New sexual harassment legislation
The Equality Act has been strengthened with the Worker Protection bill. Here's how to make sure your organisation is taking the necessary steps to protect workers.
Employers now have a duty to protect their workers against sexual harassment from managers, colleagues, customers, visitors and other people who they might come into contact with through their work.
If one of your employees is sexually harassed, they may be entitled to compensation from your organisation. If the tribunal finds that you didn’t take ‘reasonable steps’ to prevent that harassment, the compensation could be increased by up to 25%.
What counts as sexual harassment
Sexual harassment is unwanted behaviour of a sexual nature. When it comes to workplaces, the person carrying out the harassment often (but not always) targets someone who’s at an equal or lower pay grade.
The person carrying out the harassment may intend to humiliate, intimidate or degrade the person they’re harassing. However, in some instances, they may not realise that the behaviour is causing the other person distress, particularly if the person they’re harassing feels too uncomfortable to complain. For instance, if an employee is being sexually harassed by their manager, they may try to ignore or make light of it because they’re worried about their job. What some people might consider as joking, ‘banter’ or part of a workplace culture can still be sexual harassment.
Behaviour doesn’t have to be physical to be classed as sexual harassment. For example, if a member of the team makes lewd jokes or suggestions, or makes sexual comments about someone’s body or clothing, that may be classed as sexual harassment. The comments don’t need to be aimed at a specific person to be deemed harassment.
Examples of sexual harassment include:
- Asking questions about someone’s sex life
- Telling sexually offensive jokes
- Making sexual remarks about someone’s body, clothing or appearance
- Making sexual comments or jokes about someone’s sexual orientation or gender reassignment
- Displaying or sharing pornographic or sexual images, or other sexual content
- Touching someone against their will, for example hugging them or stroking their arm
- Sexual assault or rape
Who the legislation covers
The Worker Protection bill is designed to protect all those who are in ‘employment’ and covers:
- Employees who have a contract of employment with the organisation
- Contract workers, including agency workers and those who contract to provide work personally such as consultants and freelancers, who cannot send someone to do the job in their place
- Apprentices who have an apprenticeship contract
- Job applicants
While volunteers aren’t always covered under employment legislation, they deserve to volunteer in a respectful environment where they feel safe and protected. Therefore, we recommend that policies, communications and training also include volunteers.
What you can do to prevent sexual harassment in your workplace
If your organisation employs people, it must take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment. These might include (but aren’t limited to) the following:
- Carry out a risk assessment to look at how sexual harassment could take place, and how risks can be reduced.
- Create (or update) an anti-harassment and bullying policy, which explains what sexual harassment is, what everyone’s responsibilities are when it comes to preventing and tackling it, and what actions will be taken against anyone who breaks the rules.
- Ensure that all employees read this policy and are trained to recognise sexual harassment.
- Give additional training to team managers so they know how to deal with sexual harassment.
- Make sure that staff members know how to report sexual harassment and have options for who to report it to (for example, if their line manager is the culprit, the staff member will need to be able to report the behaviour to someone else).
- Clearly communicate a zero-tolerance approach to sexual harassment and intimidation (for example through posters).
- Investigate any complaints swiftly, thoroughly and sensitively.
Further reading
We recommend reading the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s guide on harassment at work, which has been updated to reflect the new rules.
Outside of the workplace, Hammersmith & Fulham Council have brought in a new public spaces protection order (PSPO) prohibiting street harassment. The order covers activities such as catcalling, sexist, homophobic or transphobic slurs and non-consensual physical touching. The police will be able to issue fixed penalty fines for such behaviour.