Employers in the travel industry will be kept on their toes with an abundance of employment law changes from the Labour Government over the coming years, most recently announced in the Employment Rights Bill 2024 (Bill). The Labour Party has proposed wide-ranging and fundamental reform of employment law and set out below is what we definitely know is happening in relation to sexual harassment at work.

Sexual harassment doesn’t just take place in the office. It could be on a work trip such as on overseas conference, an off-site team meeting, familiarisation trip, or even via email or text messages or on social media. Along with their HR teams and C-suite, travel managers need to be aware of the new legislation and how to prepare for it.

On October 26 2024 The Worker Protection (Amendment of Equality Act 2010) Act 2023 will come into force introducing a new mandatory duty on employers of all sizes to take ‘reasonable steps’ to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace.

As expected, the Employment Rights Bill, which was announced on October 11, has further expanded this duty by requiring employers to take ‘all’ reasonable steps to prevent employees from being sexually harassed at work. In doing so the Government have reverted back to the original formulation of the proactive duty, before it was watered down during parliamentary debates.

This is a significant step up for employers to meet the duty, especially since this new duty will be directly enforceable by individuals. The Bill will also reintroduce employer liability for third party harassment. In due course regulations will outline what constitutes ‘reasonable steps’ for both the proactive duty and the third part harassment.

The steps that may be specified include carrying out assessments of a specified description, publishing plans or policies of a specified description, steps relating to the reporting of sexual harassment, and steps relating to the handling of complaints. This means that employers of all sizes, large and small, will have to address their minds as to what they can do to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace. What is ‘all reasonable steps’ will depend on the circumstances and, in my view, larger employers with deeper resources may be expected to do more.

In order to take reasonable steps it is worth remembering that sexual harassment in basic terms is unwanted conduct of a sexual nature. It has the purpose or effect of; violating someone’s dignity or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading humiliating or offensive working environment for the individual concerned. It really has no place in the modern workplace or indeed society, but unfortunately it does still occur, even in the travel industry!

So, what should employers be doing? I would urge all employers to take some sort of action now to comply with the duty to take ‘reasonable steps’ to prevent sexual harassment. What such measures are will vary employer to employer, but at the very least I would recommend that you have in place policies and procedures on the prevention and reporting of sexual harassment.

However, drafting a policy only goes so far in an employee’s understanding (that’s if they even read it!), so to supplement this I would suggest implementing training, so staff have additional guidance on what is and is not acceptable. In fact, I would go as far as saying this training should be mandatory for all within the organisation.

For business trips, conferences, meetings and events employers should assess such foreseeable risks and put into place appropriate measures. Questions to ask may include ‘ Is alcohol involved?’, ‘Will staff be alone with another member of staff?’, ‘Are late nights involved?’ etc.

It is worth pointing out that employers would be liable if they were informed of any sexual harassment and did not take appropriate steps or had not taken measures to prevent it in the first place. So doing nothing is not really advised, because an Employment Tribunal will have the power to uplift sexual harassment compensation by up to 25% where an employer is found to have breached this new duty to prevent sexual harassment. This uplift could potentially be substantial given that compensation for sexual harassment is potentially unlimited.

Aside from legal compliance, employers should also be aware of reputational damage. The travel industry, for example, is close knit and word gets around. This could have a knock-on impact with suppliers and recruitment and retention of staff.

Employers who simply undertake to meet this new duty as a tick box exercise are likely to trip up. Senior leadership needs to adopt a cultural change in respect of sexual harassment, setting expectations around behaviours and demonstrating the values of respect in the workplace and with all staff knowing that sexual harassment will not be tolerated in the workplace and that when it does happen they are encouraged and supported to make a complaint.

travlaw.co.uk