What's changed? EHRC guidance on preventing sexual harassment at work

The Equality and Human Rights Commission has published its final guidance on preventing sexual harassment at work ahead of the new duty on employers which comes into force on Saturday 26 October 2024. 

The ECHR recently conducted a consultation on the proposed amendments to its technical guidance and has made some changes to the initial draft, presumably to reflect feedback it received. It has also published a short 8-step guide to help employers prepare and evaluate their progress.

What's changed?

There are no fundamental changes, but there is more detail and some clarification around third party harassment. 

The stand out point is that the guidance now states that employers are unlikely to comply with their preventative duty unless they carry out a risk assessment. It also now includes two new detailed examples to help employers understand how to assess risk in their workplaces. One is of a male dominated environment which has a culture of crude banter from staff and third parties. The other involves a senior member of staff pestering a junior to go out with them which the business initially ignored.

Reasonable steps

The section on what steps it is reasonable for an employer to take has been expanded and now says that it may be reasonable to consider: 

• The sector the employer operates in
• The nature of staff contact with third parties
• The likely impact of taking a particular step and whether an alternative step could be more effective
• The time, cost and potential disruption of taking a particular step, weighed against the benefit it would achieve
• Whether concerns have already been raised with the employer, in which case, it's likely to be reasonable for the employer to take additional steps to investigate and ‘ensure it doesn’t happen again'
• Whether the employer has complied with any additional standards imposed by its regulator
• Whether any steps that have been taken have been effective (or not); if other incidents have happened, that suggests that additional or alternative action is necessary

The guidance also now says that it may be reasonable for an employer to take a step even if it would not have prevented a particular act of sexual harassment. 

How to prepare

The new duty is both anticipatory and ongoing. Most employers are going to have a take a different approach to comply with it. 

To help prepare you for this important change, we’ve created a toolkit with practical guidance to help you prioritise your next steps. Find out:

• What sexual harassment is
• What is meant by ‘reasonable steps’ under the new framework
• What to consider when putting together a risk assessment
• The areas you should look at when reflecting on your current business culture 
• Why the changes go above and beyond updating your harassment policies.

As part of our guide, we're giving you a free sexual harassment policy that you can use within your organisation. 

Our training

Training is a key aspect of your preventative duty. It will raise awareness and help you to tackle the systems and cultures that allow sexual harassment to happen.

As a minimum, we recommend awareness training for all employees. They need to understand what constitutes sexual harassment, how to report it, how you will support them and how to access relevant policies. This can also cover bystander intervention.

Don’t assume that managers will know how to deal with claims of sexual harassment. You need to give them the tools they need so that they can confidently deal with incidents and role model best practice. 

You can find out about our back to basics training modules which include specific training on sexual harassment for employees and managers here. We can also offer bespoke face to face  or remote training tailored to your organisation. Please speak to Jenny Arrowsmith or Gordon Rodham for more information.

Our newsletters

We publish monthly education and employment newsletters. If you'd like to be added to the mailing list, please let me know.