Employment law

News: Employers' Duty to Protect their Staff from Sexual Harassment by customers

  • Date: 03/04/2008
  • Author/Solicitor: Nick Arron

An amendment to the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 has clarified the circumstances when an employer is under a duty to protect their staff from sexual harassment by customers and suppliers. The changes, which are likely to have particular effect on the licensed trade, were published in March and come into force 6th April.

The new regulations make it unlawful for an employer to fail to take reasonable steps to protect employees from harassment by third parties where such harassment is known to have occurred on at least two other occasions. It does not matter that the harassment is by different people on different occasions. Third parties include customers, suppliers or others that staff encounter in the course of their work.

If an employee, for instance working behind a bar, complains to their employer of two separate incidents of sexual harassment by customers, and the employer takes no action, the third time harassment occurs, the employee will be able to seek damages from the employer. With the third complaint, as the employer has taken no action regarding the previous complaints, the employer is considered by law to be subjecting the employee to sexual harassment.

The changes were bought about by the Equity and Human Rights Commission who a won legal case claiming the Government had failed to implement a European directive which requires workers to be protected from "any unwanted conduct related to their sex which violates their dignity or creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment."

The new law is likely to impact to a greater degree on the licensed trade and leisure industry as many staff have roles dealing directly with customers. This will be particularly acute with the heady mix of alcohol and places a further burden on employers to ensure they control their customers' behaviour. To prevent a potential claim employers should ensure they take action to prevent harassment, for instance, those customers who harass staff could be warned, ejected or barred. Employers could consider signs reflecting that the harassment of staff is not tolerated and train staff to communicate incidents of harassment.

For further information, please contact Nick Arron