Speak Safely at the University of Melbourne

Go to the Speak Safely portal

The Speak Safely portal helps you speak safely about sexual assault and harassment, and other inappropriate behaviour access support, or seek action by the University. If you make a report, you will be contacted to discuss next steps. Speak Safely is an important tool to help the University provide a safer community for all.

Speak Safely:

gives you the choice to remain anonymous.
offers an encrypted chat function that allows you to chat to someone with relevant expertise anonymously if you choose to.
lets you record confidential diary notes that you might choose to convert to a formal report later.
offers an optional matching feature enabling you to submit your report as a group report or individually if an when similar reports are made
is a confidential portal, created by Elker, an I.T. services business specialising in digital tools to identify and manage conflict, risk and suggestions. Elker protects and encrypts your information.

Detailed information:

Diary note

In case you are not comfortable reporting the incident yet, you can record your experience without making a Report by creating a Diary Note. The Diary Note is saved to your private dashboard and you can convert it to a Report at any time. Until you decide to convert it to a Report, your Diary Note will only be visible to you.

Group Report

Other people may have experienced inappropriate behaviour as well. In order to match your report with other similar reports, you can turn on the scanning function which will look for similar matches using key information. You may prefer to hold your Diary Note back to be submitted only when Speak Safely's scanning function matches it with other Diary Notes that are similar. Once your report has been matched to similar reports, you can choose to submit it as a Group Report or individually.

Note that no information will be shared between any individuals that identify othes making reports.

For more information, please refer to the FAQs below and the Sexual Misconduct Prevention and Response Policy (MPF1359).

For immediate support, please refer to available resources via the Safer Community Program.

Reports about students will be responded to by the Academic Registrar in accordance with the Student Conduct Policy. Reports about staff members will be responded to by Workplace Relations. If you are unsure if you want a more general discussion or if you require support, you can elect to speak to the Safer Community Program.

When you submit a Report, an individual from the relevant area (Academic Registrar, Workplace Relations or Safer Community Program) will contact you through the two-way encrypted chat in the Speak Safely Portal within two business days. They will guide you through the process.

Using your Speak Safely log in key, you can access your secure dashboard to view the status of your Report at any time. From your secure dashboard, you can click on your Report to review the timestamped action history, and the two-way encrypted messages between you and the contact person responding to your Report.

If and when you want to convert your Diary Note to a formal report, go to your Speak Safely Portal dashboard and click on the Diary Note you would like to send as a Report. In the top right corner of the screen, click on 'Convert to Report' and you will be asked to review or update the details in your Diary Note before converting it to a report.

From your Speak Safely portal dashboard, click on the Diary Note you would like to send as a Report. Select the ‘Scanning’ tab. Activate scanning by using the toggle. In a few moments, you will be notified if other Diary Notes submitted in the Speak Safely Portal are similar to yours.

If similar Diary Notes are found, you can choose to create a Group Report by clicking the button ‘Join a Group Report’. You will be asked to review the details in your Diary Note or update any relevant details.

After confirming that you would like to proceed, your note will await the responses of others. If others have also opted-in to a Group Report, the matched Reports will be submitted immediately.

Once your Diary Note is converted to a Report, you will have access to the Speak Safely Portal two-way-chat function.

All data that is submitted through Speak Safely is encrypted and secured with industry-standard AES-256 cryptography. This means that no-one aside from you and the person you choose to communicate with will be able to view your data at any time. This means that no-one at the University or at Elker is able to access your private information. See Elker's security and trust page for more information. Your report will be diverted to the relevant area based on the information you provide to us. A contact person from the relevant response area will be allocated to your report, who will view your report and the data that you choose to provide them with.

You choose who you share your report with. It is only this person who you select to view your report who is then able to view the data that you choose to provide them with.

While strict privacy protocols, University policies and legislation are in place to protect the identity of Reports, you may have a personal preference to take additional measures by making your Report from a personal device or switching off the Cisco VPN on your University device.

Data provided through this portal is stored in Sydney at the Amazon AWS Data Centre. Both AWS and Elker are regularly audited for their data security. All data stored on AWS servers is encrypted and secure.

You can delete your Diary Note at any time however Diary Notes cannot be edited. If you’ve made a mistake on your Diary Note you can make a new note.

In case you choose to stay anonymous, during the reporting process, do not share any identifying details in your report, such as your name, contact number, email address, your role etc. Elker removes all metadata that your web browser (Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge, Brave etc.) normally sends to websites to communicate with them. Even though this metadata cannot personally identify you, we ensure that it is properly removed from your report.

Yes, you can opt in to make de-identified data from your Diary Note available to the University. If you opt in, your responses to the free-text question, ‘In your own words, please provide a summary of what happened’, will not be disclosed to the University, but other de-identified and aggregated information will.

The University is keen to understand where and when sexual misconduct and other forms of inappropriate behaviour may be occurring across the organisation to direct its efforts towards eradicating sexual misconduct and other forms of inappropriate behaviour.

Yes, you can choose to stay anonymous and those responding to your report cannot change your anonymity status for you.

Your identity (or information that could identify you) will only be shared where:

you provide consent; or
the University is permitted, or otherwise required by law.

Please note that while you may have elected to remain anonymous, the University may potentially be able to identify you from information you provide in the free text section, ‘In your own words, please provide a summary of what happened’ of the report.

For technical support, please call the Service Centre on +61 3 8344 0888. Normally, you’ll be asked to provide identifying details when making a support enquiry. However, in this instance, you may wish to refrain. Remember, you have the option to block the number from which you are calling if it would make you feel more comfortable. You can discuss your specific the Speak Safely Portal technical issue with the Service Centre staff without providing your identity.

The University has obligations under child safety legislation to protect children under the age of 18. Reports and Diary Notes that relate to matters involving children under the age of 18 will be referred to the Safer Community Program who will take action in consultation with the University's Child Safety Officer who will enact our obligations.