How can employers prevent third-party harassment?
When employers think about workplace harassment, they often think about the behaviour of employees towards other employees. But what happens when the person responsible is your customer, client or contractor? This is an increasingly important question for employers. Here are seven practical steps businesses should consider.
1. Identify where the risks are
Start with a proper risk assessment.
For example:
- Professional services: employees working alone with clients.
- Hospitality: employees dealing with customers where alcohol is involved.
- Retail: customer-facing workers potentially exposed to abusive behaviour.
- Healthcare: employees dealing with patients and relatives.
- Property: employees conducting viewings or appointments alone.
The risks will be different for every business.
2. Put practical safeguards in place
Depending on those risks, measures might include:
- avoiding lone working;
- personal alarms;
- agreed code words;
- CCTV in appropriate public areas;
- escalation procedures; and
- arrangements for checking on lone workers.
3. Tell third parties what you expect
Prevention is not just about communicating with employees.
Consider how you communicate acceptable standards to customers, clients and contractors.
For example, customer-facing organisations might use appropriate notices or recorded telephone messages explaining that harassment of staff will not be tolerated.
4. Review contracts
Businesses working with contractors and suppliers should consider whether their contracts adequately address inappropriate behaviour.
Depending on the relationship, consequences could include requiring the removal of an individual from site or, in serious circumstances, terminating the contract.
5. Update your harassment policy
The policy should expressly cover third parties.
Employees also need to know:
- what behaviour is unacceptable;
- how to report it;
- who they should report it to;
- what happens next; and
- what support is available.
6. Train your people
Training should be practical rather than theoretical. Give managers scenarios to work through. For example:
An employee tells you that your biggest client regularly makes inappropriate sexual comments to them. What do you do?
That question is more useful than simply asking managers to memorise the legal definition of harassment.
7. Learn from complaints
A complaint is also a warning that existing preventative measures may need improvement.
Record incidents, identify patterns and update your risk assessment.
The best approach is to investigate, take appropriate action, support affected employees and implement lessons learned.
The key takeaway
Preventing third-party harassment requires more than an equality policy sitting on the intranet.
Employers need to be able to show what they have actually done to identify and reduce the risks within their particular workplace.
Please contact our Employment Team on 0345 646 0406 or fill in our online enquiry form and will be more than happy to help.