Practical steps

The Equality and Human Rights Commission suggest the following practical steps:

Carry out an anonymous staff survey

This can be useful to get as accurate a picture of harassment in the workplace as possible and help identify potential risk areas, both internally and from third parties.

It'll also help you to understand staff perceptions of workplace culture and help monitor the prevalence of harassment in the business.

Perform a risk assessment

This should assess workplace culture, identify the risk of workers experiencing harassment in the business and implement actions to prevent or minimise it. A risk assessment of the leadership in your business is also recommended.

Implement a harassment policy

You may want separate policies for sexual harassment and harassment that's based on a worker's protected characteristics.

However you choose to do it, the policy should be clear, effective and followed. It should contain certain information, such as the following:

• A statement about your preventative duty and expected behaviour of staff.
• A reporting system. This must be an effective way to report harassment (including harassment by third parties), which encourages staff to report it. If you can, offer multiple ways to report incidences of harassment (with 2 alternative methods being the minimum), e.g. anonymous reporting, reporting via an external party, digital reporting options, or reporting to an appropriate person/manager.
• An indication of timescales.
• Steps that you'll take to prevent repeat incidents by third parties.
• How you'll deal with incidents by staff, including how perpetrators of harassment could be held accountable.
• What support will be available to those who make harassment complaints.

Complaints by staff should usually be handled in accordance with the policy, unless you have a valid reason for not doing so (such as to make reasonable adjustments).

Communicate the harassment policy

You should regularly bring it to the attention of staff (ideally at least twice a year) – this could be by internal newsletters, physical or digital noticeboards (intranet). It's also a good idea to send out reminders before key events with higher risks of harassment, such as an office party.

Also, regularly remind staff of your business's core values and details of what is, and is not, regarded as acceptable behaviour at work. This should be included in induction sessions and adherence to it should be part of any annual performance assessment.

Staff should be aware of how to raise a complaint and the consequences of breaching the policy.

It's recommended that you communicate it to any third parties your staff may be in contact with.

Continually evaluate the harassment policy

You should assess, on an ongoing basis, how effective the policy is.

You could do this by, for example, keeping a centralised record of complaints (including any informal ones) to a level of detail that allows trends to be analysed.

This could include:

• Date of events
• Areas of business
• Roles of complainant and harasser
• Protected characteristic
• Legal category (such as harassment, sexual harassment)
• Outcome and brief reason for it.

However, you must ensure that the record complies with data protection law.

Ensure involvement of senior and middle management

The visible involvement of management is essential to creating and maintaining a positive workplace culture.

Senior leaders should set clear expectations about what behaviours are not tolerated, and act as role models for respectful behaviour. They should reinforce these expectations through their own actions and promote a positive and inclusive workplace culture. By integrating this into your management structures and governance, it will allow a positive culture to continue after they leave.

Middle managers are also important as they are most likely to implement the changes and influence the workplace environment, and because staff usually have a closer working relationship with them.

Provide regular training

Without some visible training there's little chance of complying with the protective duty.

The training should be timely, regularly repeated and mandatory. It should also be tailored to your business's type/sector, and to the underlying causes of harassment in your business (if any). It must ensure staff know:

• what each type of harassment is (including third-party harassment);
• what victimisation involves;
• what to do if they experience it; and
• how managers will handle complaints of harassment.

Both senior and middle managers should receive tailored training where changes in workforce behaviour are required. They should also receive behaviour-based training to help them act as role models for a business.

Regularly monitor

You should proactively be aware of what is happening in the workplace.

There may be warning signs that harassment is taking place, beyond informal and formal complaints, such as:

• Regular sickness absences
• Changes in behaviour
• Comments in exit interviews
• Dips in performance
• Particular staff avoiding particular colleagues.

Things you should avoid doing

Don't rely on the number of harassment reports to determine if there's a problem. Low harassment reporting rates can indicate that workers don't feel able to report incidents, rather than that harassment isn't occurring.

Don't treat measures to prevent harassment or change workplace culture as a 'box-ticking' exercise. This can happen when employers are primarily motivated by reputation management. Policies and other measures will not, on their own, prevent harassment or adequately protect workers.