Women’s rights charity the Fawcett Society has set out five pillars to change organisational culture to help prevent sexual harassment in the workplace. The pillars form part of a new employer toolkit developed ahead of the government’s decision impose a duty on employers to prevent sexual harassment in their workplace, and for companies to be legally accountable for harassment that employees experience from third parties, such as customers and clients.
Launching the toolkit, the Fawcett Society said that one of the problems with workplace harassment is that is often mistakenly associated with one-off, significant, incidents. In fact, it is often the very small incidents lead to a culture where such behaviour is assumed to be normal and where it is rarely reported.
The toolkit is set out as “five pillars” for tackling sexual harassment, starting with an intent to change the workplace culture; putting in place a sexual harassment policy; training staff; making reporting safe and easy; and responding appropriately to reports of sexual harassment.
