The Worker Protection Act for nurseries
We speak to Gill McAteer from Citation to understand more about how early years settings will be impacted by The Worker Protection Act.
What does it mean for your early years setting?
The Worker Protection (Amendment of Equality Act 2010) Act 2023 came into force on 26 October 2024 – and now, all employers are required to take all reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment of their employees. This legislation is a big shift to a proactive duty to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment – but it might be a bit daunting for businesses to take on. That’s why our expert Corporate Partner Citation is here to help, with a guest blog from their Director of Employment Law Gill McAteer explaining the law and what you need to do now.
The EHRC guidance around the Act outlines a couple of key points that business owners need to know, including:
- The new responsibilities are anticipatory duties – meaning you shouldn’t wait until sexual harassment happens before doing something about it
- The duty to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment includes third-party harassment, for example from visitors and parents or guardians
- You’ll need to carry out a risk assessment to set out how you’re going to prevent sexual harassment and protect employees.
The eight steps you need to take to comply – what you need to do now
- Develop a robust anti-harassment policy
Have a look at the policies you already have in place and see what could be updated. You need to include the consequences of sexual harassment, define who’s protected and explain how procedures for receiving and responding to complaints will work.
You’ll also need to address third-party harassment in this section, and explain what steps will be taken to prevent it and what will happen if a complaint is made
- Engage your staff
Have regular one-to-one meetings with your staff members, carry out staff surveys and hold exit interviews to make sure you’re creating an environment where everyone feels comfortable sharing any incidents of sexual harassment with you
- Carry out a risk assessment
Think about everything that might increase the likelihood of sexual harassment – for example, how diverse is your workplace? Do staff ever work alone or have meeting alone with parents, guardians or visitors
If you’re not sure where to start with your risk assessment, download Citation’s full Worker Protection Act risk assessment guide to help out
- Reporting
Think about ways your staff could report anonymously, and make sure everyone knows what ‘acceptable behaviour’ means, how to recognise sexual harassment and what to do if they experience it or see it
- Training
Everyone needs to be trained on what sexual harassment might look like, what to do if they experience it or see it, how complaints should be made and how to address third-party harassment
- What to do if a complaint is made
Make sure you act straight away if a complaint is raised. Keep everything confidential, and protect the person who raised the complaint from harassment or victimisation during the investigation. Always address complaints through the right disciplinary procedure and communicate outcomes as soon as possible
- Dealing with third-party harassment
You need to make sure you treat third-party harassment just as seriously as you would treat sexual harassment by a colleague. If your staff might be alone with parents, guardians or visitors, make sure you’ve assessed that risk and put measures in place to reduce the likelihood of anything happening
- Monitor, monitor, monitor
You’ll need to regularly evaluate how effective the steps you’ve got in place are – including reviewing all complaints to spot trends, surveying staff anonymously to see what other steps they think you could take and comparing complaint numbers with feedback to see if your data is accurate.
Why is tackling sexual harassment important?
Aside from the obvious moral obligation to protect your employees, this legislation also stipulates that if a tribunal finds an employer failed to take steps to protect workers, it’ll be able to order them to pay a 25% uplift on any compensation for sexual harassment – so if you get this wrong, you could be under serious financial pressure.
Plus, preventing sexual harassment in the workplace is just common sense – this proactive focus on prevention could have a huge impact on workplace culture, including improving morale, reduced turnover and an environment where everyone feels safe and respected. But it’s also about creating a safe environment for the children in your care, too. If your employees are happy, healthy and taken care of, they’ll be able to provide even better services.
Citation – by your side
If you’re wondering how you’re going to implement these extra measures, we don’t blame you! It’s a lot to keep on top of, but it’s vital that you do. That’s what we’re here to help with. As a partner of the National Day Nurseries Association, we know about the unique challenges early years businesses face on a day-to-day basis. We’re here to take Health & Safety and HR & Employment Law off your plate, so you can get back to what you do best. If you’d like to have a chat about how we can help, click here, or call 0345 844 1111 and quote ‘NDNA’ to access your preferential rates.
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