Comment: Employers must act to adhere to new sexual harassment law

Senior leaders need to set expectations around behaviours and respect in the workplace, says Travlaw’s Ami Naru

I recently read that as a business owner, from October I will have to ensure my staff are not sexually harassed. Is this right, and if so, what does this actually mean?

You are correct, the law is changing in this area. Sexual harassment is unwanted conduct of a sexual nature. It has the purpose or effect of violating someone’s dignity or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive working environment for the individual concerned. It really has no place in the modern workplace, or indeed society, but unfortunately it does still occur – even in the travel industry.

The Worker Protection (Amendment of Equality Act 2010) Act 2023 will come into force on October 26, 2024. This will introduce a positive duty for employers to take “reasonable steps” to prevent sexual harassment of employees. This means employers of all sizes will have to address their minds as to what they can do to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace; whereas before, this positive duty to prevent sexual harassment did not exist. What are “reasonable steps” will depend on the circumstances and, in my view, larger employers with deeper resources may be expected to do more.

Take action now

So, what should employers be doing? I would urge all employers to take some sort of action now to comply with the duty to take “reasonable steps” to prevent sexual harassment. At the very least I would recommend that you have in place policies and procedures on the prevention and reporting of sexual harassment. However, drafting a policy only goes so far in an employee’s understanding (that’s if they even read it!), so to supplement this I would suggest implementing training, so staff have additional guidance on what is and is not acceptable. In fact, I would go as far as saying this training should be mandatory for all within the organisation.

Sexual harassment doesn’t just take place in the office, it could happen on a work trip, such as on an overseas conference or fam trip, via email or text messages or on social media, so employers would also be urged to assess such foreseeable risks and put in place appropriate measures.

It is worth pointing out that the employer would be liable if they were informed of any sexual harassment and did not take appropriate steps or had not taken measures to prevent it in the first place, so doing nothing is not advised. An employment tribunal would have the power to uplift sexual harassment compensation by up to 25% where an employer is found to have breached this new duty to prevent sexual harassment. This uplift could potentially be substantial given that compensation for sexual harassment is potentially unlimited. Aside from legal compliance, employers should also be aware of reputational damage, with the risk of impact on their suppliers, recruitment and staff retention.

Employers who treat this new duty simply as a box-ticking exercise are likely to trip up. Senior leaders need to set expectations around behaviours and respect in the workplace, with all staff knowing that sexual harassment will not be tolerated and that, when it does happen, they are encouraged and supported to make a complaint.