Preventing sexual harassment in your workplace.
The legal, regulatory, and societal landscape has changed. Employers must show they are taking reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment.
Now is the time to start thinking strategically.
Our solutions
This is about more than risk and compliance, it’s about the behaviour and culture of your entire organisation.
Making meaningful change requires addressing the six areas shown, on a continuous and evolving basis.
We are helping organisations at varying levels of preparedness with comprehensive in person and digital training, risk assessments, and strategic guidance and support, and we can help you too.
In-person and digital training solutions
Employers now need to assess and manage risks of sexual harassment as rigorously as other workplace safety concerns. Implementing regular, tailored and targeted training with supporting resources that address specific risks as your strategy evolves is important.
Respect at work
(including a focus on sexual harassment)
Our highly engaging face to face training combines legal insights with behavioural change techniques, addressing respect as a core organisational value. We focus on how people wish to be treated in both physical and virtual spaces, underscoring the critical importance of psychological and physical safety.
The session helps participants understand definitions and red lines of sexual harassment, the dynamics behind it, and risk factors that may contribute to harmful environments. Realistic scenarios equip attendees with tools to prevent and address harassment, promoting a safe, inclusive culture for everyone.
Building respect; Preventing sexual harassment e-learning
This ~40 minute course equips participants with practical skills to build a respectful workplace, going beyond a tick-box approach. By combining a legal lens with proven behaviour change strategies, integrating ACAS and EHRC guidance, and drawing on over 20 years’ experience in workplace culture, it offers an impactful learning experience. It empowers all employees to recognise, respond to, and prevent harassment through realistic scenarios that challenge assumptions, encourage reflection, and foster a supportive, inclusive work culture.
byrne·dean Bitesize for preventing sexual harassment
Three digestible short video resources dedicated to sexual harassment: for Everyone, for Leaders and for Specialists. Available as part of our larger suite of 20+ microlearning resources that deliver critical awareness raising
Ongoing listening and enabling speak-up
The new duty calls for a proactive approach to preventing inappropriate behaviour—from microaggressions to gross misconduct—before issues escalate to grievances or tribunals.
By actively understanding the diverse experiences across demographic groups, functions, locations, and seniority levels, your organisation can take targeted actions to address specific concerns.
Our partner, InChorus, offers speak-up software and data solutions to support this critical work.
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More information on meeting the new duty
Why tick-box training isn’t enough, and what meaningful change looks like
Read our full blog on this topic, exploring our rationale in-depth.
What are the new UK legal duties, and how do they work?
Read our full explainer of the new law.
We’re showing employers how to prepare
Samantha Mangwana, from our specialist team, writes for People Management explaining how UK employers should prepare for the new laws.
Podcast on creating safe workplaces
Two prominent byrne·dean experts join the Co-Founder of InChorus, a tech platform to report and measure workplace harassment, to discuss the new legal and regulatory responsibilities for all employers on preventing sexual harassment at work.
Worker Protection Act: how should HR prepare for sexual harassment obligations?
In light of the new duty to prevent sexual harassment, HR teams may be wondering, in a practical sense, what actions to take to support the intentions of the Worker Protection Act.
Creating safe workplaces: new duties on employers to prevent sexual harassment
Two prominent byrne·dean experts join the Co-Founder of InChorus, a tech platform to report and measure workplace harassment, to discuss the new legal and regulatory responsibilities for all employers on preventing sexual harassment at work.
Our specialist advisory team for preventing sexual harassment
Our exceptional team includes experienced former employment lawyers, HR and L&D professionals, EDI experts, organisational development experts and researchers with deep coal-face experience of employment problems.
30+ year career looking at employment problems; initially as a City lawyer, from 2003 at Byrne Dean; Matt has always been convinced there's a better way to approach workplace disputes; an inspirational facilitator unafraid to ask the toughest questions.
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20+ year legal career, specialising in workplace disputes, with a particular focus on discrimination, whistleblowing and dismissal cases, as well as regular media commentator on employment issues.
20+ years legal career, working in international organisations; Helen is passionate about the aim of creating kinder, fairer, more productive workplaces and uses her professional and personal experience in all aspects of work.
Frequently Asked Questions
The UK’s Worker Protection Act will come into force this October; mandating employers proactively to take reasonable steps to prevent employees from experiencing sexual harassment.
Since #MeToo in 2018, heightened attention on sexual harassment and workplace behaviour has exposed the inadequacy of existing systems in deterring or preventing sexual harassment. In response, the Worker Protection Act will come into force in the UK in October.
The idea underpinning it is very much that prevention is better than the cure; we’re moving away from the old failed system of waiting for sexual harassment to happen and taking action when it does. Instead, organisations need to proactively take steps aimed at preventing it from happening in the first place.
The enforcement date for new legislation on preventing sexual harassment in the workplace will come into effect on October 26, 2024. Now’s the time to prepare ahead of this date. This is about much more than doing one-off training. This is about much more than doing one-off training.
To meet the positive duty, you’ll need to address several facets of your business: aligning your leadership, reviewing your policies and processes (around reporting, monitoring, investigating and deciding upon issues) and taking steps to enable a culture where everybody understands more about what sexual harassment is and feels safer to raise and talk about what’s happening.
The legislation doesn’t provide a single checklist to tick off. This is about proportionality: taking reasonable steps for an organisation in your position.
This is about much more than risk and compliance. It’s about behaviour and culture change. Our goal is to enable your people to take decisions that shift the organisation to a better place; culturally and in terms of people risk.
- We’re work behaviour experts with a coalface background of employment law: you’ll typically be working with a subject matter expert who’s worked as a senior employment lawyer too.
- We offer an end-to-end framework to help you navigate the requirements of the new positive duty – that can scale and adapt to meet the realities of your workplace in a practical and proportionate way.
- We are equipped to assist organisations at any level of readiness, whether they require comprehensive support across all business facets or targeted assistance in specific areas.
If you need help enabling a culture where everybody feels safer to talk about sexual harassment – get in touch.
