Pledge on sexual harassment protection

Discount retailer Lidl GB has signed a legal agreement with the EHRC equality watchdog to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace.

The move follows an Employment Tribunal case in 2023 which found that the store had failed to take all reasonable steps to prevent the sexual harassment of a young employee between 2019 and 2021.

The case saw a former Lidl employee, a teenager at the time who worked in a Lidl branch in Oxfordshire, awarded more than £50,000 after the tribunal found the store allowed a culture that tolerated inappropriate comments.

The tribunal ruled that the store managers where the employee worked were not aware of Lidl’s anti-harassment policy, had not carried out risk assessments, and relied on staff complaints before acting.

The agreement builds on initiatives already put in place and outlines additional steps Lidl has committed to under the Worker Protection Act. These include:

• a staff survey relating to sexual harassment and assessing if additional preventative steps are necessary;

• developing a system to monitor and analyse informal complaints of sexual harassment to identify ongoing risks;

• monitoring the effectiveness of complaint handling for new formal complaints; and

• reviewing a sample of sexual harassment complaints from 2023 and 2024 to assess any trends and risks.