Employers: How Ready Are You for the New Sexual Harassment Law?

October 1, 2024

By Fflur Jones

In just 3 weeks, on 26 October 2024, all employers will be expected to take positive steps to prevent sexual harassment in their workplaces. Our online questionnaire here is designed to see how ready you are for this change.

What is sexual harassment?

Sexual harassment occurs where one employee engages in unwanted conduct of a sexual nature and the conduct has the purpose or effect of violating another employee’s dignity, or creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for that other employee. Sexual harassment is a type of discrimination under the Equality Act.

What is the new duty on employers?

Employers will need to demonstrate that they took reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment to their staff in the course of their employment. Furthermore, employers will need to be proactive and take anticipatory steps to prevent any sexual harassment before it occurs.

This new positive duty will also require employers to prevent employees from being sexually harassed by third parties, such as customers, clients, contractors or members of the public.

How can you ensure you’re ready?

1. Carry out a risk assessment to establish whether there are any specific areas of your business which present a risk of sexual harassment – e.g. interactions with customers or the public, or any work social events.
2. Ensure you have a Sexual Harassment policy which sets out how you will prevent sexual harassment and manage complaints which are raised. Lots of employers will already have a general Anti-harassment and Bullying policy (which deals, in passing, with sexual harassment). However, we advise having a standalone Sexual Harassment policy which demonstrates how seriously you treat the issue.
3. Carry out mandatory training to all staff on standards of behaviour expected and on how to raise complaints of sexual harassment.
4. Provide further mandatory training to managers on how to identify and handle complaints of sexual harassment.

At Darwin Gray, our employment and HR team can assist employers with all of these steps, including advising on risk assessments, drafting policies and providing training. If you need advice on the new duty to prevent sexual harassment, contact Fflur Jones on fjones@darwingray.com or 029 2082 9117 for a free no-obligation chat to see how they might be able to help you.