September 2024 – The EHRC has published it long awaited guidance on what employers need to do to meet their duty to prevent sexual harassment at work.

The biggest and most important change to previous guidance is the need to carry out robust risk assessments.

The EHRC now say employers are unlikely to comply with the Preventative Duty unless they have carried out robust risk assessments.

Concrew Trainings suite of courses on preventing sexual harassment at work help employers understand and meet the demands of the Worker Protection Act.  

Day to Day risk areas that may require risk assessment might include:-

• Power imbalances
• Lone working
• Presence of alcohol
• Seasonal events like Christmas Parties
• Customer-facing duties
• Events that raise tensions locally or nationally
• Lack of diversity in the workforce
• Workers being placed on secondment
• Other well-known risk hotspots include inappropriate text and WhatsApp messages and personal relationships at work.

Additionally employers need to consider the following:

1. Do the examples of misconduct and gross misconduct in your disciplinary policy match or cross reference to their anti-harassment policy
2. Do organisational policies on use of IT, communications systems and social media include appropriate warnings against online harassment and encourage workers to report it, even where such harassment takes place on personal devices
3. Is it clear from performance objectives, that managers will be expected to deal with complaints of harassment appropriately
4. Are reasonable steps in place to prevent sexual harassment of workers by third parties, such as clients and customers?