This course is designed to help managers act proactively to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace. You will learn about your legal responsibilities, how to assess risks, and the 'reasonable steps' you can take to prevent sexual harassment.
To learn more about our courses, or to request a tailored quote for your organisation, please contact us today and a member of our team will be happy to help.
Under the Equality Act 2010, employers are legally liable for harassment committed by employees unless they can show they took all reasonable steps to prevent it. The Worker Protection (Amendment of Equality Act 2010) Act 2023 has gone further, placing a positive duty on employers to take proactive measures to prevent sexual harassment. This shifts the entire framework from responding when complaints arise to preventing the behaviour in the first place, which has significant implications for how you approach policies, training, and culture.
Sexual harassment is unwanted conduct of a sexual nature that violates someone's dignity or creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating, or offensive environment. It includes verbal, physical, and visual conduct, requests for sexual favours, jokes and comments, displaying explicit material, unwelcome touching, and gestures. The key test is whether the conduct is unwanted, not whether it was intended to cause offence. Behaviour someone considers harmless banter may still meet the legal definition if the recipient finds it unwelcome.
Your responsibility doesn't stop at your own employees. If you know that customers, suppliers, or other third parties are harassing your staff and you fail to act, you can be held liable. This is particularly relevant in customer-facing businesses where employees may experience inappropriate behaviour from people outside your direct control. Putting protective measures in place, supporting affected employees, and challenging unacceptable behaviour from third parties is part of meeting your duties.
Managers sit at the centre of your prevention strategy, and how they respond shapes everything that follows. Comprehensive training should cover recognising harassment, responding to complaints appropriately, conducting preliminary investigations, and supporting affected employees. They also need to understand their legal duties and the consequences of failing to act. Without this foundation, even the best-written policy struggles to translate into a workplace where employees feel safe to raise concerns and confident that those concerns will be handled properly.
Training employees to intervene safely when they witness inappropriate behaviour is one of the most effective cultural interventions available. This might mean directly challenging the behaviour, supporting the target, or reporting the incident to management. Creating an environment where everyone takes responsibility for maintaining respect, rather than treating harassment as something only HR or senior leaders address, makes prevention a shared commitment. It also sends a clear signal to potential perpetrators that their behaviour will be noticed and challenged.
Learn more about preventing sexual harassment in the workplace by reading our blog article Preventing Sexual Harassment In the Workplace.
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