Building a Respectful Workplace: Tackling Sexual Harassment at Manufacturing Businesses

The Equality Act 2010 defines sexual harassment as unwanted conduct of a sexual nature which has the purpose or effect of violating someone's dignity or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for them.

The effect of the conduct is assessed from the recipient's subjective viewpoint before objectively assessing whether it was reasonable for the conduct to have such an effect.  

Employers who fail to meet the new duty to prevent sexual harassment can face serious financial and reputational risks. If an employee wins a sexual harassment claim in the Employment Tribunal and the employer is found to have failed to take reasonable steps to prevent it, any award may be uplifted by 25%. With no cap on awards for sexual harassment, this uplift can be particularly damaging.

Additionally, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) can investigate businesses and enforce compliance, adding further pressure on employers.

What steps are reasonable will depend on workplace risk factors. The EHRC has identified power imbalances, especially when employees feel intimidated by senior workers, as a key factor in increased sexual harassment risks.

Other risks include:

• having a male dominated workforce;
• the majority of senior management roles being occupied by men;
• crude banter at sites;
• existence of zero-hour contracts or other temporary forms of work;
• regular worker interaction with third party contractors; and
• female workers not feeling confident in raising concerns about sexual harassment.

These risk factors are extremely pertinent to the manufacturing industry, which often has male-dominated and hierarchical structures which can contribute to power imbalances and inappropriate behaviour, making it at high risk of such claims.

Notably, employers may also be held responsible for sexual harassment committed by employees "in the course of employment," which can extend to incidents outside regular work hours, such as after-work social events or parties.

Whilst an employee cannot bring a standalone claim for third-party harassment in the Employment Tribunal, employers are still obligated to prevent sexual harassment by third parties, including contractors, clients, customers and visitors.

The EHRC has published an 8-step guide for employers. This says that employers should (in summary):

1. Develop an effective anti-sexual harassment policy to provide workers with advice surrounding sexual harassment and the employer's internal processes for dealing with it;
2. Engage with staff to ensure that workers are aware of how they can report sexual harassment and the consequences of breaching the policy;
3. Assess and take steps to reduce risk in the workplace to consider the factors that might increase sexual harassment and take steps to minimise them;
4. Set up reporting procedures to ensure that they keep records of concerns. For example, encourage anonymous reporting channels, have regular surveys and consider female mentorship programmes ;
5. Roll out training to workers and managers on what sexual harassment in the workplace looks like, what to do if they experience it or witness it, and how to handle complaints of sexual harassment;
6. Deal with complaints by promptly investigating any incident, offering support to the affected employee, and taking disciplinary action against the alleged perpetrator, if necessary. It is important to ensure the complainant is not victimised as a result of making a complaint;
7.  Address harassment by third parties, including putting reporting mechanisms in place and assess high-risk factors; and
8. Monitor and evaluate actions regularly to evaluate the effectiveness of the steps to prevent sexual harassment and implement any changes arising from any evaluation.

Complying with the new duty is an ongoing commitment for employers, not just a one-off task.

Therefore, even if a business has already taken steps to ensure compliance by drafting a policy or holding training sessions, it is important to regularly assess and improve any internal procedures.