The CEASE Framework®
Most harassment prevention is a series of disconnected events. The CEASE Framework® makes it a system.
A trademarked, continuous-improvement methodology that takes harassment prevention out of the realm of posters and annual e-learning, and turns it into a structured, measurable business process. It is the most robust way we know for an organisation to meet the all reasonable steps standard, to prove it, and to work towards CEASE certification as external evidence of that commitment.
Why we built it
Organisations were spending real money on policies, posters, and annual e-learning, and harassment was still happening. Prevention had become a compliance exercise rather than a business process, and it was not working.
The CEASE Framework®came from a simple question. OneSource HR’s founder, Chloe Wallace, spent fifteen years in manufacturing, engineering, and professional services, sectors where continuous improvement is embedded into everything from quality to safety to performance. She wondered what would happen if that same rigour were applied to harassment prevention.
CEASE is the answer. A structured, repeatable, measurable cycle that organisations return to again and again. Not a one-off programme. Not a poster on a wall. A system.
The cycle
The five steps
Each step builds on the one before, and the cycle never ends. Once you finish Evaluate and evolve, you begin the next round of Call it out culture with sharper insight. That is the point. The five interlocking rings of the CEASE emblem mirror these five stages.
Call it out culture
Challenge early. Lead visibly.
Educate
Tailored, scenario-based training.
Assess your risk
A structured risk assessment for your workforce.
Strengthen systems
Policies and reporting routes that hold up.
Evaluate and evolve
Measure, review, and adapt.
The cycle repeats, each round sharper than the last.
Call it out culture
Build an environment where unwanted behaviour is challenged early, and where colleagues, peers, and leaders feel safe to speak up. Visible leadership commitment from the top. Bystander intervention that goes well beyond watching a video. Rituals and language that reinforce the standard week on week. Psychological safety treated as a measurable culture metric.
Educate
Move beyond generic e-learning. Deliver tailored, scenario-based training that addresses the actual risks in your environment rather than a vendor's stock library. Sector-specific case studies your people recognise. Manager-specific training on response and escalation. Trauma-informed framing throughout. Pre- and post-training assessment to measure impact.
Assess your risk
Conduct a structured sexual harassment risk assessment specific to your sector, workforce, and working patterns, including third-party and lone-working risks. Front-line, customer-facing, and lone-worker exposure. Power dynamics and reporting relationships. Travel, hospitality, social events, and after-hours risk. The documentary trail that supports the all reasonable steps standard.
Strengthen systems
Tighten policies, reporting routes, investigation processes, and record-keeping so concerns are handled fairly, consistently, and without fear of retaliation. Multiple reporting routes, including outside the line-manager chain. Trauma-informed investigation protocols. Confidentiality and anti-retaliation safeguards. Clear, auditable record-keeping that holds up in tribunal.
Evaluate and evolve
Measure what works using assessments, surveys, and reporting data, then review regularly and update your approach as the workplace changes. Annual structured review at minimum, more frequent after any incident. Anonymous staff pulse surveys on safety and trust. Tracking of reporting trends, not just complaint counts. Iterating policies and training based on what the data actually shows.
Why it works
Continuous, not one-off.
Most harassment work is event-driven, a training session, a policy update, a tribunal scare. CEASE makes prevention a recurring business process, which is what the law now expects and what actually reduces risk.
Trauma-informed throughout.
CEASE is built on principles drawn from the same body of knowledge used to train UK police officers on the psychology of misconduct and victim-blaming. Care is not an add-on here. It is structural.
Built on a model your organisation already trusts.
CEASE follows the plan, do, check, act cycle that underpins ISO management standards, and is designed to align with ISO 30415 and ISO 45001. That makes it immediately familiar to quality and safety-led organisations, and reframes sexual harassment as a quality, health, safety, and environment issue rather than a purely emotional or political one.
Evidence-based.
Pre- and post-training assessment, reporting analytics, and pulse surveys give you the audit trail that tribunals and the EHRC will look for.
A trademarked methodology.
CEASE Framework® is a registered trademark. The structure is consistent, replicable, and intentionally protected from dilution.
Scalable across sectors.
Particularly suited to male-dominated environments, high-pressure workplaces, and businesses with entrenched hierarchies, but applicable in any sector.
Working towards CEASE certification
Adopting the framework is the beginning. Certification is the destination.
For organisations that want to build out their full framework with us, CEASE certification offers a clear, credible, and renewable way to demonstrate the standard of their prevention work, to their people, their board, their clients, and, if it ever comes to it, a tribunal. Think of it in the way you would think of a recognised standard in quality or people practice: an external, structured mark of a genuine, evidenced commitment, rather than a claim an organisation simply makes about itself.
CEASE Framework® is a registered trademark of OneSource HR Limited.
It is the difference between saying you take prevention seriously and being able to prove it.
Where CEASE fits
The CEASE Framework® underpins everything we do. Our consultancy helps you implement it. Our training delivers the Educate step and strengthens your culture. Our investigations reflect the trauma-informed protocols at the heart of Strengthen systems. And for practising the behaviours that Call it out culture depends on, our sister business Scenari offers simulated, real-life contextual practice for workplace conduct.
CEASE is not a product bolted onto our services. It is the thinking that runs through all of them.
Bring the CEASE Framework® to your organisation
If your organisation is ready to move from reacting to preventing, and to meet the rising legal standard with confidence, talk to our team about what implementing CEASE would look like for you.