On the 26 October 2024, The Worker Protection (Amendment of Equality Act 2010) Act 2023 comes into force, amending the Equality Act 2010 in two respects.
- Imposes a ‘mandatory duty’ upon you to take ‘reasonable steps’ to prevent sexual harassment of your employees in the course of their employment. This applies to sexual harassment as defined in the Equality Act 2010, which is unwanted conduct of a sexual nature which has the purpose or effect of creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment.
- Providing employment tribunals the authority to uplift sexual harassment compensation by up to 25% where it is found you have breached this new duty. Please note, this uplift could be substantial, particularly as compensation awarded in serious cases of sexual harassment can exceed £50,000. In addition to this, complaints of sexual harassment can also lead to costly settlements, high-profile departures of senior management, loss of productivity and an adverse effect on recruitment and employee retention.
What can you do?
Over time the courts have made it evidently clear that such reasonable steps will usually include:
- Having well-drafted equal opportunities and anti-harassment and bullying policies in place
- Ensuring all employees are aware and understand such policies and their implications
- Taking steps to deal efficiently and effectively with complaints, including taking appropriate disciplinary action where necessary, and
- Providing equality and harassment training to employees and supplementary training for those individuals with managerial/supervision responsibilities.
Written by Lucy Williams FCILEx
Head of Employment Law and HR at Key Group Services Limited