Vanessa Kelly outlines the new duty on employers to prevent sexual harassment & how this should impact their dealings with third parties
- Since October 2024, employers have been under a new legal duty to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment of their employees in the course of their employment, including by third parties.
- Among other steps, employers should review and update third-party commercial contracts to include appropriate contractual obligations and indemnities covering incidents of third-party sexual harassment.
On 26 October 2024, the Worker Protection (Amendment of Equality Act 2010) Act 2023 (‘the Act’) came into force, requiring employers to proactively take reasonable steps to prevent the sexual harassment of employees during the course of their employment.
It is a preventative, anticipatory duty, requiring employers to take positive steps. In particular, employers will need to anticipate when employees could encounter sexual harassment and take reasonable steps to prevent such harassment. Additionally, if sexual harassment has taken place, the preventative duty requires employers to take reasonable steps to stop sexual harassment from happening again.
The new duty does
