Sexual harassment: your rights

Under the Equality Act 2010, employers are liable for acts of sexual harassment by one employee towards another unless they have taken all reasonable steps to prevent it.

Sexual harassment occurs where a person engages in unwanted conduct of a sexual nature and such conduct has the purpose or effect of either violating another’s dignity, or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for them. Examples of ‘conduct of a sexual nature’ include:

Sexual harassment can range from a single incident or comment to something more frequent and serious. Surveys have found that sexual harassment is massively unreported, despite a significant number of employees experiencing sexual harassment at work. Employees are often fearful of reporting the harassment in case their complaint is not taken seriously, or they suffer victimisation as a result of making the complaint. A BBC survey conducted in 2017 found that 40% of women and 18% of men had experienced unwanted sexual behaviour in the workplace. This ranged from displays of pornographic material and unwelcome jokes or comments of a sexual nature to serious sexual assaults.