The Equality Act 2010, which protects people from discrimination in the workplace and wider society, has been updated to include sexual harassment. From 26th October, 2024 the new Worker Protection Act (Amendment of Equality Act 2010) requires employers to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace, including third parties.
The CIPD has provided a comprehensive factsheet for the Equality Act 2010 and suggests employers can focus attention on the following areas to proactively prevent sexual harassment, starting with educating your workforce and raising awareness about what harassment is:
- Organisational and cultural change: Senior leaders have a defining influence on the working culture and set the tone for expectations around behaviour and workplace civility. They need to embed and live the values and behaviour that underpin dignity, respect and inclusion.
- Policies and procedures: A formal policy won’t change culture on its own but it’s still important to have written policies and guidance. These should define sexual harassment, give examples of what it is and outline everyone’s responsibilities for preventing and tackling it. These can be used to promote the organisation’s commitment and practices to prevent and educate the workforce about sexual harassment. Given its sensitive and potentially complex nature, organisations may wish to consider dealing with harassment under a separate procedure.
- Training and development: There should be regular training sessions for all staff so that they understand what sexual harassment is and their role in preventing/addressing it.
- Reporting channels and investigating: There need to be well-promoted reporting channels for complaints and the organisation needs to respond to these promptly, fairly and thoroughly. Any evidence of discriminatory behaviour or harassment among staff needs to be investigated and acted on swiftly and a clear message sent out that such behaviour will not be tolerated.
- People management capability: Line managers play an important role in identifying, challenging and dealing with unfair treatment including sexual harassment. They need to have the training, education and guidance to give them the confidence to tackle sexual harassment.
- Monitoring and review: Monitoring the gender diversity of the workforce at every level, including for recruitment and promotion, will help to highlight if there is any potential discrimination or harassment on grounds of gender. Staff attitude surveys will enable the organisation to collect feedback in areas like gender equality and bullying and harassment.
Technical guidance and practical examples are outlined by the Equality and Human Rights Commission here.