It has been reported that a student who was employed by JD Sports has settled a sexual harassment claim against the company for £65,000. JD Sports, in settling the case, acknowledged that the employee had suffered significant upset and offered her an apology in addition to the monetary settlement.
It has been reported that a student who was employed by JD Sports has settled a sexual harassment claim against the company for £65,000. JD Sports, in settling the case, acknowledged that the employee had suffered significant upset and offered her an apology in addition to the monetary settlement.
There was a time when settlements such as this would have been covered by confidentiality provisions within the settlement terms, but nowadays employers are less able to simply hide proven cases of sexual harassment in that way.
The issue of harassment of junior staff is clearly a more widespread problem across a range of employers. Recently McDonalds announced that their managers would be getting sexual harassment training, to help protect their staff members from abusive and discriminatory behaviour. These changes followed a BBC investigation in which it came to light that a significant proportion of staff members, particularly those who were junior and newly recruited, were still facing behaviour that would amount to serious sexual harassment.
Harassment is defined under Section 26 of the Equality Act 2010. It occurs when a person engages in unwanted conduct that relates to a relevant protected characteristic, such as sex, race, disability, etc, which has the purpose or effect of violating a person’s dignity or creating an intimidating or hostile environment for that person.
One form of unlawful harassment is sexual harassment, which is where a person engages in unwanted conduct of a sexual nature which has the purpose or effect of violating a person’s dignity.
Under the Worker Protection (Amendment of Equality Act 2010) Act 2023, Employers have a positive legal duty to proactively prevent sexual harassment in the workplace.
This means that any employer must take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment, which will include steps such as implementing training and specific policies, to ensure that all staff members are aware of what sexual harassment is and how it can be prevented.
We have found that we have been called upon to provide anti-harassment training to more and more clients, across a wide range of sectors, as they become aware of the increasing duties that fall upon them.
These duties are only likely to increase under the Employment Rights Act 2025 (formerly the Employment Rights Bill), which proposes to introduce an even higher duty on employers from October 2026 to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace. They will be required to take all reasonable steps to prevent this from occurring, which suggests that a failure to train all staff will leave them falling short of the necessary steps.