Leaders: It's Your Duty to Protect Staff from Harassment

As an employment lawyer my professional motivation is to improve how we treat each other in the workplace, to reach a place where respecting and appreciating diversity in all forms and each other's boundaries becomes a societal norm. Because sadly, it is currently far from this. 

In the course of my career I have seen many harrowing cases of sexually abusive behaviour towards employees, usually involving senior people abusing their power over more junior colleagues. This is made worse by a lack of knowledge about an employer’s responsibilities to staff. 

Whether it is communicated clearly to employees or not, CEOs and agency leaders do have a legal obligation to protect staff, to provide them with a suitable and safe working environment, to monitor those conditions and take reasonable steps to protect them from unreasonable behavior, which includes sexual harassment. 

There have been huge improvements within the workplace in recent years, but it is a space that still needs serious attention and education because many leaders just don’t understand, or won’t even try to understand, the nuances of sexual harassment and how tolerating misconduct can expose the business to risk. 

According to the Equality Act 2010, sexual harassment is defined as unwanted conduct of sexual nature that violate’s someone's dignity and causes offence. 

However, people have different boundaries, which can often cause confusion with everyone from victims to perpetrators. While sexual harassment is unwanted conduct, it doesn’t necessarily have to be expressed as unwanted. Meaning someone can violate another's dignity and they may not realise it immediately. And this unwanted conduct can be as broad as comments, ‘jokes’ to suggestive looks, advances and unwelcome touching and hugging. 

A key area of danger within a business is the abuse of power, where a manager or authority figure plays on the inequality of the relationship, and preys on a junior member of staff, taking the opportunity to abuse that power. 

This tends to happen more in a workplace where the hierarchy is not very defined. Fostering a relatively flat structure, or rather the illusion of it, can create an environment where people may feel more comfortable over-stepping boundaries, and where individuals may feel too scared to report it. 

Failing to protect staff from sexual harassment not only causes emotional trauma, but can also have serious legal and financial consequences too. Employers may be in breach of the Equality Act, and this can lead to the victim claiming unfair dismissal, sex discrimination and even bringing claims for personal injury where there is an impact on their health. There are other layers to companies becoming entangled in such cases, there is usually a high cost involved, the cost of defending as well as compensation payments. The awards for financial loss are potentially unlimited and in extreme cases can include compensation for whole career loss. And of course this can all have a very negative impact publicly with the reputation of a business and its management. 

The best way CEOs and leaders can tackle sexual harassment and work towards avoiding this emotional, financial and reputational damage, and ensure they are legally upholding their duty of care, is to make sure everyone in their business understands the definition, the nuances and legalities of sexual harassment. And training such as timeTo offers is a great way to do this.