The Price of Speaking Up - Sexualised Harassment in the Workplace

“Why didn’t they speak up earlier?” is sometimes a response by senior leaders to a report of persistent sexual harassment in the workplace.  It’s often an acknowledgement of the harm created by ongoing situations and a strong desire for workplaces where people feel safe to call out misconduct.

However, when stories emerge in the media about workplace retaliation against those who report sexual harassment, thousands of people make a quiet, painful calculation: is speaking up worth the cost?

The answer, depressingly often, is no.  First comes the investigation, which requires the whistle-blower to relive events repeatedly, putting their credibility on the line. Then, even when the investigation substantiates the claims and the perpetrator faces consequences, the person who reported it often finds themselves in an impossible position. Suddenly their successful accounts are reassigned. Their performance is questioned. Their role becomes "redundant" during the next reorganisation.

For women especially, the calculation is brutal. We know that sexual harassment is endemic in many workplaces. We've sat through the inappropriate comments, dodged the unwanted touches, changed the subject when conversations turn predatory. We've watched male colleagues fail to intervene, creating a culture where silence equals complicity. And we know, with sickening certainty, that reporting it could end our careers faster than enduring it.

Many managers and leaders are time poor, so the complications that erupt when a report is made, can lead people to act from unconscious bias – which might be not believing the whistle-blower or being more focussed on the awkwardness or discomfort the reporting has caused them, rather than the incident itself.  This in turn can support whistle-blowers to feel that they are now regarded as difficult to work with. 

The chilling effect is profound. When we read about whistle-blowers facing years of professional limbo, stress-related illness and protracted legal battles just to vindicate their decision to speak up, we absorb the lesson.  Keep your head down and don't make waves, your career, your mental health and your financial security are too precious to risk.

It’s no surprise then that a victim of sexual harassment in the workplace or even someone witnessing sexually harassing behaviours from a colleague towards others, will weigh up these considerations and decide to keep quiet.  But here's what that silent calculation costs us all: workplaces where predatory behaviour flourishes unchecked, where the "boys' club" thrives and where the next generation of women learns that professional advancement means accepting the unacceptable.

However, the cost of not speaking up is also unacceptable, so what can senior leaders do to change it?  And why should they be thinking about this urgently now?

With the introduction of the Worker Protection Act and the Employment Rights Bill in recent years, employers now have a legal duty to actively prevent sexual harassment, not just respond to it.  This has resulted in a 39% increase in people seeking advice about workplace harassment (calls to ACAS helpline rose from 5,583 in Q1 2025, up from 4,001 calls in the same period in 2024).  It also sharpens the perspective on consequences for businesses and their leadership, with potentially significant impact in four main areas:

• Financial exposure. Compensation uplifts for cases where it can be proved the employer failed in their preventive duty have ranged from £12,500 to £250,000.

• Reputational risk. In our world of rapid information and social media click-baits – workplace misconduct becomes public so quickly, with potential lasting damage to an organisation's reputation and culture.

• Complexity and time commitment. Investigations can be difficult and time-consuming.  They often take months to resolve and require specialised knowledge.

• Reduced morale.  This can both be generally for employees in the workplace, but equally on leaders themselves.  They may have believed they had a healthy, safe work culture, and be disappointed and worried about their personal accountability when they discover that sexual harassment has been underreported and unaddressed in the organisation.

The answer for senior leaders is to move beyond tick box exercises and highlighting policies, to properly understand why and when behaviours like sexual harassment will flourish and how to create cultures that proactively prevent this.  An obvious first step is simply looking at the question of ‘Why didn’t they speak up earlier’ – which not only places the responsibility of the situation on the ‘victim’ – but fails to realise either what the barriers are to reporting or the lack of measures that have been put into place to support people feeling safe in terms of reporting.

Training for senior leaders and their managers is key to changing this perspective.  Simple exercises like creating a list of the Pro’s and Con’s that someone who has experienced sexual harassment will consider in deciding to report or not. 

Pro’s: feeling that you’ve done the right thing, stopping this kind of abuse from taking place in the future, bringing somebody to justice, making somebody accountable.

Con’s: on the other hand might be losing your job, losing pay, being suspended pending investigations, fellow colleagues shunning you, maybe losing friends at work, getting a reputation as a ‘snitch’, failing to get promotion opportunities, failing to get a good reference for a new job, leading to changing careers, etc. 

The key differences when you look at a list like this – apart from the fact that the Con’s far outweigh the Pro’s – is that the Con’s potentially are immediate, could cost the individual financial, emotional or practical consequences, and whilst they might be dismissed as unfounded fears there is good evidence to suggest that this is not the case.

The Pro’s on the other hand exist in a future world, usually they don’t come with immediate consequences, they are aspirational of a better future – which could be in months, or years – but in no way are they guaranteed.

An exercise like this can then lead into discussion about how barriers to reporting might be removed and develop practical steps to do that within a workplace.  It could lead into discussions about having difficult conversations, about leading by example, how unconscious bias plays into dealing with reports or making assumptions about who it will effect, how you raise issues that engage employees, etc.  Alongside training, one-to-one coaching and mentoring of senior leaders can prove very powerful for identifying and embedding change. 

Ultimately senior leaders proactively addressing sexual harassment in the workplace through a variety of interventions – and ensuring that they get the support to do so – will empower them create healthy, safe workplaces where employees can thrive. 

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