The UK employer's guide to preventing sexual harassment at work

Understand your responsibilities as a UK employer. From October 2026, the standards expected from UK employers, under the Equality Act, strengthens to an expectation that the employer as taken 'all reasonable steps' to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace.

This guide explains your responsibilities as an employer, shows you how to reduce legal and reputational risk, strengthen reporting, and prove you've taken all reasonable steps.

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Inside, you'll discover:

What your responsibilities are as a UK employer

How to prove you've taken all reasonable steps

An applicable framework for your workplace: 6 pillars of prevention

An employer checklist to reduce legal and reputational risk

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Who it's for

This guide is for UK Compliance Directors, Heads of Compliance, HR Directors, People Leaders, and Risk Leaders who are interested in establishing a clear and effective reporting and prevention process in their business.

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Key benefits

Clearly understand your responsibilities as a UK employer

Strengthen your reporting process

Prove you've taken all reasonable steps

Reduce legal and reputational risk

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FAQs

What background check do I need?

This depends on the industry and type of role you are recruiting for. To determine whether you need reference checks, identity checks, bankruptcy checks, civil background checks, credit checks for employment or any of the other background checks we offer, chat to our team of dedicated account managers.

Why should employers check the background of potential employees?

Many industries have compliance-related employment check requirements. And even if your industry doesn’t, remember that your staff have access to assets and data that must be protected. When you employ a new staff member you need to be certain that they have the best interests of your business at heart. Carrying out comprehensive background checking helps mitigate risk and ensures a safer hiring decision.

How long do background checks take?

Again, this depends on the type of checks you need. Simple identity checks can be carried out in as little as a few hours but a worldwide criminal background check for instance might take several weeks. A simple pre-employment check package takes around a week. Our account managers are specialists and can provide detailed information into which checks you need and how long they will take.

Can you do a background check online?

All Veremark checks are carried out online and digitally. This eliminates the need to collect, store and manage paper documents and information making the process faster, more efficient and ensures complete safety of candidate data and documents.

What are the benefits of a background check?

In a competitive marketplace, making the right hiring decisions is key to the success of your company. Employment background checks enables you to understand more about your candidates before making crucial decisions which can have either beneficial or catastrophic effects on your business.

What does a background check show?

Background checks not only provide useful insights into a candidate’s work history, skills and education, but they can also offer richer detail into someone’s personality and character traits. This gives you a huge advantage when considering who to hire. Background checking also ensures that candidates are legally allowed to carry out certain roles, failed criminal and credit checks could prevent them from working with vulnerable people or in a financial function.