UK: Duty to Prevent Sexual Harassment – EHRC Checklist, Action Plan and Monitoring Logs

Authors: Corinna Harris, Ruth Bonino, and Sophie Jackson 

The Equality and Human Rights Commission has published new documents to help employers comply with the new duty to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment.

To help employers comply with the new duty to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has published a checklist to help employers through every stage of a shift, an action plan to help outline the action to take to use the checklist, and monitoring logs to help monitor how the checklist and action plan are being used.

• The checklist – originally designed for the hospitality sector, this checklist provides guidance to assist employers through every stage of a shift, from rota design to the end of the shift.  Employers are encouraged to consider who will use the checklist (such as managers or supervisors) and how staff can be supported to best use it (such as through training and awareness campaigns).
• The action plan – the EHRC suggest that employers should record any actions they need to take to make the check list part of their working practices.  For example, useful things to include in the action plan would be updating policies and making staff aware of them, training staff so they are aware of what to do if sexual harassment happens, including who to speak to ensure the checklist is used across the organisation, and supporting staff to use the checklist at the correct times.
• Monitoring logs – the guidance suggests that a log be kept after each shift to help monitor how the checklist is being used and ay changes that may be needed to the employer’s approach.

You can find them here. Acas has also updated its guidance to reflect the new preventative duty.

Key Action Points for Human Resources and In-House Counsel

The new duty to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment came into force on 26 October 2024.  Key to complying with that duty is to undertake a risk assessment and put together an action plan to manage that risk.

This supplementary guidance should be particularly helpful for managing risk where there is shift work involved but will also be helpful in other situations where there is a reasonable to high risk of sexual harassment occurring such as client events and lone working.  This guidance supplements the EHRC Sexual harassment and harassment at work: technical guidance and the Employer 8-step guide: Preventing sexual harassment at work.

We have a set of comprehensive templates and guidance notes to further assists employers with their risk assessments and action plan.