Preventing sexual harassment
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Duty to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace
Employers must take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment of their staff while they are working for them, including sexual harassment by third parties. This is a preventative duty.
What does preventative duty mean?
It means your employer must take proactive steps to change any problematic workplace behaviour and eradicate harassment in the workplace.
They will be expected to follow the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) technical guidance: Sexual harassment and harassment at work.
According to the guidance:
1. Employers should not wait until an incident of sexual harassment has taken place before they take any action. They should anticipate scenarios when staff may be subject to sexual harassment in the course of their employment and take reasonable steps to prevent it from happening.
2. Management and senior staff should play an important role in creating respectful workplaces that are free from harassment. They can do so by being role models for respectful behaviour, and visibly promoting a positive and inclusive workplace culture where harassment is taken seriously and not tolerated.
3. If sexual harassment has happened, your employer should take reasonable steps to stop it from happening again.
Steps your employer can take
The EHRC guidance contains practical steps that your employer can take to prevent sexual harassment at work. The EHRC has also published an 8-point plan to help your employer comply with the rules.
The EHRC makes it clear that these steps are not an exhaustive list, and not every step in it may be reasonable for an employer to do.
Your employer will have to decide which steps are reasonable based on its size, the business sector you are working in, the resources available to it and the risks it needs to address.
However, your employer should consider doing some or all of the following:
Carry out an anonymous staff survey
This can be useful to get as accurate a picture of sexual harassment in the workplace as possible and help identify potential risk areas, both internally and from third parties.
It'll also help your employer to understand staff perceptions of workplace culture and help monitor the prevalence of sexual harassment in the business.
Perform a risk assessment
This should identify the risk of workers experiencing sexual harassment in the business and implement actions to prevent or minimise it.
Implement a sexual harassment policy
The policy should be clear, effective and followed. It should contain certain information such as:
- who a complaint should be made to;
- details of a complaints process that will encourage staff to report sexual harassment (including sexual harassment by third parties);
- steps that your employer will take to prevent repeat incidents by third parties;
- how your employer will deal with incidents by staff; and
- what support will be available to those who made the complaint.
Communicate and evaluate the policy
Your employer should communicate it to you regularly (at least annually), such as by internal newsletters, physical or digital noticeboards (intranet), and remind you about it before key events with higher risks of harassment, such as an office party.
You should be made aware of how to raise a complaint and the consequences of breaching the policy.
Your employer should evaluate the policy on an ongoing basis.
Provide regular training
The training should ensure staff know:
- what each type of harassment is (including third-party harassment);
- what victimisation involves;
- what to do if they experience it; and
- how managers will handle complaints of harassment.
Training should be mandatory and tailored towards the sector that you operate in.
Regularly monitor
There may be warning signs that harassment is taking place, beyond informal and formal complaints, such as:
- Regular sickness absences
- Changes in behaviour
- Comments in exit interviews
- Dips in performance
- Avoidance of a certain colleague.
Your employer should create a secure and confidential reporting register for complaints about all forms of harassment.