McDonald’s EHRC Agreement: What Employers Must Learn About Preventing Workplace Sexual Harassment

Within the agreement, McDonalds agreed that they would put in place measures to protect its staff from sexual harassment. This agreement was extended however, in response to serious allegations raised after the original agreement was signed. A strengthened action plan has been put in place, where McDonald’s have agreed to:

• Introduce a new safeguarding policy and continue an ongoing review of existing relevant policies.

• Work with external safeguarding experts to design and implement a new safeguarding plan to protect vulnerable workers  - to be rolled out across McDonald’s restaurants and franchisees’ restaurants.

• Commission an external auditor to audit the new complaints handling unit to give assurance that sexual harassment complaints are handled appropriately.

• Ensure complaints against managers are investigated outside the restaurant

• Continue an extensive communications plan encouraging staff to speak out when something feels wrong, alongside the implementation of a 24/7 chatbot for raising complaints

• Refresh sexual harassment training for restaurant managers, including franchisees, and expand the topics covered during training to include social media and grooming of young and/or vulnerable workers

• Strengthen risk assessments, using restaurant inspections to ensure they are regularly reviewed and reflect any learning from complaints

• Use existing quarterly staff surveys to identify problems and check workplaces are safe, respectful, and inclusive

• Request all Franchisees pledge their commitment to adopting appropriate policies, systems and measures that create a safe, respectful and inclusive workplace culture

These are all sensible steps that organisations should consider implementing where appropriate, particularly as the Worker Protection (Amendment of Equality Act 2020) Act 2023 currently requires employers to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace.

The action taken by the EHRC, and the publicity surrounding the section 23 agreement, highlight the importance of tackling sexual harassment in the workplace. The CEO of McDonalds has recently hit the headlines where she told the BBC that what happened in recent years was unacceptable but McDonalds wished to draw a line under this and that she didn’t want to talk about the past and wanted to focus on building the future.

It is important to take lessons learned from any previous instances of sexual harassment, and ensure measures are put in place to ensure where possible, that this does not occur again. The ECHR have advised that employers need to be pro-active and protect their staff from harassment both from employees and customers, and whilst section 23 agreements are voluntary, these are just one of the options available to the EHRC if they consider that an organisation is not protected their staff from sexual harassment.

Alongside the action that the EHRC can take, the Employment Rights Act 2025 will introduce a more stringent obligation on employers to take “all reasonable steps” to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace. This is expected to come into force in October 2026. Regulations will be produced to set out what are to be regarded as the reasonable steps an employer should take or may have failed to take, to comply with this duty to take all reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment, which will include the third-party harassment provisions introduced by the Employment Rights Act 2025. The steps specified in regulations will include (but will not be limited to) carrying out assessments of a specific description, publishing plans or policies of a specified description (for example sexual harassment policies and action plans), steps relating the reporting of sexual harassment and steps relating to the handling of complaints. In addition, the Employment Rights Act 2025 will require employers with 250 employees or more to develop and publish equality action plans showing what steps they are taking in relation to prescribed matters related to gender equality, and to publish prescribed information relating to their plans. It is also worth highlighting that on the 6th April 2026, the definition of qualifying disclosure in the Employment Rights Act 1996 was amended to include a disclosure that sexual harassment “has occurred, is occurring or likely to occur.”

It is important that organisations audit their working practices to consider the risk of their staff being harassed. If employment tribunal proceedings are brought and an individual is successful, employers can face a financial penalty of an uplift to the employee’s compensation, along with a EHRC investigation.

This is certainly a hot topic and one that is attracting significant publicity. Ensuring that your workplace culture and working practices meet both the legal compliance standards and provide employees with a safe working environment, will be absolutely key.