From 30 October, employers must take “all reasonable steps” to prevent sexual harassment at work, up from just “reasonable steps”. At the same time, you can be held liable when a member of staff is harassed by a customer, client, supplier, contractor or visitor, if you didn’t take all reasonable steps to stop it. For a small business, that second part is the one that matters: how your customers treat your staff is now your problem.
Think about who your staff actually deal with: the regular at the bar, the client on site, the delivery driver at the back door. In a small firm there’s no HR department standing between them and someone behaving badly. There’s you. If a complaint is made and nothing was done, a tribunal can hold that against you, and compensation in a sexual harassment claim can be increased by up to 25% where the prevention duty was breached.
“All reasonable steps” at your size doesn’t mean a binder of policies. It means writing down where the risks are, such as late shifts, lone working and customer-facing roles. It means a short policy that says harassment won’t be tolerated from anyone, customers included. It means telling staff how to report it, then actually acting when they do, even if that means barring a regular or having an awkward conversation with a good client. It applies whether you’re a limited company or a sole trader with one employee.
Keep a record of what you did and when. Staff now have six months to bring most tribunal claims, so notes made at the time are your best defence. 30 October is also the day new union access rights start, so it’s worth sorting both at once.
If a good customer crossed the line with one of your staff tomorrow, do you know what you’d do?
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