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From the 26th of October 2024, the Worker Protection (Amendment of Equality Act 2010) Act 2023 will come into force, placing a duty on employers to prevent sexual harassment of their employees in the workplace.
The Worker Protection (Amendment of Equality Act 2010) Act 2023 s1 (1) states that “An employer (A) must take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment of employees of A in the course of their employment”.
EHRC Guidance
The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has recently updated their technical guidance to support the amendment of the Act. The guidance explains the action that employers should take, in order to prevent harassment in the workplace, and outlines the components of a good anti-harassment policy.
The EHRC explains that “Employers should not wait until an incident of sexual harassment has taken place before they take any action. The duty requires that employers should anticipate scenarios… and take action to prevent such harassment taking place”.
Under the change in legislation, the EHRC now has the power to take enforcement action against workplaces that are evidently failing to comply with the preventative duty, regardless of if an incident of sexual harassment has taken place.
How does the new law differ from the existing one?
Previously, the laws on sexual harassment were outlined in the Equality Act 2010 s26 and outlined the definition of harassment to be “unwanted conduct of a sexual nature”, with the “purpose or effect of violating an individual’s dignity, or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for an individual.”
The Government Equalities Office’s Sexual Harassment Survey, published in 2020, revealed that “29% of those in employment experienced some form of sexual harassment in their workplace or work-related environment in the last 12 months”.
The report went on to state that “Levels of formal reporting of sexual harassment in the workplace were very low: only 15% reported their experience formally (internally or
externally), making it likely that employers will underestimate the amount of harassment taking place”.
The new legislation aims for employers to strive for the suppression of work-place related sexual harassment.
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