Embracing the new employment era – Webinar series 2025 | Preventing Harassment

The Employment Rights Bill seeks to bring about seismic change to the employment law landscape, requiring employers to adapt their current practices and policies.

Our latest webinar focused on preventing harassment, looking at the current duty to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment and considering what additional steps might be needed as a result of changes proposed by the Bill. The key takeaways from the webinar are highlighted below:

Understanding harassment and sexual harassment

• Harassment is unwanted conduct related to a relevant protected characteristic which has the purpose or effect of violating a person's dignity or creating an intimating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for them
• Sexual harassment occurs where the unwanted conduct is of a sexual nature which has the same purpose or effect
• Unwanted conduct covers a broad spectrum from written words to banter to physical behaviour and facial expressions
• On 26 October 2024, the Worker Protection (Amendment of Equality Act 2010) Act 2023 came into force. As a result, employers must now take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment of their employees in the course of their employment
• This new duty incudes sexual harassment by third parties, for example by customers and suppliers
• When calculating compensation payable by an employer in a successful discrimination claim, a tribunal can raise the award by up to 25% if the employer has failed to comply with the duty to take reasonable steps
• EHRC has published guidance to help employers understand the steps they should be taking, key elements of which include having an effective anti-harassment policy, carrying out a risk assessment and taking steps to reduce risk in the workplace, training staff and managers, supporting employees to report instances of sexual harassment and responding to complaints quickly and effectively - Employer 8-step guide: Preventing sexual harassment at work | EHRC

What additional steps are needed under the Employment Rights Bill?

• The Employment Rights Bill seeks to extend the obligations on employers in respect of harassment. In particular, if the Bill is passed in its current form there will be:
  • a duty on employers to take all reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment
  • a duty on employers to take all reasonable steps to prevent harassment of staff by third parties – this will therefore cover harassment based on any protected characteristic not just sexual harassment
• Other proposals under the Bill include making complaints of sexual harassment public interest disclosures
• The Bill also includes provision for regulations to be passed specifying what all reasonable steps will entail, but these are likely to include carrying out risk assessments, publishing relevant policies, supporting reporting of incidents and introducing steps to appropriately handle complaints

What should employers be doing now?

• Ensure business values are reflected in the culture of the organisation and modelled from the top down
• Conduct a risk assessment
• Refresh policies and procedures
• Roll out meaningful training to staff and managers
• Treat complaints seriously