Sexual Harassment in the Workplace
The Government has responded to the consultation on sexual harassment in the workplace that ran from 11 July to 2 October 2019.
The consultation focuses on placing a duty on employers to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace. Although sexual harassment is unlawful in any event, the consultation looks at promoting a proactive approach to prevention.
The main considerations were:
- How to ensure employers take active steps to prevent sexual harassment;
- How to protect employees from harassment from third parties such as customers/clients;
- Whether interns and volunteers were adequately protected by current legislation;
- Whether time limits for tribunal claims in relation to sexual harassment should be extended.
The Government considered these points and concluded that they intend to introduce a duty that requires employers actively to take steps to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace.
They also intend to introduce specific protections around harassment from third parties. The Government also highlighted the difficulty of defining ‘all reasonable steps’ in relation to the employer’s defence and the risk of making the test inflexible, so have agreed to consider how to best approach this.
The Government believe that interns would already be covered by current legislation. However, volunteers are explicitly not covered by legislation due to their employment status. The Government further examined whether it would be appropriate to extend this protection to volunteers. The outcome was that adding protection to those considered to be pure volunteers would create a disproportionate level of liability which could provide difficulties for organisations.
One main outcome of the consultation is the potential extension of the current three month (less one day) limitation period – the time limit within which Tribunal proceedings have to be commenced, after an act of discrimination. It is recognized that many who are affected by sexual harassment suffer trauma that is unlikely to be conducive to compliance with a short time limit. The time limits in all cases linked to the Equality Act are going to be examined as a result. The primary focus of the Government at the moment is returning the tribunal to its pre-pandemic service, so this will most likely be something that isn’t implemented in the near future.
All in all, the Government’s response seems to be a positive one. We look forward to further protections being put in place for every employee to prevent sexual harassment and other discrimination in the workplace.
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