Culture change key to unlocking gender equality

The actions employers have been taking to comply with the new duty to prevent sexual harassment can be the driver for tackling the broader issue of gender equality, but a deeper cultural shift is needed. That’s the message from experts commenting after a recent Pinsent Masons event on how firms can accelerate gender diversity. We’ll speak to one of them.

The event preceded International Women’s Day on 8 March 2025, where the central theme was ‘accelerate action’ – a concept that emphasises taking swift and decisive steps towards gender equality, including promoting economic empowerment for women, increasing women's leadership and representation, and strengthening and enforcing laws that promote gender equality. According to the World Economic Forum, the world is moving further away from, rather than closer to, gender parity. Tracey Roberts and Kieron O’Reilly of Pinsent Masons, and Joeli Brearley, founder of Pregnant Then Screwed, which campaigns on parental rights issues, agreed that much more needs to be done to deliver gender equality in the UK.

Kieron makes the point that proactively tackling workplace sexual harassment, which has been a legal duty since 26 October last year, can drive broader gender equality by creating a culture where employees feel safe to speak up and challenge misconduct. He says legal obligations such as risk assessments, anonymous reporting channels, and enhanced training force businesses to take preventative action which helps to break down systemic barriers like bias and exclusion. But, whilst the new duty has helped, gender equality requires a wider cultural shift to allow women to be better represented and thrive in the workplace. 

The new duty to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace was expected to promote deeper-level changes in organisations and that is certainly what we have seen within our own client base. Clients across all sectors have been very proactive and our legal team alongside our D&I consultancy Brook Graham have been kept fully engaged on this issue helping clients implement cultural change within their businesses. On that point, Kieron talks about what he describes as three ‘levers’ to pull to make it happen. Earlier I caught up with Kieron who joined me by video-link to discuss how that translates into practice. Lever one, setting the tone of behaviour from the top:

Keiron O’Reilly: “The important point is that when we're looking at this change, people are going to only believe it if the message is coming from the top clearly. Now what we've done, and how we've made that happen in the work we are doing with our clients, because they want to do that practically, is we're doing board sessions to bring up to speed the members of the board and including senior leaders as to what that means. So, how do they speak about it and what do they need to ask their teams to do to ensure not only they're meeting the duty to prevent but that they're setting the tone. Specifically that means they can say what we are doing to meet the requirement, how we're meeting it and then also, importantly, the reporting systems they use when things happen because things do happen. So being able to speak confidently, to have that transparency, shows that they're leading from the top and that's what the EHRC would also expect.”

Joe Glavina: “The Commission’s guidance talks about the sort of steps firms can take and gives the example of setting up a senior management development programme for women to encourage and support women into senior leadership positions. Is that something you’re helping with?”

Keiron O’Reilly: “It is and to be honest that is something we've been doing before. If we look at this more specifically about that second lever, taking action, because the Equality Human Rights Commission, as you say, is asking people to take measures to prevent. So the actions to prevent are coming from the HR teams, the D&I teams, and the others. It's up to senior leadership to give them a mandate, to give them that lever, to put in the policy changes and the actions we're looking at. Now, that particular programme you mentioned is a very positive one, but it's early days. So what most organisations that we're working with at the moment are doing to make sure this happens is they're putting in a compliance plan. So that is, let's look at the first three things that they need to take action on. They need to do their risk assessment. They need to understand where their areas of risk are, and that's very much where we are at the moment. But running alongside that now is the training and that's really important because once the policy is in place, training people so they are clear on the expected behaviours and how to support that, such as active bystander - what do you do if something like this happens? So the early stages that people are taking action on is to put a policy in place and make sure their risk assessment is in place. That’s not just a single one-page document because that won't wash with the EHRC. You need to have a really well thought out risk assessment that leads to a good policy and that you are equipping your people to ensure that those behaviours that they're trying to reduce through the requirements of the guidelines actually happen.”

Joe Glavina: “The third lever you talk about, Kieron, involves training and reporting. Tell me about that.”

Keiron O’Reilly: “So this is really important and I think a lot of organisations have sometimes said to us when we've gone to look at them, we have a whistle blowing system, of course they do, and we also have other channels for reporting. So the first thing is to make sure they're there, but we actually look at how well or often they are used and this is a problem. People don't always feel confident to report stuff, and especially as a bystander in a situation. In particular, and this is to do with harassment, but in particular sexual harassment. We know from all the work we've done in the past, and even if you look at past tribunals and issues, there's a moment when people freeze whether it's happening to them, or whether they're seeing it happen, they don't know what to do. So the confidence in how do I report something that I feel should be reported? How do I take that action safely? People are afraid to do this, to step into that area, because it could potentially, for some people, feel like it's threatening their role or their job, or they feel unsafe. So what we're looking at here, and it goes into the training, so these two go hand in hand I think the reporting of the training. People need to feel confident they can report safely and they need to know how to do it quickly and that builds into the training. This way, we will see a call out of those behaviours and part of this training is to give people that confidence, certainly how to be an active bystander when you see something, what do you do? The reporting mechanisms need to be robust and easy to access and that's part of the training that goes with the new policy.”

That Out-Law article I mentioned is called: ‘IWD 2025: employers can drive gender equality by acting on harassment law’. We’ve included a link to it in the transcript of this programme for you.

- Link to Out-Law article: ‘IWD 2025: employers can drive gender equality by acting on harassment law’