New legislation has been passed to introduce a duty for all employers to take “reasonable steps” to prevent sexual harassment of employees in the course of their employment and the new duty comes into effect on 26 October 2024.
So, what exactly are reasonable steps?
The legal duty only refers to ‘reasonable’ steps. Clearly an employer cannot control the behaviour of its staff at all times, but the law demands reasonable, proactive steps.
Initially, the legislation was drafted to include that an employer should take all reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment. However, the final legislation was watered down by removing the word “all”. The new Labour government has, however, recently published the Employment Rights Bill which contains provisions to raise this to ‘all reasonable steps.’ The Bill also intends to extend the obligation to customers and third parties, as well as employees.
The Act itself, rather unhelpfully, doesn’t spell out what “reasonable steps” are but The Equality and Human Rights Commission’s (EHRC) has recently updated their technical guidance on sexual harassment and harassment at work which suggests some of the following actions:
- Anticipating scenarios when workers may be subject to sexual harassment and taking action to prevent it taking place;
- If sexual harassment has taken place, taking action to stop it from happening again;
- Carrying out a sexual harassment risk assessment;
- Producing an action plan setting out what preventative steps will be taken in response to the risk assessment;
- Appointing a designated lead to take responsibility for the action plan and compliance with the duty;
- Ensure there are effective and well-communicated policies and procedures in place that deal with sexual harassment;
- Adopting a zero tolerance approach to sexual harassment;
- Taking caution with any statements in relation to malicious complaints;
- Ensuring all workers are aware of the anti-harassment policies;
- Evaluating effectiveness of policies, potentially through a record of complaints;
- Nurturing a speak up culture;
- Providing effective training and refreshing this regularly;
- Ensuring agencies have effective policies in place before using agency staff;
- Addressing power imbalances;
- Responding effectively to instances of sexual harassment.