A quick guide to sexual harassment risk assessments

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.

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:

Find out how the new laws may impact your business – get the full facts on the Employment Rights Bill.

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:

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