Sexual harassment in the workplace – what can employers do?

Lucy* was in her twenties in her first job out of university when she first experienced workplace harassment. “There were so many incidents where I knew it wasn’t right at the time, but you just don’t say a thing. You just put up with it,” she says.

This colleague, who was 20 years her senior, ‘took a shine’ to Lucy when she arrived at the company in south London. He started to send her endless emails, hover around her desk and persistently ask her out for lunch. “It got to the point where it made me feel uncomfortable.”

Lucy made it clear to him that she had a boyfriend, but in response, the colleague said “it doesn’t matter”.

“I used to have to walk past his department to do my job, which I hated because he would turn around and stare. By the time I got back to my desk I had an email from him saying something like ‘you look gorgeous today’ or ‘wow’ in the subject heading. He just hadn’t taken the hint.”

Lucy did tell some colleagues but felt like she wasn’t being taken seriously. “I told two more senior male colleagues and they said ‘oh yeah, he’s a bit of a lech’, but then just used to tease me about it and joke. It was as if I should have taken it in my stride,” she says.

“Escalating it felt like a huge risk”

Lucy didn’t take the issue to HR for fear of receiving the same response. “I was embarrassed and I felt a bit ashamed, wondering what I might have done to cause this. You imagine all the things he would say to defend his actions if you ever brought it up, and you think: do I have a strong enough case?”

Lucy was also discouraged because she didn’t know what the process of a complaint would look like and what the consequences might be. Would she have to work in the same office as him still, would things actually change?

Sean* was similarly conflicted about whether to report an incident with a senior male colleague to HR. “He was married with a child and ostensibly straight, but at two consecutive work drinks events he grabbed my bum,” he says. “I didn’t report it because my girlfriend was also working in the business at the time and she had a very close – and occasionally turbulent – relationship with him. Escalating it felt like a huge risk.”

“If someone had said ‘I’ll support you, I’ll go with you’ or anything like that, maybe I would have gone to HR,” says Lucy. “But there was no talk about it in the office, no education in our workplace at all about what’s acceptable and what’s not. There was no encouragement from HR that if you’re experiencing any of these things then come to us. There was no conversation about sexual harassment at all,” says Lucy.

“You’re seeing about a fifth of actual incidents”

Workplace sexual harassment is unfortunately a common occurrence. At least 40% of women have experienced workplace harassment, according to a recent report from the Fawcett Society. And while statistics show that sexual harassment of women by men is most common, it’s important to remember that it can occur to and by people of any sex, gender or sexual orientation. A 2020 survey by the UK Government Equalities Office found that men were almost as likely as women to experience workplace sexual harassment.

But Andrew Bazeley, policy, insight and public affairs manager at the Fawcett Society, says the vast majority of sexual harassment in the workplace goes unreported. “That’s something that employers should be holding quite firmly in their minds,” he says. “The idea that you are at best seeing about a fifth in terms of reports of actual incidents of unwanted sexual behaviour in the workplace.”