National law firm Clarke Willmott LLP has launched a comprehensive information pack to help employers ensure they meet their legal obligations ahead of new workplace sexual harassment legislation.
From 26 October 2024, employers will be under a new positive duty to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace. The new Worker Protection (Amendment of Equality Act 2010) Act 2023 includes a wide definition which means that employers are required to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment against staff, not only from colleagues, but also from third parties, such as clients and customers.
Many employers are now questioning what those reasonable steps may be and how they can best take them, says Clarke Willmott.
Paula Squire, partner in the employment team at Clarke Willmott, said:
“Sexual harassment at work is already unlawful and includes unwanted behaviour of a sexual nature which violates someone’s dignity or creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for someone to work. This applies even if the behaviour was not intended to have this effect. Employers are potentially vicariously liable for such actions stemming from their duty of care to staff.
“Many of our clients have been asking how they can really stamp this out, so our team has pulled together an essential compliance pack focusing on anti-harassment in the workplace, as well as a training pack employers can use to roll out across their business.”
Clarke Willmott’s compliance pack includes an updated harassment and bullying policy, sexual harassment risk assessment form, a checklist for preventing and responding to sexual harassment, guidelines for supervisors and managers responding to a complaint and much more.
“The aim of the pack is to assist employers in meeting their obligations. The guidelines can be fairly vague, so we want to remove some of the uncertainty for clients and make things as simple as possible,” said Paula.
“We provide a model policy including the procedure for raising and investigating complaints and a risk assessment form which can be used to determine reasonable measures to minimise those risks.
“We also include model questions for investigating complaints which provides a good starting point to get both sides of the story and to effectively manage the investigation process.”
Clarke Willmott has also launched training guides around respect in the workplace for both employees and managers and supervisors. This model training can be rolled out to staff internally or the firm’s trained presenters can do this in person or online.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has updated its guidance to assist with the new legislation and sets out an eight-step guide to preventing sexual harassment at work.
- Step 1: develop an effective anti-harassment policy
- Step 2: engage your staff
- Step 3: assess and take steps to reduce risk in your workplace
- Step 4: reporting
- Step 5: training
- Step 6: what to do when a harassment complaint is made
- Step 7: dealing with harassment by third parties
- Step 8: monitor and evaluate your actions
Paula continued:
“The new law does have some teeth as it will give Employment Tribunals the power to increase compensation by up to 25% where an employer is found to have breached this new duty in addition to the existing rights of employees to be protected under the Equality Act 2010. However, this new law does not give employees a freestanding right to claim for third party harassment in the Employment Tribunal, only the EHRC can do this.
“Nevertheless, where an employee succeeds on a claim for sexual harassment the question will then follow of whether the new obligation has been satisfied.”
Clarke Willmott is a national law firm with offices in Cardiff, Birmingham, Bristol, London, Manchester, Southampton and Taunton and is this year celebrating its 135th anniversary.
