Harassment law: Your greater obligations since 2022
HR Dept
In 2022, the way you must manage occurrences of harassment and sexual harassment in your business changed, putting greater obligations on you to prevent them. The change came in the form of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, IHREC for short, publishing a code of practice to follow.
While the code is not legally binding, its application (or absence of it) is admissible in Workplace Relations Commission (WRC)/ court proceedings to determine employer liability for allowing harassment or sexual harassment to happen.
What does the code of practice cover?
The code of practice defines harassment and sexual harassment. Any harassment must be linked to one of the nine protected grounds stipulated in equality legislation, like race or age.
Two further notable points here are that the existence of harassment is based upon how behaviour makes a victim feel, not what the intention behind the perpetrator’s behaviour was; and that unlike “bullying” which is a persistent behaviour, harassment can be a one-off incident.
Significantly, taking steps to prevent third-party harassment is included.
The code also covers the importance of having a policy on harassment and sexual harassment, how these can be prevented and having the right procedures to respond to a problem and stop it from happing again.
What should you be doing now?
Having a harassment and sexual harassment policy is a must. It sets out what acceptable behaviour is in black and white, and gives you the framework to investigate and discipline where necessary. Under the code of practice, any judge can take the absence of such a policy as evidence against you.
Keeping a risk assessment on file and demonstrable employee training on the subject are good, proactive ideas too. Training can educate employees in how to behave, how to respond as a victim and how to intervene as a witness or manager.
The code of practice suggests having a trained up champion in your business as the lead contact for reporting harassment and sexual harassment. It does, though, acknowledge that this may not be possible in smaller companies with limited resources.
Depending on the nature of your business, visible signs saying that harassment and sexual harassment are not acceptable may be appropriate too – particularly in public facing businesses such as in hospitality (with third-party liability in mind).
Also for third-party liability, you might look at putting harassment clauses into contracts with suppliers.
It is clear that all of the above could help, given that should harassment or sexual harassment occur and you are taken to the WRC, judges will look at what actions you took prior to the event – as well as what your response was. Better still, they will all be part of the solution for stopping something bad happening to your employees in the first place.
Here to help
If you fear you may be falling short in your obligation to take reasonable preventative measures for harassment and sexual harassment, we can help. Our training (we have a highly effective eLearning course) and policy creation could be just what you need, and if you have a live case, our services extend to managing the fallout. Please contact us today to find out more.
