What is the Worker Protection Act?
From October 24th 2024 employers will have a new legal obligation to protect workers from sexual harassment.
The Worker Protection Act (2024) is an amendment to the existing Equality Act 2010. The act marks a significant shift in obligation from the individual toward the employer in challenging inappropriate conduct.
The act, which states that ‘an employer must take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment of employees in the course of their employment’, will mean a number of things for employers, and guidance from the European Human Rights Commission have already indicated actions that employers need to be taking to ensure that they’re compliant with the incoming regulation.
Culture Shift exists to help you transform your culture. Our commitment to change is already helping over 100 organisations stay ahead of regulation and legislation like the Workers’ Protection Act.
We’ve created and brought together a number of resources that will help you in getting ready for the arrival of the Workers’ Protection Act.
Our report shows that nearly half of those responsible for tackling sexual harassment are unaware of the new legislation outlining an employer’s responsibilities to prevent harassment in the workplace.
Pre-order the reportThe report also reveals :
- Nearly half of employers are still failing to train employees on the topic
- Over half of employers don’t have an established process for speaking up
- The barriers that HR teams believe exist that prevent organisational readiness
Sign up now to be the first to read this report.
What are your responsibilities
The Worker Protection Act comes into effect on October 26th. That means organisations are responsible for preparing for the act ahead of then.
There is no exact guidance on what action needs to be taken to demonstrate that you have taken reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment. However, leading authorities such as the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and the Fawcett Society, have offered guidance on the topic.
Reasonable steps you can take to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace include:
- Reviewing policies: ensuring that they are up-to-date and fit for purpose. This may require consultation with current employees or a review alongside other existing policies.
- Improving internal communication: creating more avenues to detect harassment through informal one-to-ones, post-employment surveys, staff networks, and so on.
- Training to embed positive behaviours, and raise awareness on harmful behaviours
- Introducing an online reporting system that allows employees to make complaints either named or anonymously – with the latter helping to remove barriers to reporting such as trust, and fear.
What do reasonable steps look like
In this webinar we discuss what the new legislation means for employers and what action you can take today to help prepare your organisation.
Creating a speak up culture
The Workers’ Protection Act is shifting the focus of employer responsibility from response to prevention when it comes to dealing with sexual harassment.
In order to prevent sexual harassment, you need to assess your culture on an ongoing basis in order to identify potential issues and intervene at the earliest stage possible.
Creating a speak up culture is the most effective way to maintain a consistent understanding of the behaviours and culture within your organisation. This starts with removing barriers to reporting.
Here are some of those barriers:
- Not being able to identify their experience as harassment
- Not trusting the organisation with their report
- Fear of not being believed
- Thinking it’s not serious enough to report
- Fear of repercussions, including dismissal or further incidents
You can read more about understanding the barriers to reporting here.
Our anonymous reporting platform can help to overcome these barriers, reduce workplace harassment by giving you a way of identifying warning signs early and the best opportunity of preventing incidents from happening.
Other ways we help with prevention:
- Ongoing consultation from a dedicated success manager
- A catalogue of behaviour change and awareness campaigns
- Training academy with dedicated courses on tackling harassment and managing cases
- Leading SaaS software built with users in mind.
