safety requires.
• Guests. Set out what counter chefs and servers should do when a guest makes sexual comments, and who takes over.
• Drinking and staff events. The policy still applies. Nobody is pressured to drink or to stay.
• Staff housing. Rules on privacy, visitors and who has keys. See staff housing for restaurants.
• Group chats. Work chats are covered. Images and jokes unacceptable in the kitchen are unacceptable there too.

5. Handling a complaint, including when the head chef is the subject

1. Take it seriously and act quickly. Acknowledge the complaint in writing and agree next steps with the person who raised it.
2. Separate the people involved where needed, by changing shifts or stations, without disadvantaging the person who complained.
3. Investigate fairly. Hear both sides and any witnesses, with an interpreter where either person is more comfortable in Japanese or another language.
4. Record everything: dates, statements, decisions, reasons.
5. Decide and communicate the outcome to both parties to the extent you can, with reasons.
6. Follow up weeks later to check the behaviour has stopped and there has been no retaliation.

A small restaurant has a structural problem the steps above do not solve: if the person complained about is the head chef or owner, nobody senior and independent is left to investigate. Decide this before a live complaint, not during one:

• Name a second contact in advance who is not in the head chef's reporting line, even if it is the owner's spouse, a co-owner, or an outside adviser, and put them in the policy (section 3, line 4).
• Bring in an external HR adviser or employment lawyer to run the investigation itself when the complaint concerns the owner or head chef. A one-off fee for an outside investigator is cheaper than a finding, real or perceived, that the owner investigated himself.
• Suspend, do not dismiss, while you investigate a head chef facing a serious complaint, on full pay if your law requires it, and cover the kitchen with the sous chef or a trusted senior line cook rather than closing. Plan this cover before you need it: know in advance who could run the pass for two weeks.
• Do not let the kitchen's dependence on one chef stop an investigation. That dependence is the reason to train a second chef in the standards (see training local staff in Japanese cuisine), not a reason to look away from a complaint.

6. Briefing chefs from Japan

A chef hired from Japan needs to understand, before the first shift if possible, that local law and your policy apply whatever was normal in kitchens they trained in. Brief them in Japanese as part of onboarding, with specific, not abstract, examples:

• What is ordinary in some Japanese kitchens but unlawful abroad: shouting personal insults rather than work corrections; physical contact as correction; asking a junior's age, marital status or family plans in an interview or review; expecting unpaid hours as proof of dedication. Say plainly that these are not "strict standards", they are the specific behaviours the policy exists to stop.
• Who decides what counts as harassment: the law of the country you are in, not the kitchen hierarchy they learned under.
• How to report harassment directed at them. Chefs from abroad can be targets too, including comments about their nationality or accent.
• Supervisor training where required, such as California, if they will supervise staff.

A clear policy, applied the same way to a star chef as to a kitchen porter, protects your staff and your business, and helps retention: people stay where they feel safe to work.

General information, not legal advice. Harassment law differs by country, state and city, and changes often. Take local legal advice when writing your policy or handling a complaint.