Legal Update: Sexual harassment costs a renowned good employer £45K

Legal Update: Sexual harassment costs a renowned good employer £45K

A large employer has settled out a claim this week for sexual harassment for £45,000 in order to avoid a full judgement at tribunal.

The case in question appears to us to be a master class in how not to do things, and there are useful reminders of how to avoid such a claim in the first place.

The employee in question felt harassed by a male colleague on sexual grounds. For this purpose, it doesn’t really matter if this harassment was intended or not, it matters only that she felt that way.  The original allegations were of inappropriate touching and text messages. So, she brought a grievance, and it was looked into.  The conclusion appears to be that these harassment events happened to some extent.

After this, clearly not thinking the sexual harassment was serious enough, the employee alleges that the employer then failed to take the steps that they said they would take to protect her. It said she would not have to work with him again and so the male employee would be redeployed.  The employer then simply took no steps to ensure that she didn’t work with him again. In fact, she changed her own role in order to move away from the male. The employer (we assume) must have felt that this was enough so took no further steps to reassure or protect the lady. This was in fact an argument which was later used against them, as giving her the impression that they didn’t take this sort of thing seriously.

The lesson from this case is that when someone makes a complaint of sexual harassment, take steps to protect them while you look into it.  If the employer then finds that the allegations which reasonably amount to sexual harassment are true to some extent, the employer is under a duty to both protect the harassed, and not tolerate the harasser.

If employees fail to live up to the standards of behaviour expected by modern society, it is an obligation on the employer to act. This is the case, even if the power’s that be don’t see the harassment as “all that serious” (which can sometimes be the mistaken view of people who grew up in the 70’s and 80’s.)

The employer in this case was Tesco, and it is important to state that the case was settled without admission of liability.

Important note

The new protections against third party sexual harassment are now in force, and employers are under an onerous duty to ensure that employees are not sexually harassed, even once.  The duty is to ensure that the employer has done ALL THEY CAN DO TO PREVENT SEXUAL HARASSMENT.

We are running some courses to set out what this means for an employer, and what you can do to satisfy this obligation on 6th November 2024.  To secure your place on this concise but comprehensive guide, click HERE.