Sexual Harassment in the Workplace – Guidance for Employers
Sexual harassment is a problem that affects millions of workers each year in the UK. It is estimated that 40% of women and 18% of men have experienced some form of unwanted sexual behaviour in the workplace, with studies consistently revealing high prevalence levels. It impacts both people and businesses, with significant consequences for employee wellbeing, organisational culture and business performance.
With new and evolving legislation that places greater responsibilities upon employers to create safe and respectful working environments, holding them more accountable for unwanted behaviour and poor cultures, along with tougher penalties for non-compliance, it has never been more important for leaders, managers and employees to understand what constitutes sexual harassment, how the law is changing and practical steps businesses must take to create and nurture safer work environments.
This article explains:
- The legal definition of sexual harassment
- Who sexual harassment affects most
- Employer responsibilities under the Worker Protection Act (WPA) and the upcoming Employment Rights Bill
- Why reporting systems and training is essential for compliance
- How Culture Shift’s sexual harassment training courses help you meet your legal duties
What is sexual harassment
Sexual harassment is any unwanted conduct of a sexual nature.
Beyond the general protection against discrimination and harassment related to a protected characteristic, the Equality Act 2010 provides specific protection to workers against sexual harassment.
The act defines sexual harassment as: unwanted conduct of a sexual nature that has the purpose or effect of violating a person’s dignity or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for that person.
The Equality Act protects a broad range of people against sexual harassment including all employees, workers, apprentices, agency workers and job applicants.
Dealing with sexual harassment is potentially one of the most sensitive issues you may face as an employer. There’s likely to be a range of attitudes in your workplace about what conduct is considered as offensive, degrading, intimidating or hostile. What one worker may consider ‘banter’, another may find upsetting and unacceptable.
Importantly, both employers and employees need to understand that intention is irrelevant – conduct can amount to harassment or sexual harassment, even if that is not how it was intended.
Examples of sexual harassment
Sexual harassment includes but is not limited to:
- Unwanted kissing, touching or other physical contact
- Sexual gestures or suggestive body language
- Sending sexually explicit photos or messages
- Propositions and sexual advances
- Making promises in return for sexual favours
- Sexual comments or jokes or inappropriate compliments
- Intrusive questions about a person’s private life or a person discussing their own sex life
- Repeated compliments on a person’s appearance or comments of attractiveness in front of others
- Unwanted gifts of a sexual or romantic nature
- Suggestive looks, staring or leering
Who is affected most by sexual harassment at work
Sexual harassment can happen to, and involve anyone, regardless of their age, gender or seniority with an organisation, spanning from junior team members to senior employees.
However certain groups face disproportionately high rates. Women, LGBTQ+, ethnic minorityand disabled workers experience sexual harassment more frequently, with TUC research finding that:
- 1 in 2 women experience workplace sexual harassment
- 7 in 10 LGBTQ workers are sexually harassed
Unite, the Union’s 2025 landmark survey of 300,000 female members uncovered that:
- 25% of women surveyed had been subject to sexual assault at work
- 56% of women had been the recipient of sexually offensive jokes
- 55% had experienced unwanted flirting, gestures or sexual remarks
- 43% had had been inappropriately touched
- 28% had been shared or shown pornographic images by a manager, colleague or third-party.
Power imbalances play a major role in sexual harassment. Workplaces where there are strong power dynamics between men and women, or junior and senior employees, allow perpetrators to abuse their position of power.
Alarmingly, 75% of women who experienced workplace sexual harassment did not report it, often due to fear of retaliation or because their harasser is someone more senior than them. Reporting often requires employees to speak directly to their manager to start a complaints procedure which can prevent people from speaking up.
TUC found that nearly 1 in 5 women reported their harasser was either a direct manager or someone else with direct authority over them, creating significant barriers to reporting.
Impact of sexual harassment on businesses
Sexual harassment undermines staff wellbeing, damages organisational culture, and exposes businesses to serious legal and reputational risks.
Costs to employers include:
- Poor performance
- Increased absences
- Reduced productivity
- High levels of staff turnover
- Low morale and disengagement
- Reputational damage
- Legal fees and financial liability
Increased protections against sexual harassment in the workplace
Since October 2024, the laws around preventing sexual harassment at work changed significantly with the introduction of the Worker Protection Act and The Employment Rights Bill expected in late 2025 is likely to build on the protections in the WPA. The WPA placed a legal duty on employers to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment of employees in the course of their employment. We anticipate that the Employment Rights Bill will introduce the requirement for employers to take all reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment in their organisation.
Worker Protection Act
The Worker Protection Act marked a significant change in the legal landscape, requiring employers to take a more proactive approach to eliminating sexual harassment rather than just responding to claims under the previous legislation.
Key changes included:
- Stronger duty to actively prevent harassment
- Proactive, not reactive, expectations on employers
- Employment Tribunals can increase compensation by up to 25% if employers breach this duty
Employment Rights Bill
The Employment Rights Bill is expected to become law in late 2025 and when passed will bring widespread changes to employment law in the UK, placing even more responsibilities on employers to prevent harassment and sexual harassment in the workplace.
Stronger duty to prevent sexual harassment (expected 2026) – The current duty (to take “reasonable steps”) will be strengthened to require all reasonable steps, raising the standard for compliance.
Third party harassment (expected 2026) – employers will be directly liable for third party harassment across all protected characteristics, unless the employer took all reasonable steps to prevent this. This covers all types of harassment not just sexual harassment
Ban on NDAs in harassment claims – prohibit the use of NDAs that prevent workers from speaking out about harassment or discrimination
Whistleblowing protections for sexual harassment disclosure – Sexual harassment is expected to become a new category of ‘protected’ disclosure under whistleblowing law, meaning that whistleblowers reporting sexual harassment will get protection from detriment and dismissal when making a disclosure (expected April 2026).
Why training is essential for compliance
UK employers now have clear legal responsibilities under the Worker Protection Act, the proposed Employment Rights Bill, and other sector-specific requirements such as the FCA non- financial misconduct regulations.
Legal compliance requires a more proactive, evidence-based and documented approach which should include:
- Clear and accessible anti-harassment policies
- Accessible reporting channels such as an anonymous reporting platform like the one provided by Culture Shift
- Risk assessments with outcomes that are actioned
- Clear processes and procedures for responding to incidents
- Ongoing, organisation wide sexual harassment training
Workplace sexual harassment training is no longer optional, it’s essential for compliance, culture, and long-term success. Employers must prove they have taken proactive steps to manage the risk of sexual harassment and one way to demonstrate that is through training programmes. By training your team you’re showing a commitment to improving culture and fulfilling a duty of care to your people.
Training is crucial to your employees being able to understand what sexual harassment in the workplace is. If your employees can identify sexual harassment in pratice, know how to speak up about it if they witness or experience it, and understand expectations on their behaviour at work, then you are taking a reasonable step to preventing sexual harassment in your workplace.
Book sexual harassment training with Culture Shift
At Culture Shift, we offer three levels of preventing sexual harassment training courses – training for strategic leaders, managers and all employees. What is included in each of these courses has been tailored to what each of these groups need to know, to lead your organisation to compliance with the Worker Protection Act.
Our training programmes help organisations meet their legal obligations, protect employee wellbeing, and strengthen workplace culture. Each session is designed to empower leaders, managers, and employees with the tools to prevent harmful behaviours and respond effectively when they occur.
Our preventing sexual harassment training has been reviewed and endorsed by The Fawcett Society. The Fawcett Society is the UK’s leading membership organisation for gender equality and women’s rights at work, and they are experts in workplace sexual harassment.
The Culture Shift Training Academy adopts an evidence-based and human-centred approach to training. We combine lived experience and insight with legal expertise, engaging participants through interactive online and in-person sessions that use polls, case studies, and real-world scenarios to embed learning.
We can tailor each course to suit the needs of your organisation and will always make sure that any examples used are relevant to your workplace and the sector that you operate in. We can include references to your internal policies and processes in the training, and will offer to have a meeting with you beforehand to run through the training and ensure that you are happy with the content that is going to be delivered. Our preventing sexual harassment training has been delivered across many different sectors and has consistently received positive feedback and had excellent impact.
To find out more visit our training page.
