Employment legislation is an ever-changing field so it’s easy to lose track when new laws and policies are introduced. Here Regional Support Manager, Fliss McCalmont, speaks to HR and Employment law solicitor and Director of Buxton Coates Solicitors, Sarah Buxton, about a recent change that may have passed by some practice owners and managers.
Fliss: We know the government announced the Employment Rights Bill last year which contained quite a few suggested changes to employment law. Is there anything else we should be aware of now that affects practices?
Sarah: Yes, there is. The Worker Protection Act came in on 26th of October 2024, and it places a preventative duty on employers to set out how they will prevent sexual harassment in the workplace. This doesn’t only cover employee to employee, or self-employed staff member sexual harassment but also includes third parties as well. So, that means patients, suppliers, any people that come into the practice.
So, the employer now has to demonstrate that they’ve taken steps to prevent sexual harassment from happening in the practice. That’s not all as the Labour government has also said that it’s planning to strengthen that piece of legislation in the future.
What they’ll probably do is connect it to the rest of the protected characteristics. At the moment it only relates to sexual harassment, but they would like the protected characteristics found in the Equality and Diversity policy such as disability, race, age, and so on, to also be covered.
Something that concerns me about this piece of legislation is that when I speak to clients, many of them were not prepared for it being introduced. It’s now in place and practices should have developed policies and should be taking action to demonstrate how they’ll be preventing sexual harassment in the workplace now from third parties as well as from within the team. However, a lot of them don’t seem to be aware of it and have not put anything in place to try to prevent it. Worse still, if this piece of legislation is extended, practices won’t be anywhere near ready for it. They really should be taking notice of it as it’s not going away, it’s just going to be added to.
Fliss: Part of the feedback I get consistently from the NHS practices I visit can be about the level of abuse that they have started receiving from patients. So, according to this legislation, depending on the nature of the kind of verbal abuse they might be getting, it’s the practice owner’s obligation to protect their team from that, is that right?
Sarah: Yes, that’s the case. There are some things that practice owners will already be doing, such as having a phone system whereby phone calls are recorded; although I appreciate there’s a cost to put that in place, and data protection legislation to worry about. But that is something whereby if a claim were ever to be made, the practice owner could say they were recording calls so that they could deal with any complaints under the Act. They were trying to prevent a complaint from happening in the first place by having the recording in place.
The majority of things owners can put in place are code of conduct Equality and Diversity policies around the practice to make people aware that you have a strict policy on harassment in the workplace and that you don’t accept that kind of behaviour. Sadly, you’re right, though, the biggest risk for dental practices will be from patients.
It is worrying that people don’t seem to have prepared for this piece of legislation or are not aware of it. It’s already on the statute and it’s going to be extended.
About Sarah
Sarah Buxton specialises in acting exclusively for dentists, dental managers and dental practice owners in all aspects of HR and employment law and is a director at Buxton Coates Solicitors Ltd Sarah advises dental practices on managing and motivating their staff, dealing with sickness absence, assisting with making changes to employment contracts and, if needed, how to bring the employment relationship to an end.
