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Last October, the Worker Protection (Amendment of Equality Act 2010) Act 2023 came into force, meaning all employers are required to take all reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment of their employees. This legislation is a big shift to a proactive duty to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment – but it also meant big changes for your members. To help, the experts over at our partner Citation have provided an article detailing what the Act means for your members and the steps they need to take to stay compliant.
The EHRC guidance around the Act outlines a couple of key points that your members need to know, including:
• The new responsibilities are anticipatory duties – meaning your members shouldn’t wait until sexual harassment happens before doing something about it
• The duty to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment includes third-party harassment, for example from visitors and other members of the public
• You’ll need to carry out a risk assessment to set out how you’re going to prevent sexual harassment and protect employees.
The eight steps you need to take to comply – what your members need to do
1. Develop a robust anti-harassment policy
Your members need to have a look at the policies they already have in place and see what could be updated. They need to include the consequences of sexual harassment, define who’s protected and explain how procedures for receiving and responding to complaints will work.
They will also need to address third-party harassment in this section, and explain what steps will be taken to prevent it and what will happen if a complaint is made.
2. Engage staff
Your members should have regular one-to-one meetings with their staff members, carry out staff surveys and hold exit interviews to make sure they’re creating an environment where everyone feels comfortable sharing any incidents of sexual harassment with leaders.
3. Carry out a risk assessment
Your members need to think about everything that might increase the likelihood of sexual harassment – for example, how diverse is their workplace? Do staff ever work alone or have meeting alone with visitors or other third parties?
4. Reporting
Your members need to think about ways their staff could report anonymously, and make sure everyone knows what ‘acceptable behaviour’ means, how to recognise sexual harassment and what to do if they experience it or see it.
5. Training
Everyone in your members’ organisations need to be trained on what sexual harassment might look like, what to do if they experience it or see it, how complaints should be made and how to address third-party harassment.
6. What to do if complaint is made
Your members need to make sure they act straight away if a complaint is raised. They need to keep everything confidential, and protect the person who raised the complaint from harassment or victimisation during the investigation. They also always need to address complaints through the right disciplinary procedure and communicate outcomes as soon as possible.
7. Dealing with third-party harassment
Your members need to make sure they treat third-party harassment just as seriously as they would treat sexual harassment by a colleague. If their staff might be alone with third parties, they need to assess that risk and put measures in place to reduce the likelihood of anything happening.
8. Monitor, monitor, monitor
Your members will need to regularly evaluate how effective the steps they’ve got in place are – including reviewing all complaints to spot trends, surveying staff anonymously to see what other steps they think leaders could take and comparing complaint numbers with feedback to see if the data is accurate.
Why is tackling sexual harassment important?
Aside from the obvious moral obligation to protect employees, this legislation also stipulates that if a tribunal finds an employer failed to take steps to protect workers, it’ll be able to order them to pay a 25% uplift on any compensation for sexual harassment – so if your members get this wrong, they could be under serious financial pressure.
Plus, preventing sexual harassment in the workplace is just common sense – this proactive focus on prevention could have a huge impact on workplace culture, including improving morale, reduced turnover and an environment where everyone feels safe and respected.
Citation – by your side
Preventing harassment can be a minefield, and puts a lot of pressure on your members. Working with us means you’ll be able to get must-know information out to your members including content for your newsletters, free guides (like our full guide to the Worker Protection Act here) and joint webinars and events. And, if your members need more support, we’ll make sure they get our bespoke compliance packages for less with preferential rates. For more information about becoming a Citation partner, email partnerships@citation.co.uk or visit our website.
