Posted Date: 8th October 2024
Prepare for new employer duties, which involve taking ‘reasonable steps’ to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace.
Failure to do so, means employers could be held vicariously liable if a tribunal claim is brought forward and a 25% uplift on any tribunal award payments.
Under s.26(2) of the Equality Act 2010 sexual harassment is: “Unwanted conduct of a sexual nature that has the purpose or effect of creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment.” This can take place in many forms, for eg. spoken or written words, offensive jokes or ‘banter’, emails, social media messages, unwanted touching, bribery and displaying explicit images.
Why has this came about?
The #MeToo movement promoting awareness of sexual harassment in the workplace, along with other global campaigns including #TimesUp, helped shed the light on the high number of harassment incidents occurring in the workplace. According to research by Randstad, almost three-quarters (72%) of female workers have seen or been subject to inappropriate behaviour from male colleagues in the workplace.
What are 'reasonable steps’?
Employers will be liable for harassment committed by employees unless they can rely on the fact they made reasonable steps to attempt to prevent it.
Actions by the employer to prevent sexual harassment must be:
- Practical
- Proportionate
- Tailored to the circumstances of the workplace
We advise that your reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment should include:
- Investing in sexual harassment training for all employees, but leaders as a minimum. Check out our online training course.
- Introducing channels to report incidents of sexual harassment, with different options of who the employee can report the incident to
- Having a clear, zero-tolerance attitude towards this behaviour
- Creating and regulating effective anti-harassment policies
- Ensuring all policies and procedures are readily available to all employees
- Not using NDAs to cover up sexual harassment claims
- Risk assess scenarios or roles which are more at risk of sexual harassment - for eg. lone workers, those who work late in quiet offices, where there is an imbalance of power
If you need any further support with this topic, feel free to contact us!