Sexual harassment at work complaints reported to Acas have risen by 6.2% following the introduction of new legal reforms in October 2024.

The good news? More people are speaking up, and new laws are pushing businesses to act. But while policies are important, real change comes from culture shifts—and that’s where training makes all the difference.

What’s Going On?

Employers are now legally required to take proactive steps to prevent sexual harassment at work. This means just having a policy isn’t enough—you need to be actively creating a workplace where people feel safe and respected.

We’ve been delivering sexual harassment at work training across different industries, and we could write a book on some of the stories that we have heard. Which of course we won’t, but to help your business craft what to focus on in your training this year, here are some of the theme’s we are seeing:

“I had no idea that would amount to sexual harassment”

All the managers we see are willing to learn, but often managers see sexual harassment as having to be something physical; not verbal, unintentional, ‘just a look’ or even a message in a WhatsApp group. We hear the phrase ‘but they were just trying it on’ pretty frequently, and the case study examples we use in our video resources have proven to be really positive eye-openers for these people.

“I don’t want to get involved”

This one is probably our most common objection, and we get it. But wilful blindness is a dangerous game, and organisations need to make sure employees feel confident and capable in raising issues. How? First up is helping your employees to understand that just because they raise it, doesn’t mean they have to deal with it. Reporting to someone with managerial responsibility will take the perceived burden away from bystanders and make even more people willing to speak up.

“But if everyone’s joking, is it really a problem?”

Cue awkward silence.

So, what now?

• If you haven’t already, start with a risk assessment. Here’s a free template.
• Assess the likelihood of your risk, and the potential impact that could have. Consider things like the frequency and severity of past incidents, and third-party risk factors.
• Develop your risk mitigation plan – you can use our action plan template here to make it easier.
• Engage your employees AND third parties. You can use things like surveys, focus groups and employee reps to do this.
• Invest in regular training that focuses on not just what to do, but how to tackle sexual harassment at work. And therein lies the start of your culture shift. Vista provide market-leading training for managers in this space, check out how we do it for other clients here, and an example of what a training session could look like for your company here.