A quick guide to sexual harassment risk assessments
Sexual harassment risk assessments are key to fulfilling an employer’s responsibility to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace. Learn about what these are and their key components.
Published: 2 April 2025 | by Brightmine
Sexual harassment at work is a persistent and troubling problem in the UK, and it can affect employees’ well-being, reduce their productivity and damage company culture. In answer to this issue, new legislation is placing greater responsibility on employers to prevent sexual harassment in their organisation before it can occur.
To reduce compliance risk and avoid the potential of serious penalties, businesses must implement proactive measures, including conducting a risk assessment for sexual harassment to identify and mitigate areas of concern. A thorough risk assessment can help employers pinpoint vulnerabilities, address power imbalances, and foster a positive culture of accountability in their organisation. Read on to find out more.
In this resource:
- What constitutes sexual harassment in the workplace?
- The employer’s duty to prevent sexual harassment
- What is a sexual harassment risk assessment?
- What makes a sexual harassment risk assessment unique?
- What are the key components of a sexual harassment risk assessment?
- Sexual harassment risk assessment example
What constitutes sexual harassment in the workplace?
Unfortunately, sexual harassment in the workplace is common in the UK. According to the Government Equalities Office, almost 72% of the UK population has experienced sexual harassment at work in their lifetime.
Sexual harassment in the workplace includes unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favours, and other verbal, non-verbal, or physical conduct of a sexual nature that creates a hostile, intimidating, degrading or humiliating work situation. Sometimes these actions can be quid pro quo, where job benefits depend on submission to such behaviour, or they may create a hostile work environment, where persistent and inappropriate behaviour makes it difficult to work.
Examples include inappropriate touching, suggestive comments, sexual jokes, sharing explicit content, repeated unwanted romantic advances or sexual assault. Some forms of sexual harassment automatically break criminal law in England and Wales and are therefore crimes.
Harassment can come from supervisors, coworkers, clients or others in the workplace. It is important to note that conduct can amount to sexual harassment even if that is not how it was intended.
The employer’s duty to prevent sexual harassment
Recent amendments to the Equality Act 2010 place new responsibilities on businesses to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace. As of 26 October 2024, employers in England, Wales and Scotland now have a positive duty to “take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment” of their employees in the course of their employment (‘the preventative duty’).
The penalties for employers who fail in these responsibilities can be severe. Where an employment tribunal finds an employer liable for sexual harassment, it must consider whether the employer has complied with the preventative duty. If the employer has breached this duty, the tribunal can order an uplift in compensation of up to 25%.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission’s technical guidance
The Equality and Human Rights Commission has produced a technical guide for employers on sexual harassment and harassment at work. The guidance is not legally binding, but tribunals may take it into account where relevant.
How can employers comply?
The guidance makes it clear that the preventive duty requires:
- That employers should anticipate scenarios where their staff may be subject to sexual harassment in the course of their employment.
- Take action to prevent such harassment taking place – including communicating with staff, clients and customers.
- Prevent sexual harassment of their staff by third parties.
- Developing a robust reporting process.
- Creating a monitoring log to ensure 100% due diligence
- And, if sexual harassment has occurred, the employer should take action to stop sexual harassment from happening again.
The guidance leaves no doubt that an employer is unlikely to be able to comply with the preventative duty if it does not carry out a risk assessment, which highlights the critical role that risk assessments play.
The Employment Rights Bill
In addition to changes to the Equality Act, and as the first part of their ‘Plan to Make Work Pay’ initiative, the government introduced the Employment Rights Bill in October 2024. The legislation is designed to amend worker protections and address exploitative employment practices in the UK.
Provisions that refer to sexual harassment in the workplace include:
Liability for third-party harassment
The Bill makes employers liable if their employees are harassed by third parties in the course of employment. Employers will be liable unless they can demonstrate that they took reasonable steps to prevent the harassment.
Stronger anticipatory duty to prevent sexual harassment
The Bill requires employers to take “all reasonable steps” to prevent sexual harassment, raising the bar from the current standard of “reasonable steps.”
Whistleblowing about sexual harassment
The Bill adds disclosures about sexual harassment to the list of topics that can qualify as protected whistleblowing.
Find out how the new laws may impact your business – get the full facts on the Employment Rights Bill.
Extensive HR resources and expertise at your fingertips
In an ever-changing regulatory environment, we have everything you need to stay in control and compliant. The HR & Compliance Centre is now available with our user-friendly generative AI chat capability, AI Assist.
What is a sexual harassment risk assessment?
Sexual harassment can happen in any business. Employers must not assume that it will not happen in their company, and they should take proactive steps to prevent harassment before it occurs.
The first—and most crucial—step to achieve this goal is to assess the possible risks within your organisation. Conducting a comprehensive risk assessment is essential. This is a point-by-point analysis of your business, covering all potential areas of concern. This includes factors specific to:
- Your organisation’s sector
- The type of work your business does
- The ways your employees work
- The different roles within your organisation
Higher risk factors may include situations such as:
- Meeting clients or service users alone
- A work environment where people are drinking alcohol – such as pubs, restaurant and hotels
- Work related events
- Power imbalances between staff – which may create a quid pro quo situation
- Travelling for work, including overnight stays
Employers should also be aware that some staff might be at higher risk. For example:
- Younger staff, including apprentices and interns
- People with learning difficulties
What makes a sexual harassment risk assessment unique?
A sexual harassment risk assessment differs from other business risk assessments because it focuses on identifying and mitigating risks related to workplace behaviour, culture, and power dynamics rather than physical safety, financial losses, or operational hazards.
Unlike general risk assessments, which often address compliance, cybersecurity or health and safety, a sexual harassment risk assessment examines factors such as workplace relationships, reporting mechanisms, leadership attitudes, and organisational culture. A sexual harassment risk assessment takes a proactive approach, including employee feedback, policy reviews and training, to foster a safe and respectful work environment.
What are the key components of a sexual harassment risk assessment?
A sexual harassment risk assessment can highlight areas of concern within your business and provide a blueprint for measures that may be taken to address or eliminate the problems. The following are key components of an assessment:
- The risk factors – such as lone working, power imbalances or third-party contact
- Who may be at risk – and why they are vulnerable
- How the risk was assessed – methodology
- Steps already taken to address any risk – example: an anti-bullying policy
- What further action is necessary – such as CCTV, panic buttons, check-ins with lone workers
- Who is responsible for implementing the recommended actions
- When the actions were completed
- Further necessary tasks
Like any audit, a sexual harassment risk assessment can provide transparency and understanding that goes beyond the superficial and searches deep into company culture and the potential for debilitating risk. When businesses can’t fix what they can’t see, a risk assessment is the only way to illuminate the best path forward.
Sexual harassment risk assessment example
Download the Sexual harassment risk assessment form
Employers should always be aware of the risk factors in their organisation. Subscribe to the Brightmine HR & Compliance Centre and download our sexual harassment risk assessment form today. Please note this form is a universal template and must be customised to fit the unique needs of your business. Request a quote below.
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About the author
Brightmine
With more than 10,000 customers, Brightmine is a leading global provider of people data, analytics and insight – empowering HR leaders to deliver brighter business outcomes.
For more than two decades, Brightmine, formerly XpertHR, has continued to help HR leaders confidently navigate the evolving world of work through our unique combination of critical workforce data, AI-enabled technology, and trusted HR expertise.
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