Preventing sexual harassment

Extension of employers' legal obligation

Currently, employers must take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment of their staff in the course of their employment, including by third parties (see next section for a description of what this means).

This applies to all employees, workers, partners or directors, apprentices, and some self-employed individuals who either can't send someone else to do the work instead or have a limited right to do so.

Where the duty is breached, Employment Tribunals can uplift the discrimination compensation by up to 25%. The Equality and Human Rights Commission also has the power to investigate and take enforcement action.

This is set to be extended so that employers must take (or should take) all reasonable steps employer to prevent sexual harassment (which is currently the case for forms of harassment based on a worker's protected characteristics).

This is likely to include preventing sexual harassment by third parties and will align the requirements for both forms of harassment (see the next section).

The government will amend the Equality Act, giving it a power to make regulations that specify what 'taking all reasonable steps' will mean. This is expected sometime in 2027 or 2028.

In the meantime, the government has given the following examples of reasonable preventative steps that employers should take:

• Carrying out assessments of a specified description - likely to be risk assessments
• Publishing plans or policies of a specified description - likely to be action plans and sexual harassment policies (having an action plan will be compulsory for employers with at least 250 employees sometime in 2027)
• Steps relating to the reporting of sexual harassment
• Steps relating to the handling of complaints.